Sparging help

Doing my first AG brew in a week or so, just trying to study up as much info as I can. Main thing I am worried about is sparging properly. My beersmith says to Mash with 12.5 qts of water, cool. Then it says to sparge with 19.38 qts.

So when I go to sparge, I will drain out a few pitchers and run it back through the grain bed after my mash is complete. Drain out my mash tun completely into my kettle. And then after that, pour half of sparge water in my mash tun and give it a gentle stir and sit for 10 min or so and drain that completely into my kettle. Pretty much just do that until I reach my pre boil volume. Does that sound like a solid process? Any tips? Thanks!

I think your math is off somewhere... 12.5 qrts is for about 3 lbs of grain. Are you only making a 2 gallon batch? I typically use 10 to 15 lbs of grain for 6 gallon batches.
Your sparge amount alone is almost 5 gallons.

How big of a batch, what is your grain bill, and what is your boil-off rate?

Also- no 'gentle stir', in either the mash or the batch sparge steps; Stir like it's a mofo that owes you money and you want it NOW.

acidrain said:

I think your math is off somewhere... 12.5 qrts is for about 3 lbs of grain. Are you only making a 2 gallon batch? I typically use 10 to 15 lbs of grain for 6 gallon batches.
Your sparge amount alone is almost 5 gallons.

How big of a batch, what is your grain bill, and what is your boil-off rate?

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I was just going by beersmith. 5 gallon batch

8 lb. 2 row
8 oz carafoam
8 oz melanoidin
1 lb crystal 120

I'm not sure what the other poster was thinking, but 12.5 qts mash volume into 10 lbs of grain is 1.25 qts/lb. That's an acceptable mash density albeit at the thick end of the range.

Then you're sparging with much more volume than the mash. Ideally the two volumes should be closer to equivalent. No need for such a discrepancy unless you have no room in your kettle to increase the mash volume. Is that the case? If you have room in your mash tun, try decreasing the density to 1.5 qts/lb.

McKnuckle said:

I'm not sure what the other poster was thinking, but 12.5 qts mash volume into 10 lbs of grain is 1.25 qts/lb. That's an acceptable mash density albeit at the thick end of the range.

Then you're sparging with much more volume than the mash. Ideally the two volumes should be closer to equivalent. No need for such a discrepancy unless you have no room in your kettle to increase the mash volume. Is that the case? If you have room in your mash tun, try increasing the density to 1.5 qts/lb.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I knew that sounded right!

treacheroustexan said:

And then after that, pour half of sparge water in my mash tun and give it a gentle stir and sit for 10 min or so and drain that completely into my kettle.

Click to expand...

Stir the bejesus out of it, skip the 10 min rest, and vorlauf each sparge prior to draining to the BK.