help with sparge

I'm getting back into all grain from a few years ago, need a refresher real fast. I have a cooler with a braid inside for my mash tun.
I'm making Centennial Blonde and have Beersmith program. I'm mashing at 150 deg. for 60 min. How do I sparge again? I'm in process right now, so any help I can get.


thanks

Ummmmm, drain your first runnings, add your sparge water, mix again and drain your second runnings

so just empty it 1st, add how much water at what temp?

The beersmith brew sheet should have those #s
but if you cant find them figure out volume of first runnings and subtract that from preboil volume leaving you with the sparge water volume

so I think I sort of messed up..
here is what happenend
I used about 1.5 gal water at 170 deg. ish, gentaly poured over the grain bed.
I got about 2.5 total out of this at gravity 1.060, I added 4 gal water for the boil, and ened up with OG of 1.024

I read somewhere to use about 1/2 the orginal water for the sparge..
after I printed out my brew sheet from Beer Smith, I see there is some instructions on how much sparge water to use 5.57 gal

I guess I"ll just have a light watery Centennial Blonde

Yeah you messed up. Mash the grain with 1.5 gallons water per lb of grain, for 60 min. Drain the mashtun dry, then add the sparge water to the mashtun (the volume of water= the total amount of wort that you want preboil minus the amount that drained from the mashtun). Stir very well, then some more, and drain again. You should now have about 6.5 gallons of wort (depending on your particular evaporation rate) in the kettle, all of which rinsed sugar out of the grain. The pre boil SG is a bit lower than you desired OG, again because of evaporation.

If you boil away too much wort, you can top off the carboy with water. If you drain the mashtun and then just add water to the kettle with out sparging with it, you've made something very light.

Add some malt extract. What have you got to lose. Should be easy to figure the amount needed to hit your OG goal.

Hey FEARDIZ...

I use a double-sparge method by bringing 1gal water to 160 degrees and pour into mash tun and swash around and cover to set the temperature environment before mashing. I then bring the strike water to the desired temperature, add to mash tun and add grains 1/3 at a time while stirring the mash to ensure complete saturation with good even temperature through out the grain bed (use a thermometer to attain your target mash temp). After the normal 60 min mash, I drain a few quarts (usually 2-4) and recycle into tun (pouring slowly along the edges of the tun) until the run out is clean then I drain into boil pot and measure runoff.

I then subtract runoff from the desired Kettle Full Volume to get Batch Sparge amount. I divide batch sparge amount by 2 for two batch sparges. Heat total batch sparge water to usually 170deg, add ½ sparge water to grain while stirring grain lightly to loosen sugars and cover the tun for 15 min. I do the same 2-4 quart recycle then run out to the boil pot. I do same to second batch sparge.

The amounts of strike and sparge water will depend on your water-to-grain ratio (usually between 1.25 - 2qts per lb of grain), the absorption ratio of the grains, evaporation rates of the boil, and absorption rate of your loose hops. It is much easier to use a program to figure this out.

Hope this helps.

TripHops

Northcalais40 said:

Yeah you messed up. Mash the grain with 1.5 gallons water per lb of grain, for 60 min.

Click to expand...

I think you mean 1.5 QUARTS per pound...

Yeah, that sounds a bit more like it.