See Ya Fly Sparge

Last night I confirmed my findings from my first time with batch sparging, meaning I hit 75% efficiency again. This should be the end of my HLT teetering precariously on a chair above my mash tun (NYC Brewing, baby!). I shall miss climbing onto my chopping block to peer into the HLT to see how much freaking longer my fly sparge would be. Fare thee well.

 

I have always batch sparged and average in the 70's as far as efficiency... Last brew was a wit beer and called for a long protein rest at 122 followed by an hour at 150, and efficiency went up to 82%... Don't know if that was the cause or not yet.

This is my apartment brewing setup

 

I've always fly sparged but recently I did two beers doing batch sparging and I got really good efficiency and all, and it was easier and quicker, but my beer was a LOT darker than it should have been. There's a lot of debate on this subject but that's really the biggest difference I can tell. Obviously if efficiency is an issue that's cheap to offset with extra grain.

 

Why would batch sparing affect the color of the beer?

L

 

Well, my guess is that when you add the sparge water after laudering, it stirs up the grain quite a bit, rinsing almost all of the color off as compared to fly sparging where the grain bed stays static through laudering and sparging. Of course, recirculation greatly helps to remedy this.

 

I gotta say that is pretty bad ass. Best apartment setup I think I have ever seen. I live in a house so I brew in my garage and/or driveway but friends ask "How can I get into doing this? I live in an apartment" and I just don't know what to tell them other than stove-top extract batches.

 

This is the first time I have ever heard color change mentioned as a difference between batch and fly sparging.

 

This sounds very unlikely to me. Just sayin'. My batch-sparged wheat beers and blonde's are pretty light in color.

L

 

I was under the impression that fly sparging would actually do a better job of rinsing the grains than batch sparging. So the opposite would be correct.

 

I've always batch sparged and my efficiency is always bewteen 72-76%. Saves so much time compared to doing a fly sparge.

 

You can get 80-90% efficiency batch sparging depending on your crush, water, etc. Plus its super easy.

 

ive never fly sparged. course my efficiency is usually like 65%

 

This what all the books say and I can't disagree with that, I have just noticed a difference but that's with my setup and everyone's is different. There may be no difference at all and maybe I just think there is, who knows. I have had good luck doing both so even though I usually fly sparge, I wouldn't really say that overall one method is any better than the other.