Sparging at 155F instead of 170F?

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From John Palmer's How to Brew

Before the sweet wort is drained from the mash and the grain is rinsed (sparged) of the residual sugars, many brewers perform a mashout. Mashout is the term for raising the temperature of the mash to 170°F prior to lautering. This step stops all of the enzyme action (preserving your fermentable sugar profile) and makes the grainbed and wort more fluid. For most mashes with a ratio of 1.5-2 quarts of water per pound of grain, the mashout is not needed. The grainbed will be loose enough to flow well. For a thicker mash, or a mash composed of more than 25% of wheat or oats, a mashout may be needed to prevent a Set Mash/Stuck Sparge. This is when the grain bed plugs up and no liquid will flow through it. A mashout helps prevent this by making the sugars more fluid; like the difference between warm and cold honey. The mashout step can be done using external heat or by adding hot water according to the multi-rest infusion calculations. (See chapter 16.) A lot of homebrewers tend to skip the mashout step for most mashes with no consequences.
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EdWort said:
From John Palmer's How to Brew
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I know the whole enzyme thing - but my wort goes right on the stove after sparge. It hits 170 pretty quickly

From your link:
" A lot of homebrewers tend to skip the mashout step for most mashes with no consequences."

Hypothetically if I have two exact batch sparges. What would be the difference in efficiency by using 155F vs 170F.
 
BeerWars said:
I know the whole enzyme thing - but my wort goes right on the stove after sparge. It hits 170 pretty quickly

From your link:
" A lot of homebrewers tend to skip the mashout step for most mashes with no consequences."

Hypothetically if I have two exact batch sparges. What would be the difference in efficiency by using 155F vs 170F.
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Probably 0. Kaiser did an experiement with a cold water sparge, and lost no efficiency.

The theory is that bringing the grain bed up to a higher temperature causes the sugars to be more fluid and "loose" in the grainbed. That's the only advantage that I can think of for batch spargers, where denaturing enzymes isn't critical.

I'm not sure it matters much at all, if your efficiency is acceptable with a 155 degree sparge.
 
Yooper_Brew said:
The theory is that bringing the grain bed up to a higher temperature causes the sugars to be more fluid and "loose" in the grainbed. That's the only advantage that I can think of for batch spargers, where denaturing enzymes isn't critical.
QUOTE]

+1 on this. But I still try to get my grain bed up to 170 when batch sparging. Not sure why you'd want to go lower though!
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its fine. mashout is a waste of time IMO. even if its cost me 5 points(which it doesn't), not worth my time.
 
Bizoune said:
+1 on this. But I still try to get my grain bed up to 170 when batch sparging. Not sure why you'd want to go lower though!
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Why wouldn't you want to go lower?

Because to hit 170 you use water that is hot enough to extract Tanins. If there is no or minimal "gain" to a 170F sparge you are risking something for nothing.
 
BeerWars said:
Why wouldn't you want to go lower?

Because to hit 170 you use water that is hot enough to extract Tanins. If there is no or minimal "gain" to a 170F sparge you are risking something for nothing.
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using hotter water doesn't always equal tannin extraction - afterall, people mash out and do decotion mashes using boiling water all of the time.

As long as your pH is acceptable, you can use ~190*F sparge water with no problem...
 
Yooper_Brew said:
Probably 0. Kaiser did an experiement with a cold water sparge, and lost no efficiency.

The theory is that bringing the grain bed up to a higher temperature causes the sugars to be more fluid and "loose" in the grainbed. That's the only advantage that I can think of for batch spargers, where denaturing enzymes isn't critical.

I'm not sure it matters much at all, if your efficiency is acceptable with a 155 degree sparge.
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Thanks for your help (again) - you are an asset to this site. :mug:

That is what I was thinking.

I can't imagine that the additional 15 degrees are making the sugars any less viscous.

I understand for the fly spargers or the more advanced techniques where you are sparging for an extended period of time and want conversion to cease. But I never figured out why batch spargers that are seeking efficiency would do anything to stop the conversion process prematurely.

Just seemed like 1 more thing to mess up (especially for new brewers like myself).
 
BeerWars said:
So you just mash the full volume?
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mash out is adding a little bit of boiling water after the mash to get the mash up to ~170.

A lot of us skip that step and just sparge hotter (as has been discussed in this thread) to get the grainbed up to ~170.

Mashing the full volume would be a no sparge, not a mash out...
 
AZ_IPA said:
mash out is adding a little bit of boiling water after the mash to get the mash up to ~170.

A lot of us skip that step and just sparge hotter (as has been discussed in this thread) to get the grainbed up to ~170.

Mashing the full volume would be a no sparge, not a mash out...
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I get the concept - I just don't get why it is done with 170F water especially when batch sparging.

Yooper said that someone did a sparge with cold water and experienced no loss in efficiency.

Why not use cold water and save some propane? Why not do a no sparge mash and save some time? Is this something that is a "tradition" or "legacy" that doesn't need to be done?
 
There's some good reads on braukaiser.com relating to sparging (cold sparge, 1 v. 2 sparges, etc.)

