upped my efficiency by around 20%

so wednesday i decided to do an impromptu brew session. Had some errands to run and tasks to do around the house, but thought i could squeeze a brew in (had 5 empty fermenters so i had to fill one up).

Decided to brew an Rye Pale Ale, put a hopper/feed assembly on my grain mill, then went to work. did my mash while working around the house, then put in my batch sparge water.... but i'd promised a buddy i'd service his pool while he was out of town for the week, so i left the sparge water in while i headed over to his place. Got back right at an hour later.

I ended up with 87% efficiency when i've averaged about 67% doing a 15 min batch sparge over my last 6 or 7 brews.

needless to say i think from now on i'll add the extra 45 min to my brew day to get that higher efficiency.

Are you sure that's a good thing? Conversion is continuing while it sits there and may give you a different beer than you expect.

JKoravos said:

Are you sure that's a good thing? Conversion is continuing while it sits there and may give you a different beer than you expect.

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I thought that Conversion was completed in the initial mash. Iodine tells me that conversion is complete.

Do I not understand that correctly?

I thought that conversion happened almost immediately if the temperature was right, and the long rest time was just to make sure that all of the sugars are drawn out of the grain and solublized. In which case, the longer rest in the sparge water would only result in a minimal amount of continued conversion. Also, if your sparge water is 170, shouldn't it denature a lot of the enzymes and stop much of the conversion?

My concern would be grainy/husky/astringent flavors from over sparging.

BendBrewer said:

I thought that Conversion was completed in the initial mash. Iodine tells me that conversion is complete.

Do I not understand that correctly?

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Just because the iodine test shows that your mash is "converted" doesn't mean the profile isn't changing. The larger chain sugars will keep getting broken down as long as the beta amylase is still active. Maybe you denature the beta when you add the sparge water, or maybe not. IMO, 20% jump in efficiency is a lot for just leaving the water in there a little longer. I don't batch sparge, but isn't low to mid-80s typical batch sparging efficiency.

I usually get 70-75% batch sparging. I've hit 80 before. I keep tweaking my process so I'm still trying to dial in my equipment. The astringency is what would have me worried with an hour long sparge. Then again, I've played around with using third runnings for a weak wort that I can build up with some DME. I usually just add the sparge water and let it sit while I boil the main brew. Then I collect the wort, check gravity and add DME as I think is necessary to make a second beer. It always tastes like wort.

I'd be of the School of thought that if the temp of the mash tun is held between 165-170 with the sparge water in their, then conversion has been killed and the sparge water is merely extracting the sugars from the grain. Now, if the temp drops below 160, I don't know if conversion would resume or not.

good points... I sparged w/ 170* water, i guess we'll see how it ends up in a few weeks. i'd definitely not thought about the possible tannins/astringency from the husks though.. will definitely take this into consideration and may not repeat this process untill i get to try this brew.

BA_from_GA said:

good points... I sparged w/ 170* water, i guess we'll see how it ends up in a few weeks. i'd definitely not thought about the possible tannins/astringency from the husks though.. will definitely take this into consideration and may not repeat this process untill i get to try this brew.

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Well at 170*F sparge water you may very well have got some extra conversion. It likely only raised your grain bed temperature to ~160 (+/- 2*F) and at that point your alpha amylase is probably still working... especially if you're leaving it for an hour.

The tannins maaaay come through but I feel like that was possibly saved by a relatively low sparge temp.

Be sure to let us know how it comes out!

Tannin extraction is more a problem of pH which occurs with an overaggressive fly sparge and is not an issue with batch sparging. If temperature was an issue would anyone do decoction mashing?

The first question I would have is what was the OG of this beer. My efficiency is very dependant on the OG. Lower gravity beers get much better efficiency than high. Generally I can get about 85% for a 1.040, about 75% for 1.070 and 70% for 1.090.

I batch sparge but take my time. It usually takes me about 30 minutes to drain each batch. I'm not in a hurry and generally doing something else while awaiting the sparge.

GT

target OG w/ 70% efficiency would have been 1.051, after my bump i actually got 1.063.

