biertourist
Well-Known Member
As long as we're resurrecting this thread, I'd like to help shore up some of the confusion surrounding fly sparging and whether or not / why to sprinkle.
Many of the things that we do and generally take for granted in home brewing have been passed down by the British and German brewing traditions; these two traditions are very different; they had different materials (malts especially), different yeasts, different historical philosophies on things like adjuncts and even spice vs. hop usage and MOST CERTAINLY different brewery hardware and practices. -We're often taking bits and pieces of British and German brewing heritage and mixing them and throwing them into our modern American context and systems without understanding where they came from or why they were done. -It's not necessarily that it's old and bad advice that we've overcome with our modern knowledge, it's that some of these things only make sense within the context / end-to-end process and equipment that it originated in. Sparging practices are certainly one of these issues.
Those of us that have read some of the older home brew literature might remember that there USED TO BE talk about 3 sparging methods: "English", "continuous" ("fly"), and "batch" sparging. The old Palmer materials mention all three: http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter17.html -Random aside: It's super ironic that the "English" method is called "English" as it was actually invented (sparging in general was) in Scotland.
If you read Palmer's description of "English" "sparging" they would perform the mash, then completely drain the mashtun and then sparge into it and perform what he/they called a second mash. This is pretty close to correct but it's merging one old historical practice with an even older one, so let's go further...
Even older English mashing techniques WOULD involve multiple mashes back-to-back, sometimes with a bit of additional grains or hops added to the second mash (yea, mash hopping; yes they were reusing the grains and mash hops from the first mash in the second); sometimes this would result in a higher quality strong beer out of the first mash that would be sold at a higher price and a second lower quality, lower gravity beer sold at a cheaper price. -"Partigyle brewing". Later brewers combined the two mashes into one wort, much like the batch sparging of today except they would've thought of it as batch mashing (they called it "Entire Brewing" because the entirety of the wort was combined into one batch/beer); some sources say it started in London, some say Scotland, I'm not a historian so I don't know who to believe on that one. -Another random aside- ever heard the story that a historical beer called "Entire butt" was one of the constituent beers that was blended together to make the original London porter? It was called "Entire" because it was brewed using this "entire" method and "butt" because that was the name for a certain sized large wooden cask. (Yes, I know that the fact that porter originated from this blend of "entire butt" and another beer is now considered a myth and that there's very little evidence for it, but "Entire Butt" was a real beer and is relevant to this discussion.)
What we DO know is that sparging as a practice started in Scotland and rather than performing a second mash (batch sparge) they would drain the mashtun all the way dry and then sprinkle grain over the top of the dry grain bed - when you are sparging over a dry grain bed even distribution drives efficiency so sparge arms are required / recommended / a good idea. -This is the technique that Palmer is calling out on the HowToBrew website as the "English method". (The end-to-end process -single mash followed by dry grain bed sparging via sprinkling hot water over the wort was early on called the "Scottish method" and referred to the larger set of new brewing innovations coming out of Edinburgh as the "Scottish System"; See the Scottish Ale Brewer and Practical Maltster from 1847: http://books.google.com/books?id=WBkZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
I lived in Ireland for 5 years and took some brewing courses at BrewLab in Sunderland and visited a number of modern English breweries and spent a few brewdays at some and all of the small breweries that I visited still mash / sparge in this way; they drain the mashtun dry and THEN sparge over the dry grain bed and that requires a squeaky sparge arm to sprinkle the grain evenly over the grain bed.
So the practice absolutely makes sense if you're sparging over a dry grain bed, but if you're using our modern "fly sparge" techniques where you're starting the sparge while still draining off the mash and you keep the water level above the grain bed, absolutely a sparge arm is a pointless complication. Its useful and makes sense when used in the right system.
-Having said that I included a garden spray head in the roof of my mashtun because it doubles as both a poor-man's ($1.52) CIP sprayer and sparging / recirc fitting. (My mashtun is insulated so I don't lose much heat and I keep my insulated lid on while recircing / sparging so air introduction and HSA isn't an issue, if you believe in HSA (personally I put it in the same category as a living Elvis, Bigfoot, and UFOs).
