PM techniques: grain bag, sparge, manifold...

Good morning all. I'm still refining my PM techniques and have been wondering about a few things. I'm doing partial boils right now.

Here's my current procedure, which I've gleaned from reading here and the instructions in the AHS mini-mash kits I've been doing:

Crush grain, put in grain bag, put bag at bottom of Igloo.
Heat 2.5 gallons water to strike temp and dump in Igloo.
Stir/teabag (ouch!) and verify temp between 150-155F.
Cover, leave for 45 minutes.
Stir/teabag (still hot, ouch!) then put grain bag in strainer over Igloo.
Sparge with 170F water at 1qt/2lbs of grain by pouring water over grain.
Let drain and boil as usual.

So there are several things I'm curious about here. First is the sparge volume. AHS recommends 1qt/2lbs, but I've seen many recommendations of 1gal/2lbs here. Will that get more fermentable sugars out of the grain?

Second, instead of pouring the sparge water over the grain, I've seen some folks take the grain bag and put the whole thing in the sparge water, letting it soak for 10 minutes more, then teabagging (mmm, nut brown) and discarding the grain. Is this more efficient?

Lastly, the whole grain bag thing. Are there advantages to not using one and using a manifold instead? I saw someone's design using a S/S braided hose and thought it was nifty, but I don't want to go to the effort of building it if there aren't advantages to it.

Thanks much for your help and patience

-Joe

1. More sparge water means more sugars, but also longer to boil down.
2. That's the old batch vs fly sparging technique. I batch.
3. For PM, a large grain bag cannot be beat. Once you hit 5-6 lbs of grain, a more complex approach makes sense.

For my allgrain batches I do essentially the exact same thing you're doing, except I don't lift the bag out and let it drain. I simply open the tap at the bottom of the igloo cooler and let the wort filter out through the grainbed as you normally would with the ss braided hose approach. For batch sparging, I simply dump the sparge water in the igloo (its big enough to hold it all) and then run it out again. No collanders or 'teabagging' .

The bag is a pretty good filter, and it makes for easy cleanup (lift out the grains and dump em). Recently I did swap out the stock button-tap that the igloo comes with for the plastic tap that comes with your bottling bucket. I can regulate the flow a lot better, and I can attach a hose to the tip and run it into my kettle without the splashing.

I'll get some pics soon. Check out the MacGuyver brew system in my sig for my igloo setup.

mike

Pouring sparge over the grains in a bag really isn't as effective as true batch OR fly sparging. It's like a fly sparge with bad channeling.

Are you sparging less because you don't have the kettle capacity to sparge more? If so, nothing you can do to increase efficiency except get a larger pot. If you just picked an arbitrary amount to sparge with, you could be getting more of the sugar out by increasing the sparge to at least the same as your initial infusion of 1.25qt/lb if not a little more. It's not even an issue of longer boil down because you're always going to top up a PM batch. The more liquid that is derived through the sparge, the more sugar you end up with.

You specifically asked what the advantage of a stainless braid would be. Well, not having to fill the grain bag or clean it later is one. Also, the mash/sparge would be much easier to stir which would increase efficiency.

Bobby_M said:

Are you sparging less because you don't have the kettle capacity to sparge more? If so, nothing you can do to increase efficiency except get a larger pot.

Click to expand...

I'm sparging at 1q/2# because that's what the AHS instruction sheet said to do. I am using a 70qt turkey fryer pot, so I've got plenty of room. If I do use more sparge water than the recipe calls for, do I need to boil farther? How do I know how far to go? Or will it just mean I'll need less top-up water at the end?

Bobby_M said:

You specifically asked what the advantage of a stainless braid would be. Well, not having to fill the grain bag or clean it later is one. Also, the mash/sparge would be much easier to stir which would increase efficiency.

Click to expand...

When/how often should I be stirring the mash? Just at the start and end, I hope?

I think I'm going to do things a bit differently next time. Increase sparge volume, batch sparge directly in the cooler. Perhaps a vorlauf, because I like the word? So...

Crush grain, put in grain bag, put bag at bottom of Igloo.
Heat 2.5 gallons water to strike temp and dump in Igloo.
Stir and verify temp between 150-155F.
Cover, leave for 45 minutes.
Stir, pull a gallon or so through the spigot and recirc through the grain bed (this is the vorlauf, correct?).
Drain the wort into my brew kettle through the spigot.
Add 2gal of 170F water to the grain, stir well.
Vorlauf again, then drain into brew kettle through spigot.
Boil as usual.

Does that sound a little more like it?

Thanks again for the input. Bobby, I'm going to try to join you guys at JJ Bittings the next time you meet

-Joe

Bobby_M said:

It's not even an issue of longer boil down because you're always going to top up a PM batch.

Click to expand...

Er...disregard my first question in that last post.

Hooray, reading comprehension!

-Joe

Hmm, so you're a cooler conversion away from full on all grain with that big ol' kettle.

Looking forward to meeting you. I won't be at the October meeting but you're welcome to come to the club's big brew at my house on Nov 8th.

Bobby_M said:

Hmm, so you're a cooler conversion away from full on all grain with that big ol' kettle.

Click to expand...

Don't remind me But until I work it out so I don't have to shlep 5 gallons of boiling lava down my basement steps, it's going to be partial boils for me.

Bobby_M said:

Looking forward to meeting you. I won't be at the October meeting but you're welcome to come to the club's big brew at my house on Nov 8th.

Click to expand...

Ooo I may just take you up on that!

-Joe

One more thing. I've been doing a half extract addition at the start of the boil and the other half at 15 minutes. Since I'm doing a PM, would it be OK to add all of the LME at 15 minutes? Is there some guideline to how much it will alter my hop utilization?

Thanks,

-Joe