Partial Mash - Sparge or No?

[bernerbrau]

I'm starting on my black tar porter tonight.

I have about 3lb of grain for the partial mash. I was going to do a 155F steep for 1 hour, and I'm wondering whether or not to sparge. It seems the prudent thing to do, considering just lifting the grain bag out of the pot would unnecessarily discard a lot of wort.

So, I think I'll steep in 1 gallon of water at 155F, then sparge with an additional 2 gallons at 170, pouring over the grain bag for maximum extraction.

Unless someone here tells me otherwise, while my initial boil (trying a partial boil this time) is cooling.

Thoughts?

 

[BigEd]

That sounds fine. You don't have to be too fancy since you will have an extract base to produce the majority of the beer's OG. Just gently pouring that hot water over the grains will help you get out more sugar, flavor and color than if you only pulled out the bag.

 

[malkore]

I would not sparge with that much water. typically the mash gives you half your volume, and the sparge gives the other half.

in your scenario, you sparge with 2x as much water as the mash. If you have that much kettle space to boil, I'd up the grain another pound, up the mash water a little, and then take a tad off the sparge.

so like, 4lbs grain, 1.5 gal mash, and like 1.75gal sparge. That should net you about 3gal of wort after grain absorption.

 

[DeathBrewer]

read Easy Partial Mash Brewing in my sig