Fly Sparging Question

[MikeCass]

I am about to start my fourth All-Grain brew and I have one question for fly sparging.

I have been fly-sparging all of my brews thus far. Till now I never had a way to measure my pre-boil volume. I recently ordered a sight-glass from brewhardware, and now I will be able to measure it.

However, up until now I have been either overshooting or undershooting my volumes, I haven't really been close yet. I'm assuming my issue is coming from either mashing or sparging volumes. I follow my beersmith volumes meticulously.

But my question is, now that I can measure my pre-boil volumes. Can I just follow my typical beersmith mashing volumes, and then just heat up more than the suggested amount of sparge water and just sparge until I get the correct pre-boil volume? Or does when the final sparge water run through the grain, does it collect some residual sugars that would not be collected had I not run the mash tun dry? Will I see some hits as far as efficiency?

My fault I never took good notes for volumes and whatnot.. Now I'm paying the price. Oh well, gotta learn somehow haha.

Thanks!

 

[CBMbrewer]

Use a standard 1.25-1.5 quart/pound for the mash. Find out how much you collected from that. I usually lose .1 gallons per pound. Sparge with enough water to get you to your total pre-boil volume or your running's are bellow 1.007, whichever comes first. You can make a dole rod to measure how much you have in the kettle. Take a sanitary straight rod of some kind (I use my large spoon) pour one gallon after another into the kettle and mark on the rod where the water level is at each gallon. Keep the rod straight up and against the side to ensure consistency.

 

[nobby]

AS cmb said use a measuring stick I use my old faithful spoon measuring stick it is marked in 5 and 1 litre sections
its a 1 metre lenth of copper pipe with a spoon stuck in it and the markings are made visibe by quarter cutting the pipe with a pipe cutter to score it

 

[jbaysurfer]

My measuring stick is a tape measure.

 

[Bobby_M]

He already bought a sight glass. The question was not about how to measure volumes.

You can continue sparging until you reach the necessary preboil volume as measured on the sight glass. Running a fly sparge grain bed completely dry isn't typically done.

 

[Smellyglove]

Just stop the sparge when you've hit your target preboil volume.

If there's still a lot of water/wort left in the mash tun my guess is that it will have a lower concentration of sugars than then last few drops you drained before you stopped, since this water has not been drained through the entire grainbed yet, and the grains wil alsol have less sugars left in them to dissolve.

The longer the sparge, the lesser sugars you can draw from the grains, so when leaving the grainbed "full" when stopping you're just discarding the least sweetest wort.

 

[Smellyglove]

AS cmb said use a measuring stick I use my old faithful spoon measuring stick it is marked in 5 and 1 litre sections
its a 1 metre lenth of copper pipe with a spoon stuck in it and the markings are made visibe by quarter cutting the pipe with a pipe cutter to score it

That stick of yours looks like something from LOTR. It should have some sort of eye on the very top which shoots out a bright light full of brewing-powers.

 

[Bobby_M]

I'll provide a little more clarification to my previous post. There are a few fly sparge philosophies out there but most either continue adding sparge water (and maintain the 1" of water over the grain) the entire sparge right up to when they stop collecting due to satisfying the required preboil volume. There is a second practice, which I believe is a bit of a carryover from previous batch sparging experience, is to calculate the required sparge volume such that when the preboil volume is satisfied, the MLT is dry or nearly dry (as if it were batch sparged). Certainly the advantage of the latter technique is that you only heat the water you absolutely need. The disadvantage is that your grain bed does not remain as fluid and you CAN get a stuck runoff. A side negative is that you can get screwed if you didn't calculate the volume correctly.

I typically compromise in that if my "run dry" sparge volume would have been say 4 gallons, I'll heat up 6 gallons and add it until it runs out. My logic is that the bed doesn't run completely dry but by the time I'm done, only the top half of the bed is dry-ish but the bottom near the false bottom is still pretty fluid and still acting like a true fly sparge.

 

[jbaysurfer]

He already bought a sight glass. The question was not about how to measure volumes.

You can continue sparging until you reach the necessary preboil volume as measured on the sight glass. Running a fly sparge grain bed completely dry isn't typically done.

Lighten up francis. We were passing time til a pro like you came along to answer the question straight. I also have a site glass, from you, but I use it on my HLT. My BK measuring stick is a tape measure... on topic (somewhat), do YOU have a sight glass on your BK? I've noticed the water splashes out the top of it when it boils, would it make for a mess when it's wort and not water?

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

I used to run my mash tun dry, but I found out over time that there were slight variations on my volume in the kettle, and hence variations into the fermenter.

I now keep sparging until I reach 13.25 gallons (about 1/4" above the 13-gal measure on my wood dowel). When boiled for an hour and into the fermenters, I get about 10.5-gal, which eventually ends up in 2x 5-gal cornies with a minute amount of waste.

MC

 

[Bobby_M]

Lighten up francis. We were passing time til a pro like you came along to answer the question straight. I also have a site glass, from you, but I use it on my HLT. My BK measuring stick is a tape measure... on topic (somewhat), do YOU have a sight glass on your BK? I've noticed the water splashes out the top of it when it boils, would it make for a mess when it's wort and not water?

I'm light. I was just a little confused why people were ignoring the actual question he asked.

Yes, I do have a sight glass on my boil kettle and it doesn't boil in the tube at all. If you do have internal boils, it's heat wash on the fitting and can be solved with a heat shield.

 

[eltorrente]

I put a piece of tin foil beneath my sight glass to prevent it from boiling inside of it.

I would suggest that everyone calibrate their sight glass, based on two positions. This is important if you are following Beer Smith and are into figuring out efficiency, and reproduceability.

To do this, add exact amounts of water in half-gallon increments, and make marks on the glass based on where you will have the kettle sitting when filling it during the sparge. If you boil it in a different location, then make marks based on the position it's in during the boil. Subsequently, always keep the kettle oriented in the same direction during these two steps.

The reason is that it's probably not totally level where the kettle is, and since the sight glass is on the side of the kettle, it won't read exactly accurate and you can't count on it as you move the kettle to a different location. My sight glass has two sets of marks, and the place that I boil the wort is off by almost half a gallon, since it's slightly tilted. The place I fill it during the sparge is off by about 1/4 gallon.

Also, remember that the wort expands quite a bit during the boil, and if you wait until you hit your target volume during the boil, you'll end up short by close to a half gallon once it cools - plus of course the loss inside of the kettle.

 

[MikeCass]

I posted this thread like a week and a half ago and gave up on it when after a few days didn't get any relative answers. I was just paroozing the forum before bed and saw this topic and thought there was no way this was my topic haha.

Thanks Bobby for the reply! Your answer helped me greatly. I also just installed my sight glass from you, gonna give it, its first go on Tuesday with a pumpkin ale.

Also, thanks to Bobby at BrewHardware for excellent products and superb customer service!

 

[jbaysurfer]

I'm light. I was just a little confused why people were ignoring the actual question he asked.

Yes, I do have a sight glass on my boil kettle and it doesn't boil in the tube at all. If you do have internal boils, it's heat wash on the fitting and can be solved with a heat shield.

Just messin' around Bobby. I didn't feel qualified to answer it, so I bumped the OP's thread with a response to the post above mine. Thanks for the feedback on the heat shield. I already have one of those too, but I don't think I was using it when I got the boil over.