First all grain- sparge question- HELP

Okay so I just started my mash on my first all grain... I am confused about mash out/ sparge.... I want to know what I should heat my sparge water to... If I am doing batch sparging... I drain everything from my mast tun to my boil kettle the run my sparge water correct?... help!

For batch sparging, I heat my sparge water to about 185-190.

When the mash is done, vorlouf, and drain all of your runnings into the kettle. Add your sparge water, stir, vorlouf, and drain again.

Personally, I heat my sparge water to 170*F, has always worked for me. Also, I use just under .5 gallon of water per 1lb of grain. So, if I'm using 10lbs of grains, I'll sparge with 5 gallons of 170* water.

I also batch sparge.

Drain as much as you can from your mash goop after vorlaufing. Once you run dry, close the valve on your mash tun, add your 170* water & stir vigorously. Wait about 10 minutes, drain all THAT water out (or whatever preboil volume you're looking for)

Again, personally, for my 5 gallon batches, I try to start with 7 gallons pre boil, cause I routinely boil off almost 2 gallons over 1 hour.

Good Luck!!

biestie said:

For batch sparging, I heat my sparge water to about 185-190.

When the mash is done, vorlouf, and drain all of your runnings into the kettle. Add your sparge water, stir, vorlouf, and drain again.

Click to expand...

Dang, I typed too much and you beat me to it!

Most folks feel like all conversion is done in the mash, so extra hot water (like 190*) isn't going to hurt anything or leach any tannins in the sparge, you're only rinsing at that point.

I love brewing beer

Okay I am doing the the smoked porter all grain kit from northern brewer. It has 13 lbs of grains so I used about 4 gallons in my mash. How much should sparge Water should I use?

I use brewing software that gets me on the ballpark and i add if needed when I've collected the 1st runnings. You could heat 4 gallons or so and see what you need. If you collect 3 gallons and need 6, add 3 gallons and change of sparge water.

Y0ungun said:

Okay I am doing the the smoked porter all grain kit from northern brewer. It has 13 lbs of grains so I used about 4 gallons in my mash. How much should sparge Water should I use?

Click to expand...

Awesome! Now... your question is hard to answer, it kinda depends on how much you get out of your mash (your system is different from everyone else's)

I'd expect that you might get just over 2 gallons of wort out of your mash. General school of thought is that each lb of grain absorbs .1 gallon of water. So.. you'll probably lose 1.3 gallons to absorption. My cooler mash tun holds about 1.5 quarts due to it's design. So, the best I can hope for when I mash with 4 gallons is to lose about a gallon to absorption (10lb grain bill) and another almost-two-quarts to mash tun design. 4 gets me about 2 1/2 gallons on a good day.

In that case, I need to sparge with 5 gallons cause I'll get 4.5 back due to no more absorption by the grain. Add 4.5 sparge to 2.5 gallons of mash, and I get my 7 gallons.

YMMV

Very simple to look at it like this IMO.

Drain MT and measure wort collected, Sparge volume will be

(total volume needed) minus (wort collected from MT)

so for an average 5 gal batch, say 3 gal is collected from the initial drain of the MT and you want 7 gal preboil

7-3=4 gallons sparge water required