Cold Water Fly Sparging

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pdfmorais

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Hi,

I am thinking about changing from batch sparge to fly sparge. The problem is that I have no way of heating the Fly Sparge water. I read two articles about experiments where is claimed that temperature is not an important factor in sparge effciency but the two articles were related to Batch Sparging.

Is temperature an important factor in Fly Sparging? Can anyone help with this?

Thanks.
 
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Yes temperature will affect your efficiency. Not a bad thing if you plan for it. Based on what your saying, you are also not mashing out. So, adding cold water to a 148-154F grain bed is going to cool it down very quickly. If you get it to cool the malt will not be gelatinized anymore and extraction will be difficult. The grain bed will start to solidify locking some of the wort in the bed.

I'm assuming you would be fly sparging for 45 minute at least. Once you get in the 130s F you are now breaking down proteins. Highly modified malts do not need any help breaking down their proteins. So brewers do protein rest but for short periods of time (10-15 min) not 45-60 minutes. This could affect the flavor, mouthfeel, and head retention of the beer.

I got to ask why? You are adding a difficult and time consuming step without having the capability to complete it correctly. If it's not broken don't fix it especially if you do not have the correct tools. Batch sparging works just fine. Many of award winning beers have been crafted with batch sparges. You would be better off dropping the sparge completely. Research no sparge brewing or full volume mashing.

I would not change until I had the correct tools in place.
 
I'm already doing batch sparges with cold water and get the same efficiency as before. The problem is that I have a direct fire mash tun and only one burner. I have no way of heating the soarge water while mashing. As I see it, fly sparge would eliminate the sparge water calculation errors and, if it worked with cold water, I could simply do it directly with tap water while collecting the wort in the boil kettle.
 
Is there some specific reason you want to avoid batch sparging? I think hot water may be useful with the fly sparge especially. The mash may get stuck, depending on the grainbill and sparge time/volume and this can lead to a very slow sparge. This can be prevented using hot water. The effect of cold water on efficiency is probably small, but some more starchy compounds(as well as tannins, under certain conditions) may be eluted with hot water.
 
pdfmorais said:
Mine too! At least for batch sparge method. But never read anything about fly sparging with cold water...
Click to expand...

The issue is that with fly sparging, you really need to do a mash out. Especially if you are sparging with cold water. To do a mash out, you need to add water of about 180 degrees to your MLT, maybe a bit higher depending on your equipment. If you maintain a temperature of 168-170 degrees F for at least 15 minutes, then you could sparge with cold water after that. That just seems to complicate matters rather than making it easier though.
 
To batch sparge correctly, I have to add a calculated amount of water to the mash tun. How do I measure that amount if I have the tun full of grain?

And I have no pump so the only way(and this is how I was doing) is to put the right amount of water in a kettle and then dump it over into the mash tun. My mash tun is at 1.8 meter (six feet i guess)high so if I continue to do it like this I might develop back problems in the future.
 
Yooper said:
The issue is that with fly sparging, you really need to do a mash out. Especially if you are sparging with cold water. To do a mash out, you need to add water of about 180 degrees to your MLT, maybe a bit higher depending on your equipment. If you maintain a temperature of 168-170 degrees F for at least 15 minutes, then you could sparge with cold water after that. That just seems to complicate matters rather than making it easier though.
Click to expand...
My tun is direct fired. Can I just raise the temp or do I really have to add water?
pdfmorais said:
To batch sparge correctly, I have to add a calculated amount of water to the mash tun. How do I measure that amount if I have the tun full of grain?

And I have no pump so the only way(and this is how I was doing) is to put the right amount of water in a kettle and then dump it over into the mash tun. My mash tun is at 1.8 meter (six feet i guess)high so if I continue to do it like this I might develop back problems in the future.
Click to expand...
 
Oh, yes, if your tun is direct fired than you could definitely try it!

Batch sparging is quicker and easier, but if you feel that you want to try it you definitely could.

