Missed OG

Well still not hitting OG. This time I missed my mark of 1.051 and got 1.047 is that really a big miss?

Hulud said:

Well still not hitting OG. This time I missed my mark of 1.051 and got 1.047 is that really a big miss?

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The easiest thing to do is just adjust your planned OG to your actual efficiency, and scale up the grain a tad to hit the desired OG. That said, missing by 0.004 is nothing! That could be from a quart and a half more water in your brew than in the recipe.

Yooper said:

The easiest thing to do is just adjust your planned OG to your actual efficiency, and scale up the grain a tad to hit the desired OG. That said, missing by 0.004 is nothing! That could be from a quart and a half more water in your brew than in the recipe.

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Great to hear! I didn't think it was much its just I have missed in the past by like .012 and the beers lacked body. From now on I'm gonna scale up a bit until I start hitting better efficiency

Another issue is that you could be letting the wort flow out of your tun too quickly, hurting your efficiency. Try going slower, it may or may not help. This used to happen to me quite often, and when I slowed down how fast my wort came out, my efficiency started to rise.

Well how long should it take batch sparging?

It took me about 15-20 mins

Hulud said:

Well how long should it take batch sparging?

It took me about 15-20 mins

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It takes just a couple of minutes. With batch sparging, you just add the sparge water, stir it extremely well, vorlauf, and let it rip. It takes me less than 10 minutes.

Fly sparging, which works on the principle of diffusion, needs to be slow. But batch sparging doesn't rely on diffusion to rinse the sugars off of the grain, so it can be as fast as your valve will let it run.

Yooper said:

It takes just a couple of minutes. With batch sparging, you just add the sparge water, stir it extremely well, vorlauf, and let it rip. It takes me less than 10 minutes.

Fly sparging, which works on the principle of diffusion, needs to be slow. But batch sparging doesn't rely on diffusion to rinse the sugars off of the grain, so it can be as fast as your valve will let it run.

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Then what is the point on doing a first and second runnings? Like why don't you add the full volume and get it all done at once?

Hulud said:

Then what is the point on doing a first and second runnings? Like why don't you add the full volume and get it all done at once?

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if you are batch sparging then it does not matter how fast your wort runs out, the second batch sparge just rinses the grains. with a fly sparge the heavier sweet water sinks down so you want to drain not much faster than your sparge water is flowing in or else you will be pouring fresh water over bare grain with no rinsing effect.

Hulud said:

Then what is the point on doing a first and second runnings? Like why don't you add the full volume and get it all done at once?

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You drain the mash tun of sweet wort from the mash, and then add the sparge water at one time (in a "batch"). Stir well, vorlauf and drain. That's it!

The first runnings are from the mash, and the second runnings are the "rinsing" of the grain from sugars that were dissolved into the wort but "stuck" on the grain.

Some people do split the sparge water into two additions, using 1/2 each time, but that hasn't really been shown to make a big difference.

Ok well I guess I used a little too much water. I think I need a more precise way to measure. Time to make a purchase