Kettle top up / mash temp question

[Tribe Fan]

I am going to do a clean Cream Ale session beer. I was going to add water to the boil and to the fermenters to minimize sparging time because I am lazy, impatient and this will be for the bud lite drinkers of the world. To them, I'm sure it will be amazing.

Recipe I've laid out calls for an 11 gallon yield. 2 gallons in the fermenters, which I will boil and airlock the night before, and 4.5 gallons at boil.

Questions I have:
Any issues with such a large ratio of water adds, beside the fact I have to hit the mash eff numbers?
Is there a downside to boiling the 4.5 gallons first and adding the wort directly from the MT / sparge, or should I let that cool down to mash out temps before adding the wort?

TIA-

 

[wilserbrewer]

Adding 6.5 gallons of top up water to an 11 gallon batch is way too much IMO?

Why do you want to do this? Why not sparge all or most of the 6.5 gallons?

What size kettle do you have?

 

[Tribe Fan]

Yeah it does seem like a lot. I have a converted keg for a boil kettle and a 10 gal gatorade MT.

I added more into the mash and sparge, 7 gal and 6 gal respectively. That still leaves 2.50 gal into the kettle and 2 gallons in the fermenters. I could sparge some of it, but I'm already at 12 gallons in the kettle and I fly sparge so it's pretty slow and it's a 90 minute mash. 1.7 gallons are going to boil off, so adding 2.5 doesn't seem like a big deal.

Shooting for 1.040, 4% session beer here. 11 gallons of finished beer is pushing my volume limits. I'll test the og coming out of the kettle and adjust the volumes to hit the target.

 

[RM-MN]

Yeah it does seem like a lot. I have a converted keg for a boil kettle and a 10 gal gatorade MT.

I added more into the mash and sparge, 7 gal and 6 gal respectively. That still leaves 2.50 gal into the kettle and 2 gallons in the fermenters. I could sparge some of it, but I'm already at 12 gallons in the kettle and I fly sparge so it's pretty slow and it's a 90 minute mash. 1.7 gallons are going to boil off, so adding 2.5 doesn't seem like a big deal.

Shooting for 1.040, 4% session beer here. 11 gallons of finished beer is pushing my volume limits. I'll test the og coming out of the kettle and adjust the volumes to hit the target.

If fly sparging is too slow and you are doing a 90 minute mash why not do a batch sparge and maybe cut the 90 minute mash down to 75 minutes? That should be nearly the same amount of time as doing the 90 minute mash but you got the benefit of the sparge to get the residual sugars?

Next question, why are you doing a fly sparge at all? There is so little to be gained in efficiency and so much time taken that could be used for other things.

 

[Tribe Fan]

If fly sparging is too slow and you are doing a 90 minute mash why not do a batch sparge and maybe cut the 90 minute mash down to 75 minutes? That should be nearly the same amount of time as doing the 90 minute mash but you got the benefit of the sparge to get the residual sugars?

Next question, why are you doing a fly sparge at all? There is so little to be gained in efficiency and so much time taken that could be used for other things.

Thanks, I've always just fly sparged. This will be a good time to try batch. Pretty basic grain bill. 2 row and rice.