If you have a big enough MLT, why not try no-sparge? That might really be the way to go for your situation.
 
pdfmorais said:
My mlt is 43 usable liters. For typical 1.060 og brew what is the max batch size I could get with no sparge method?
Click to expand...

What is your starting boil volume and batch size? There are calculators that can tell you the maximum grain and water that can fit in a MLT, like the one at Green Bay Rackers site: https://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml (scroll down to see that calculator).
 
To use the no sparge method I would have to considerably decrease the batch size... witch at this time is not an option. I think I'll try the mash out + fly sparge method first...
 
pdfmorais said:
To batch sparge correctly, I have to add a calculated amount of water to the mash tun. How do I measure that amount if I have the tun full of grain?
Click to expand...

If the whole reason for switching from batch to fly is your problem with calculating batch sparge additions, that is easily corrected...
Drain of first runnings and measure the volume.
Calculate how much more wort is needed for your pre-boil volume. That is the volume you will add as a total sparge volume. You can split that number in half for two sparge if you want. You don't need a calculator for sparge volumes.
 
Ok. But how do I heat up the sparge water ( I only have 1 burner and my tun is direct fired), and how do I put the sparge water in the tun without a pump and without dumping it from the top of the tun (6 feet high)? That's why I thought about tap water (I have a water source right behind the tun) and fly sparge so that a don't have to dump a given volume from 6 feet high...
 
I fly sparge with cold water. My tun is direct fired as well. I heat to 170, and hold it for 10 minutes or so. Then begin the sparge. I haven't had any trouble with stuck sparges, but I do use rice hulls in every batch. Make sure you account for them in your water measurements. They soak up more than you would think.
 
The easy way too calculate your sparge volume is to collect the wort after mashing, measure what you collected then determine how much more water you need to reach your preboil volume.

So you mash with your chosen amount, drain into boil kettle, you have let's just say 3 gallons of wort collected and you need 6 gallons to make a 5.5 gallon batch to go in the fermenter, if your boil of rate is.5 gallons an hour. You need 3 more gallons. Batch sparge with that 3 gallons.

Adjust the numbers for your system. They were just examples for explanation.

Mash, collect, measure, sparge with the remaining amount to reach the volume you need.
 
BrewInspector said:
The easy way too calculate your sparge volume is to collect the wort after mashing, measure what you collected then determine how much more water you need to reach your preboil volume.

So you mash with your chosen amount, drain into boil kettle, you have let's just say 3 gallons of wort collected and you need 6 gallons to make a 5.5 gallon batch to go in the fermenter, if your boil of rate is.5 gallons an hour. You need 3 more gallons. Batch sparge with that 3 gallons.

Adjust the numbers for your system. They were just examples for explanation.

Mash, collect, measure, sparge with the remaining amount to reach the volume you need.
Click to expand...
And how would I measure the water? In a separate container? Since I don't have a pump, I'm just trying to avoid dumping 20 to 25 liter (more than 25 kg) from a height of 6 feet. The problem is not calculating the needed volume. The problem is adding the water to the tun with no pump without causing back problems later.
 
May not be of much help to you if you have no second pot. That and your direct fire tun are different from what I use.

I have a 3 tier system with no pumps. Boil kettle on the floor, cooler MLT above that and a smaller hot liqueur tank with a separate burner. The HLT sits on the burner at about 4' so I do have to lift but it is usually no more than 4 gallons.

I would probably do what was suggested earlier given your equipment. Mash, drain, determine sparge amount, add to tun, heat and then drain. Seems like a simple approach to avoid lifting.

Just use a small container to measure how much you add. Maybe a 1 gallon jug or the like for adding your sparge amount to the tun.
 
If you are fly sparking you have a HLT. So heat your mash water in the BK, then mash your grains in MT. Now your BK is empty while you mash for an hr. Simply heat your sparge water in there. It won't take an hr. Then transfer to HLT.
 
I don't have an hlt. I usually batch sparge with cold water (with no efficiency issues) that I have to dump in. The only difference is now I want to fly sparge instead of batch sparging (with cold water too) connecting a hose to the tap and use a sparge arm so I don't have to dump the water from 6 feet high.
 