Got Trub? said:

Tannin extraction is more a problem of pH which occurs with an overaggressive fly sparge and is not an issue with batch sparging. If temperature was an issue would anyone do decoction mashing?

The first question I would have is what was the OG of this beer. My efficiency is very dependant on the OG. Lower gravity beers get much better efficiency than high. Generally I can get about 85% for a 1.040, about 75% for 1.070 and 70% for 1.090.

I batch sparge but take my time. It usually takes me about 30 minutes to drain each batch. I'm not in a hurry and generally doing something else while awaiting the sparge.

GT

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Not true. Tannins have everything to do with temperature and pH and nothing to do with Fly Sparging. You can just as easily extract tannins with a batch sparge if the temperature and pH is wrong.

From Palmers "How to Brew"

Sparging is the rinsing of the grain bed to extract as much of the sugars from the grain as possible without extracting mouth-puckering tannins from the grain husks. Typically, 1.5 times as much water is used for sparging as for mashing (e.g., 8 lbs. malt at 2 qt./lb. = 4 gallon mash, so 6 gallons of sparge water). The temperature of the sparge water is important. The water should be no more than 170°F, as husk tannins become more soluble above this temperature, depending on wort pH. This could lead to astringency in the beer.

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Sawdustguy said:

Not true. Tannins have everything to do with temperature and pH and nothing to do with Fly Sparging. You can just as easily extract tannins with a batch sparge if the temperature and pH is wrong.

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Isn't the buffering capacity of grain bed maintained to greater extent in batch sparging than it is during fly sparging? Less chance of a pH swing leads to a lower tendency for tannin extraction in batch sparging.

At least that's how I understood it.

Rushis said:

Isn't the buffering capacity of grain bed maintained to greater extent in batch sparging than it is during fly sparging? Less chance of a pH swing leads to a lower tendency for tannin extraction in batch sparging.

At least that's how I understood it.

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I admit I don't know everything. If I knew everything, I wouldn't be reading this forum. This is the first time I have ever heard of this but that doesn't mean it isn't so. I am a big reader and read everything I can get my hands on about brewing. Maybe I missed something. Could you point me in the right direction on where you read or heard of this?

Rushis said:

Isn't the buffering capacity of grain bed maintained to greater extent in batch sparging than it is during fly sparging? Less chance of a pH swing leads to a lower tendency for tannin extraction in batch sparging.

At least that's how I understood it.

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Correct. I'll try to remember where I read this. Again if temperature was the main culprit in tannin extraction who would do decoction mashing where you boil your some of your grain? For fly spargers who are trying to maximize their efficiency they use a cut off SG which indirectly is a measure of pH. If you continue pulling of further sparged wort with its increasing pH you will get increased tannins.

GT

Got Trub? said:

Correct. I'll try to remember where I read this. Again if temperature was the main culprit in tannin extraction who would do decoction mashing where you boil your some of your grain? For fly spargers who are trying to maximize their efficiency they use a cut off SG which indirectly is a measure of pH. If you continue pulling of further sparged wort with its increasing pH you will get increased tannins.

GT

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This I know, but at that point you would be trying to pull blood from a stone. There are also games that can be played with additives to maintain ph if one wanted to take it that far. I monitor pH during the mash. When I started, I thought that was pretty much standard practice regardless of sparge technique.

Sawdustguy said:

I monitor pH during the mash. When I started, I thought that was pretty much standard practice regardless of sparge technique.

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Have never once checked the pH of my mash. Not for a specific reason or laziness... just never felt the need. I use salt additions that will enable me to get the right pH and I trust science.

Reno_eNVy_446 said:

Have never once checked the pH of my mash. Not for a specific reason or laziness... just never felt the need. I use salt additions that will enable me to get the right pH and I trust science.

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I guess I do it out of habit. I ruined a couple of batches when I first started all grain many moons ago. I had no idea why, so I started to check everything and became a little anal about it. I figured I had the pH meter so I periodically take a little mash, cool it down and take a pH measurement. I use salts also.