rockout
Well-Known Member
I'm hoping this is the right forum for this; it might be more of a beginner thing but... okay.
I bought 2 all-grain kits from AHBS.
We went with the 2-cooler method of all-grain, and the mash went fine, heating the strike water to 170 and after mixing with our grains we were at 149. It was at 148 after 60 minutes so I think we were okay.
The kit instructions said to recirculate the wort by drawing it off the bottom and returning it to the top until it was free of any detritus, which we did.
Then the sparge - instructions said to sparge at a rate of 12 minutes/gallon, which seemed really really slow but okay, we attempted to do it that slowly. Problem was, the sparge arm wouldn't rotate unless we had a certain amount of flow, and that flow rate was easily more than 12 minutes/gallon. We ended up being out of sparge water way too early and we were done with the sparge in about half the time that the kit said it should've taken; ie we averaged about 6 minutes per gallon.
Is this really really bad, or just something we shouldn't worry about, or something in between? The starting gravity, once we chilled our wort and added yeast and all that, was actually right on target, in fact, it was a touch high, so I figure it's okay, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask for advice here. Thanks!
I bought 2 all-grain kits from AHBS.
We went with the 2-cooler method of all-grain, and the mash went fine, heating the strike water to 170 and after mixing with our grains we were at 149. It was at 148 after 60 minutes so I think we were okay.
The kit instructions said to recirculate the wort by drawing it off the bottom and returning it to the top until it was free of any detritus, which we did.
Then the sparge - instructions said to sparge at a rate of 12 minutes/gallon, which seemed really really slow but okay, we attempted to do it that slowly. Problem was, the sparge arm wouldn't rotate unless we had a certain amount of flow, and that flow rate was easily more than 12 minutes/gallon. We ended up being out of sparge water way too early and we were done with the sparge in about half the time that the kit said it should've taken; ie we averaged about 6 minutes per gallon.
Is this really really bad, or just something we shouldn't worry about, or something in between? The starting gravity, once we chilled our wort and added yeast and all that, was actually right on target, in fact, it was a touch high, so I figure it's okay, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask for advice here. Thanks!