If you choose to use a hose make sure that it is suitable for human consumption use. A typical garden hose may impart some flavors you do not want.

I don't see a problem with what you propose but you will need to watch the fly sparge closely near the end to determine when to stop the flow since it will not be coming from a source of specified volume if coming straight from the tap. You will also not be able to eliminate chlorine etc if it is added to your water source without some serious filtration.
 
As I said before, the tap water is nothing new in my setup so chlorine is something I'm not concerned with... as for the volume, as I understanded fly sparging, I should stop when I reach the desired boil volume. I'm I right?
 
I'm missing something. You only have one vessel? Are you doing full volume BIAG?
 
You don't need to lift and dump all your sparge water at once. Use a step ladder and a one gallon pitcher to measure and add sparge water a gallon at a time.

Shouldn't be all that difficult even at 6' high IMO.

You can also increase your strike water and decrease you sparge a bit without killing efficiency.

How large a batch are we talking here?

Try a cold sparge as well if so inclined.
 
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It's a 32 liter batch... I have a 2 liter jug. That could work. Never thought about it. Lol. But I'm still trying the could fly sparge... I'm on my way to my brew place. I'm going to brew a Belgian Blonde today. I'll post the results later.
 
Tried the cold fly sparge and guess what... I had an efficiency increase by 3%!

I don't know if thats all related to the fly sparge because I had a problem with my mill and had to adjuste it. The thing is that with that mill and batch sparge (hot or cold), I never passed the 70% efficiency (i know... is low) and today I got 73%.

Even if the increase was due to the mill(which I seriously doubt it), I can say that cold fly sparging works.
 
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pdfmorais said:
Tried the cold fly sparge and guess what... I had an efficiency increase by 3%!

I don't know if thats all related to the fly sparge because I had a problem with my mill and had to adjuste it. The thing is that with that mill and batch sparge (hot or cold), I never passed the 70% efficiency (i know... is low) and today I got 73%.

Even if the increase was due to the mill(which I seriously doubt it), I can say that cold fly sparging works.
Click to expand...

I cold fly sparge as well and haven’t had a loss in efficiency either. I’m assuming homebrewers learned to sparge at temperature because that’s what the big boys were doing. What they didn’t say was the sparge temp doesn’t effect efficiency, but it cools the wort. Which means you spend more time and energy heating the wort to boiling. This can be a matter of a few minutes on our scale, but when you’re talking multiple bbls it can be a significant amount of time and energy wasted.
 
Yes. But in my case, I already sparged with cold water (batch sparge) so it didn't add much time to the process. And it is much easier. Just connect the hose from the tap to the sparge arm and open them valves.
 
pdfmorais said:
Tried the cold fly sparge and guess what... I had an efficiency increase by 3%!

I don't know if thats all related to the fly sparge because I had a problem with my mill and had to adjuste it. The thing is that with that mill and batch sparge (hot or cold), I never passed the 70% efficiency (i know... is low) and today I got 73%.

Even if the increase was due to the mill(which I seriously doubt it), I can say that cold fly sparging works.
Click to expand...

The top three reasons for a difference in efficiency are:
1. The crush
2. The crush
3. The crush

Your cold sparging probably lowered your efficiency a smitch but the change in the crush would easily raise it up more.
 
pdfmorais said:
Yes. But in my case, I already sparged with cold water (batch sparge) so it didn't add much time to the process. And it is much easier. Just connect the hose from the tap to the sparge arm and open them valves.
Click to expand...

I meant cold sparring increases the amount of time it takes to raise the wort temp to boiling. If you sparge normally your temp will either stay the same or rise a little. With cold sparging we are causing a significant drop in wort temperature that has to be accounted for when raising the wort to boiling. The increased time is negligible on the homebrew scale, but on the pro side it could be significant.
 
So can you sparge with hot tap water? It's readily available and wouldn't drop the wort temp as much as cold sparge water.
 

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