Adam
Many of the things that we do and generally take for granted in home brewing have been passed down by the British and German brewing traditions; these two traditions are very different; they had different materials (malts especially), different yeasts, different historical philosophies on things like adjuncts and even spice vs. hop usage and MOST CERTAINLY different brewery hardware and practices. -We're often taking bits and pieces of British and German brewing heritage and mixing them and throwing them into our modern American context and systems without understanding where they came from or why they were done. -It's not necessarily that it's old and bad advice that we've overcome with our modern knowledge, it's that some of these things only make sense within the context / end-to-end process and equipment that it originated in. Sparging practices are certainly one of these issues.
Those of us that have read some of the older home brew literature might remember that there USED TO BE talk about 3 sparging methods: "English", "continuous" ("fly"), and "batch" sparging. The old Palmer materials mention all three: http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter17.html -Random aside: It's super ironic that the "English" method is called "English" as it was actually invented (sparging in general was) in Scotland.
If you read Palmer's description of "English" "sparging" they would perform the mash, then completely drain the mashtun and then sparge into it and perform what he/they called a second mash. This is pretty close to correct but it's merging one old historical practice with an even older one, so let's go further...
Even older English mashing techniques WOULD involve multiple mashes back-to-back, sometimes with a bit of additional grains or hops added to the second mash (yea, mash hopping; yes they were reusing the grains and mash hops from the first mash in the second); sometimes this would result in a higher quality strong beer out of the first mash that would be sold at a higher price and a second lower quality, lower gravity beer sold at a cheaper price. -"Partigyle brewing". Later brewers combined the two mashes into one wort, much like the batch sparging of today except they would've thought of it as batch mashing (they called it "Entire Brewing" because the entirety of the wort was combined into one batch/beer); some sources say it started in London, some say Scotland, I'm not a historian so I don't know who to believe on that one. -Another random aside- ever heard the story that a historical beer called "Entire butt" was one of the constituent beers that was blended together to make the original London porter? It was called "Entire" because it was brewed using this "entire" method and "butt" because that was the name for a certain sized large wooden cask. (Yes, I know that the fact that porter originated from this blend of "entire butt" and another beer is now considered a myth and that there's very little evidence for it, but "Entire Butt" was a real beer and is relevant to this discussion.)
What we DO know is that sparging as a practice started in Scotland and rather than performing a second mash (batch sparge) they would drain the mashtun all the way dry and then sprinkle grain over the top of the dry grain bed - when you are sparging over a dry grain bed even distribution drives efficiency so sparge arms are required / recommended / a good idea. -This is the technique that Palmer is calling out on the HowToBrew website as the "English method". (The end-to-end process -single mash followed by dry grain bed sparging via sprinkling hot water over the wort was early on called the "Scottish method" and referred to the larger set of new brewing innovations coming out of Edinburgh as the "Scottish System"; See the Scottish Ale Brewer and Practical Maltster from 1847: http://books.google.com/books?id=WBkZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
I lived in Ireland for 5 years and took some brewing courses at BrewLab in Sunderland and visited a number of modern English breweries and spent a few brewdays at some and all of the small breweries that I visited still mash / sparge in this way; they drain the mashtun dry and THEN sparge over the dry grain bed and that requires a squeaky sparge arm to sprinkle the grain evenly over the grain bed.
So the practice absolutely makes sense if you're sparging over a dry grain bed, but if you're using our modern "fly sparge" techniques where you're starting the sparge while still draining off the mash and you keep the water level above the grain bed, absolutely a sparge arm is a pointless complication. Its useful and makes sense when used in the right system.
-Having said that I included a garden spray head in the roof of my mashtun because it doubles as both a poor-man's ($1.52) CIP sprayer and sparging / recirc fitting. (My mashtun is insulated so I don't lose much heat and I keep my insulated lid on while recircing / sparging so air introduction and HSA isn't an issue, if you believe in HSA (personally I put it in the same category as a living Elvis, Bigfoot, and UFOs).
Adam
