Sorry another Fly Sparge question.

[ddrayne10]

I am about to attempt my first fly sparge brew tomorrow with 6 all grain batch sparge under my belt. My efficiency has been all over the place from 50's to low 70' s. I just have a few questions.

First off, I build the sparge arm with 1/2 copper tubing that I bent into a 9inch diameter circle that will connect to my HLT via a hose and drilled about 10, 1/16 of an inch holes around it. Now does this pipe seem too big, are there enough or not enough holes? The holes are placed all around the pipe shooting water out at different angles in an attempt to cover the top of the grain bed equally.

When I when I am fly sparging do I use the same about of water for sparging as I would when I batch sparging?

Also how long should it take to batch sparge if I have 13 pounds of grain in a 10 gallon igloo so I will be using 6 gallons for sparge water? I played around today with out the grain in my mash tun and thought about 25-30 minutes. Is this too short?

Also is 6 gallons enough for 13 pounds of grain?

Does it matter if my igloo does not have a top for the sparge? Will I lose a lot of temperature this way? And also what should my sparge temperature be? I have read around 175?

Thanks

 

[bullinachinashop]

When I fly sparge, I target 60 min or more. So depending on the batch size, I try to balance the outgoing wort at the proper flow rate.( 6 gal sparge volume over 1 hour= 1 gal every 10 min or 1 qt every 2.5 min)

You want to maintain sparge water over your grain bed so you'll have to adjust that flow rate as well.

The temp should be 170-175. and you should be fine with no lid.

Good luck,

Bull

 

[ddrayne10]

Thanks for the response, so should I do my first runoff and recirculate and time that for 1qt for the 2.5 min. Then start the draining the wort at this rate?

 

[bullinachinashop]

When I fly sparge, I never run out my tun. I vorlauf to clear the wort, set the grain bed and set my flow rate. Then I sparge until my gravity gets down to 1.008 or I reach my boil volume. Usually the second happens first.
The only thing that I would highly recommend would be to mash out before starting you sparge.
Bull

 

[ddrayne10]

Thanks I think I got it now. Thanks for your help Bull.

 

[Bobby_M]

Yeah, I think you're getting batch/fly confused. In fly sparging, you mash, vorlauf, start running your sparge water in, THEN start running the mash out slowly. You'll use a couple gallons more sparge water in this case because you want to have some water/wort left in the tun when you reach your preboil volume.