Mash water as sparge water?

[charliwest]

Have I done a terrible thing and killed my beer?

I was breweing with a friend and we decided to put our sparge water through the mash once time was up, and then put that same 'water' back through the grain to sparge with again, did we do a terrible thing or is that ok?

 

[fartinmartin]

No.
Did you end up with your desired volume.

 

[IslandLizard]

Nothing disastrous. But your efficiency may be lower than expected, since more heavy gravity wort is left behind in the grain and mash tun. Sparging is a form of rinsing, rinsing the sugars from the grain.

Next time, when mash is done, stir, let sit for a few minutes, vorlauf, lauter.
Add half your sparge water and repeat.
Then add the other half and repeat.

 

[DrWill]

Nothing disastrous. But your efficiency may be lower than expected, since more heavy gravity wort is left behind in the grain and mash tun

I'm curious why you think you'd leave behind sugars that you'd normally rise out. If you're draining the mash tun there shouldn't be a problem. It requires a little bit of calculation up front but it's not difficult.

 

[fartinmartin]

I guess all this amounts to what you are brewing, so many different sparge methods! By what your brewing I mean a masterpiece or a pleasant beer.
For instance many Biab Brewers mash at full volume and don't sparge at all.

 

[Hamaki]

I'm curious why you think you'd leave behind sugars that you'd normally rise out. If you're draining the mash tun there shouldn't be a problem. It requires a little bit of calculation up front but it's not difficult.

It's a matter of dilution. Your spent grain retains a considerable amount of wort. The first runnings have a high percentage of sugar. Sparging dilutes this and rinses out sugars that would have been left in the grain. You'll never get all the sugar due to potential for over extraction of tannins but sparging is intended to optimize efficiency. No sparge methods can produce great beer but at the expense of some efficiency.

 

[Homercidal]

Was there some drinking involved?

 

[mongoose33]

I'm curious why you think you'd leave behind sugars that you'd normally rise out. If you're draining the mash tun there shouldn't be a problem. It requires a little bit of calculation up front but it's not difficult.

The wort contains sugars, obviously; if the grain bed retains any moisture (and it does), then some of that moisture will contain sugar.

An easy way to see what this means is to compare first runnings and second runnings. Yesterday I had first runnings gravity of about 1.083; after draining off those first runnings I batch sparged with 4 gallons of RO water. Those second runnings had a gravity of 1.036.

Those second runnings contain sugar that remains "stuck" to the grain until it's rinsed by the sparge water. Using first runnings to "sparge" instead of clear water doesn't change anything.

 

[McKnuckle]

Let's say you're dirty and you get into a bathtub containing hot, clean water. You rinse yourself in the water, then you drain the tub from the bottom into a clean tank. That water has a bunch of dirt in it now. Your skin still has some dirt, but nowhere near as much as before.

Then you pour the dirty water from the tank back into the tub and repeat the process. Some additional dirt rinses off of you into the water. Probably, though, some of the dirt that was already in the water gets stuck on your skin again.

It would have been better to have performed the second rinse with a fresh batch of clean water, right? It would have rinsed more dirt away, leaving you cleaner, and the total volume of water more saturated with dirt.

In this analogy:
You = grain
Dirt = sugar
Bathtub = mash tun
Water = itself

 

[charliwest]

@homercidal how dare you, drinking while brewing? Whoever heard of such a thing....

I'm still totally in the dark about efficiency % etc, but the gravity before fermentation was spot on what beer smith predicted. Which makes me think the sparge was ok. Is that a misunderstanding?
I have brewed maybe 8 beers in total so far and I will say this beer overnight already has more sediment in the barrel than any I ever made before, I will rack to secondary and get some clarification agent I think, meant to be a nice clean earl grey ipa.....

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1461007513.845160.jpg

Thanks for the advice

 

[charliwest]

@homercidal how dare you, drinking while brewing? Whoever heard of such a thing....

I'm still totally in the dark about efficiency % etc, but the gravity before fermentation was spot on what beer smith predicted. Which makes me think the sparge was ok. Is that a misunderstanding?
I have brewed maybe 8 beers in total so far and I will say this beer overnight already has more sediment in the barrel than any I ever made before, I will rack to secondary and get some clarification agent I think, meant to be a nice clean earl grey ipa.....

View attachment 350888

Thanks for the advice

 

[charliwest]

@homercidal how dare you, drinking while brewing? Whoever heard of such a thing....

I'm still totally in the dark about efficiency % etc, but the gravity before fermentation was spot on what beer smith predicted. Which makes me think the sparge was ok. Is that a misunderstanding?
I have brewed maybe 8 beers in total so far and I will say this beer overnight already has more sediment in the barrel than any I ever made before, I will rack to secondary and get some clarification agent I think, meant to be a nice clean earl grey ipa.....


Thanks for the advice

 

[charliwest]

Sorry app was playing up saying it hadn't posted

 

[IslandLizard]

Let's say you're dirty and you get into a bathtub containing hot, clean water. You rinse yourself in the water, then you drain the tub from the bottom into a clean tank. That water has a bunch of dirt in it now. Your skin still has some dirt, but nowhere near as much as before.

