Mash Out and Fly Sparging

I am not sure if I have the mash out procedure correct. I fly sparge and have not done a mash out. I have read a few good things on it and will be adding it to my procedure next AG brew. I use BeerSmith so will get the proper volumes and temperatures from the program. The following is the BeerSmith mashing instructions for my 6 gallon batch:

Mash In: Add 15.53 qt of water at 169.7 F
Hold mash at 154.0 F for 60 min
Mash Out: Add 8.70 qt of water at 198.3 F
Hold mash at 168.0 F for 10 min
Sparge with 3.64 gal of 168.0 F water.
Add water to achieve boil volume of 7.96 gal

My main question is: Do I stir the mash after the 8.7 qts is added, then slowly fly sparge after the 10 minute hold? Also, to me, this sounds like a modified batch sparge since i'm only adding 3.5 gallons of fly sparge water.

Thanks all in advance!

 

Once you hold the inital mash temp, begin your collection and sparge at the same time. Add sparge water at the same temp as you collect the wort. (10-12min per Gallon is typical).

So in this case you would Mash in at 154 for an hour.
Add hot sparge water, and begin collection.
Thats it.

 

Pearlbeer's description does not include a mashout.

Mash In: Add 15.53 qt of water at 169.7 F - OK
Hold mash at 154.0 F for 60 min - OK
Mash Out: Add 8.70 qt of water at 198.3 F - OK, stir this in really well.
Hold mash at 168.0 F for 10 min - Not necessary to wait. just vorlauf and start sparging/draining.
Sparge with 3.64 gal of 168.0 F water. OK.
Add water to achieve boil volume of 7.96 gal - Add water to what, the boil kettle? No... just keep adding sparge water to the mash tun and stop collecting when you have your desired boil volume.

 

Thanks BobbyM! Is this a typical procedure for mashout when fly sparging? Or are there any other methods I should consider?

 

I'm a fly sparger and initially was not doing a mash out. My first 5 or so batches came out super tasty, but I couldn't seem to get over 72ish efficiency. Only out of curiosity I tried mashing out and didn't get any noticeable efficiency gains. Bobby_M posted an interesting poll here about running the bed dry or keeping it fluid. Up until that point I had been running the bed dry (IE: using exactly as much sparge water as necessary to hit pre-boil target). I decided to try some tests:

1) First test was to skip the mashout but instead of running the bed dry, I kept an inch of water above the grain bed until i had about a 1 or 1.5 gallons left to hit my pre-boil. This caused me to run the bed about half dry. I saw some slight increase over 2 batches to consistently about 75%.

2) Second test was to bring back in the mashout step and use the same method as above to keep the bed fluid until the last 1-1.5 gallons. This has brought my efficiency to consistently 78-80% so I've stuck with it. This weekend was the third batch with this process and it's working great.

Everyone's system is different so you just have to tweak until you dial in your process. My typical batch is 1.25 qts/gal for mash in, mash out with ~2g of boiling, I heat up 6 gallons to sparge with and honestly haven't been paying much attention to how much is left, but the key is that I'm using more than needed so running out isn't something I'm concerned with. It's working pretty well so far so I'll stick with it.

 

I was under the impression that it wasn't good to sparge after the sparge runoff reaches 2 plato. I thought I read you would be more likely to get tannins from the grain bed. I normally don't run into this problem, but when I do I add hot water to get my pre-boil volume. Then I adjust my OG using DME towards the end of the boil.

 

Tannin extraction is a function of pH and temperature. As the gravity gets lower, the pH approaches neutral and tannin extraction is more likely. If you can control your pH, and as long as you keep the temperature below 170, you won't get much tannin extraction. Having said that, the potential gains from extracting such low gravity wort are very minimal, so most people just don't risk it.