(I honestly haven't read it in awhile, otherwise I would summarize, sorry).
 
BeerWars said:
I get the concept - I just don't get why it is done with 170F water especially when batch sparging.

Yooper said that someone did a sparge with cold water and experienced no loss in efficiency.

Why not use cold water and save some propane? Why not do a no sparge mash and save some time? Is this something that is a "tradition" or "legacy" that doesn't need to be done?
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Well for one, if you use cold water to sparge, the temperature of all your wort in the boil kettle will drop causing you more time and more propane to reach a boil. I can't see it saving you propane.
 
I feel like a no-sparge full volume mash would still leave a bit of sugar in the grain bed. Probably little enough that it wouldn't affect your efficiency too much to use this method, but (excuse the amaterish analogy) it could be like washing clothes with really solute soap solution, instead of the thick soap mixture in your washing machine followed by the pure water rinse. Wouldn't you still leave some soap/sugar hanging on in the clothes/grain bed? I feel like the point of a sparge is also partly a final rinse to get those last few remaining sugars out.

This ignores the temperature issue originally brought up by OP, but it'd be interesting to do an efficiency experiment with a full-volume mash vs. sparging at any temperature.

EDIT: Oops, I thought AZ IPA was implying a no-sparge mash - clarified later as a no-mashout sparge. I'm just going to continue sparging at 170 as normal... :cross: though you're right - if we wanted to, there are probably hundreds of ways to do it if we tried really hard!
 
throwbookatface said:
This ignores the temperature issue originally brought up by OP, but it'd be interesting to do an efficiency experiment with a full-volume mash vs. sparging at any temperature.
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It's off topic, but I think the whole "brew-in-a-bag" concept is basically a no-sparge mash...

As with most homebrewing techniques - there are more than a hundred ways to skin a cat :D
 
jmo88 said:
Well for one, if you use cold water to sparge, the temperature of all your wort in the boil kettle will drop causing you more time and more propane to reach a boil. I can't see it saving you propane.
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LOL - Well played.
 
throwbookatface said:
I feel like a no-sparge full volume mash would still leave a bit of sugar in the grain bed. Probably little enough that it wouldn't affect your efficiency too much to use this method, but (excuse the amaterish analogy) it could be like washing clothes with really solute soap solution, instead of the thick soap mixture in your washing machine followed by the pure water rinse. Wouldn't you still leave some soap/sugar hanging on in the clothes/grain bed? I feel like the point of a sparge is also partly a final rinse to get those last few remaining sugars out.

This ignores the temperature issue originally brought up by OP, but it'd be interesting to do an efficiency experiment with a full-volume mash vs. sparging at any temperature.
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It is a great analogy that I agree with. The act of sparging makes sense to me - but I honestly cant see how the 15 degrees makes any difference (and someone has already pointed out that is doesn't).
 
BeerWars said:
(and someone has already pointed out that is doesn't).
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That point is debatable - Bobby_M swears that batch sparging at 185 has increased his efficiency by 10 points.

If I recall, and again, I haven't read it recently; Kaiser's cold sparge experiments weren't conclusive - I hope to read them again now :D
 
AZ_IPA said:
That point is debatable - Bobby_M swears that batch sparging at 185 has increased his efficiency by 10 points.

If I recall, and again, I haven't read it recently; Kaiser's cold sparge experiments weren't conclusive - I hope to read them again now :D
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I see where he says to use 185 water to hit 170 sparge.
 
BeerWars said:
Finally found this.

http://chestofbooks.com/food/science/Experimental-Cookery/The-Solubility-Of-The-Sugars.html

At 155F the liquor would not be saturated with sugar nor would it be at significantly lower temperatures. So hotter water is not needed to increase the amount of sugar that can be dissolved. Plus the time that it takes to sparge would cause the sugar to dissolve into solution.
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I might be misunderstanding what you mean here. It seems like you are saying that from 155 and below there is not sugar saturation, but then it seem to say that the hotter water wouldn't do it either? At work right now so can't read what you linked to (blocked for some odd reason..)
 
I Just had an incident where I sparged with lower temp water. Some of you may recall I posted about my burner taking a crap in the middle of brewing a batch of beer. I was only able to get my sparge water up to about 160 or so and I usually sparge with 185 degree water. The beer is in the fermentor so no idea if taste was affected but the efficiency was no different. I hit my expected OG dead on... It was however a recipe I have never brewed before sooooooo.
 
shanecb said:
I might be misunderstanding what you mean here. It seems like you are saying that from 155 and below there is not sugar saturation, but then it seem to say that the hotter water wouldn't do it either? At work right now so can't read what you linked to (blocked for some odd reason..)
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Even at freezing - water is saturated with sugar (sucrose) at a gravity of 1.3149. I dont know of any beers that get close to touching that. There is a table for maltose on the next page but it does not furnish gravity readings. I did some rough math and it is amazing the amount of maltose that can be dissolved in water.

But like I said there is plenty of carrying capacity even with ice cold water to dissolve any sugars left in the grain bed. The 15F increase in sparge water for all intents and purpose isn't allowing the water to work in a more meaningful way.
 

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