Then you pour the dirty water from the tank back into the tub and repeat the process. Some additional dirt rinses off of you into the water. Probably, though, some of the dirt that was already in the water gets stuck on your skin again.

It would have been better to have performed the second rinse with a fresh batch of clean water, right? It would have rinsed more dirt away, leaving you cleaner, and the total volume of water more saturated with dirt.

In this analogy:
You = grain
Dirt = sugar
Bathtub = mash tun
Water = itself

I just love this allegory! It would make John Palmer proud.

If anything to change in the character of the players, "you" don't have impermeable skin, you are a sponge, soaking up as much dirty water as you can. Although you can be squeezed somewhat if need be, it can't be done thoroughly.

 

[charliwest]

In this analogy:
You = grain
Dirt = sugar
Bathtub = mash tun
Water = itself

Starring Water as himself :rockin:

 

[charliwest]

Haven't drunk this yet due to time away for work, but bottled it Sunday, hit the expected gravity, tasted pretty good! Thanks for all the input

 

[DrWill]

It's a matter of dilution. Your spent grain retains a considerable amount of wort. The first runnings have a high percentage of sugar. Sparging dilutes this and rinses out sugars that would have been left in the grain. You'll never get all the sugar due to potential for over extraction of tannins but sparging is intended to optimize efficiency. No sparge methods can produce great beer but at the expense of some efficiency.

Some experiments in double and triple mashing done by John Palmer and John Blichmann counterindicate this.

 

[Hamaki]

Some experiments in double and triple mashing done by John Palmer and John Blichmann counterindicate this.

Counterindicate what, specifically? Source please?

 

[DrWill]

Counterindicate what, specifically? Source please?

The claim that you will lose gravity using wort doesn't appear to be the case.

John and John discussed it extensively in two episodes of Brew Strong on the BN. Just search for the episode on Triple Mashing from 28 March 2016.

 

[doug293cz]

The claim that you will lose gravity using wort doesn't appear to be the case.

John and John discussed it extensively in two episodes of Brew Strong on the BN. Just search for the episode on Triple Mashing from 28 March 2016.

Just listened to the podcast. You are misinterpreting the nature of the experiment. They added the runnings from one mash to a whole new grain bill. They said nothing about running wort back thru the original mash. Unfortunately, they presented no details about procedures or actual data in the podcast, so it's not possible to figure out exactly what they did or double check their conclusions. If you have a link to a write up with details, that would be great.

Brew on

 

[Hamaki]

The claim that you will lose gravity using wort doesn't appear to be the case.

John and John discussed it extensively in two episodes of Brew Strong on the BN. Just search for the episode on Triple Mashing from 28 March 2016.

I think you misunderstood what I said. Sparging with water, more of the sugar remaining in the wort adsorbed to the grain bed could be extracted than if sparging with the first runnings. No gravity would be lost doing the latter but none gained.

 

[eric19312]

It is interesting that OP hit his original gravity target doing this method.

@charliwest what was your efficiency target in Beersmith?

 

[DrWill]

It is interesting that OP hit his original gravity target doing this method.

That would seem to be the long and short of it, although I'm sure someone will find a way to do the mental gymnastics necessary to continue to tell him he's wrong despite all empirical evidence. Seems to be SOP.

 

[kh54s10]

It is interesting that OP hit his original gravity target doing this method.

@charliwest what was your efficiency target in Beersmith?

That would seem to be the long and short of it, although I'm sure someone will find a way to do the mental gymnastics necessary to continue to tell him he's wrong despite all empirical evidence. Seems to be SOP.

The OP stated that he is still a novice brewer, so I doubt that he has dialed in efficiencies in BS. So it may be that if he hadn't run the wort back through the grains, the OG might have been higher.

 

[Hamaki]

That would seem to be the long and short of it, although I'm sure someone will find a way to do the mental gymnastics necessary to continue to tell him he's wrong despite all empirical evidence. Seems to be SOP.

I don't think anyone was telling the OP he was wrong despite any evidence - anecdotal, empirical, or otherwise. I understood that sparging twice with the same water was either an accident or an experiment, not the normal routine and he was looking for some feedback.

It does not appear that he was double or triple mashing or inquiring about same. Introducing that concept into the conversation is off topic and only serves to confuse. IMO pointing something like this out so that the OP is aware of the difference is or should be SOP.

 

[DrWill]

It does not appear that he was double or triple mashing or inquiring about same. Introducing that concept into the conversation is off topic and only serves to confuse.

More clarity is always good. I apologise that I didn't make more clear that I introduced the evidence from double and triple mashing because it is analogous, not identical, since both employ sparging with wort. I had assumed that was obvious but it wasn't.

 

[charliwest]

Yeah its true, I have no idea what those bits in BS mean, its all a bit magic to me at the moment.

Hoping to do a brew with some other homebrewers soon so that I might pick up on some of my mistakes.