Batch or Fly on a large grainbill?

[hal simmons]

Attempting my first parti-gyle brew this weekend, a barleywine and ESB. My grainbill is 33 lbs of grain. I was planning on batch sparging, since I could just drain the first 7 gallons, refill with another 8, stir, short rest, then drain again and be done.

Will I get alot less efficiency with this large of a grain bill and batch sparging? I typicially fly sparge and get 85 percent, but I figured this recipe at 75% just in case.

Should I try a modified sparge where I drain the first 7.5 gallons to get the strong wort, then fly sparge the rest? Is this even possible?

 

[bradsul]

I've done that before and it's worked really well. The only annoying thing about doing it that way is you need to add enough water back into the tun to cover the grains again before you can start sparging. But since this disrupts the grain bed you will also need to vorlauf to reset the filter bed.

The caveat being that I've read recently (don't ask me where, can't remember) that you don't want to expose the grain bed to the air if possible. Supposedly it causes off-flavours but I've not been able to detect any.

 

[Warrior]

I've done that before and it's worked really well. The only annoying thing about doing it that way is you need to add enough water back into the tun to cover the grains again before you can start sparging. But since this disrupts the grain bed you will also need to vorlauf to reset the filter bed.

The caveat being that I've read recently (don't ask me where, can't remember) that you don't want to expose the grain bed to the air if possible. Supposedly it causes off-flavours but I've not been able to detect any.

I'm also brewing a Barleywine tomorrow and will follow up with a 80 shilling scottish ale. This is also the 1st time for me to brew a 2nd runnings beer. Based on your response I think I'll heat all the sparge water for both batches at once. I will then keep about 1 or 2 inches of water above the grain. Once I collect 7 1/2 gal of wort for the Barleywine I'll stop the sparge. I will then add another 3 lbs of grain plus the other specialty grains for the scottish ale. I will have these already mashed in a 3 gal pot and will just need to add them to the MLT. I will then sparge another 7 1/2 gal of wort for the next beer. I'll post my results here next week.

 

[hal simmons]

So I ended up just doing batch sparge. I needed 7.5 gallons of 1.068 wort and 8 gallons of 1.048. I ran off the first 6 gallons which ended up being 1.078. Then I refilled with 8 gallons, stirred, rested 5 minutes, and ran off the rest which ened up being 1.044. I needed a bit more volume and I was still getting sugars, so I put another couple gallons in, stirred and ran off a couple gallons of 1.020.

All told, I did better than my estimated 75% and still left sugars in the grain.

 

[Warrior]

So I ended up just doing batch sparge. I needed 7.5 gallons of 1.068 wort and 8 gallons of 1.048. I ran off the first 6 gallons which ended up being 1.078. Then I refilled with 8 gallons, stirred, rested 5 minutes, and ran off the rest which ened up being 1.044. I needed a bit more volume and I was still getting sugars, so I put another couple gallons in, stirred and ran off a couple gallons of 1.020.

All told, I did better than my estimated 75% and still left sugars in the grain.

This was my longest brew day ever! It ended up being a 14 hr brew day. I made an Thomas hardy's clone and my target gravity was 1.125 in 5 1/2 gal in the primary. By the gravity reading at 7 1/2 gal I was going to end up with about a 1.103 gravity. Not a problem I just added 3 lbs of DME to make up the difference. The sparge went fairly well and I didn't have a stuck mash, it was slow but kept on flowing. I ended up doing about a 2 1/2 hr boil 30 mins longer than I planed. The problem was when I went to drain the wort from the keg after chilling the beer to pitch, it flowed like molasses in January! I use a shmidling easy masher for the drain on my boil keg and it worked great on all my other beers, even my IPA which has a huge amount of hops. I think the problem was with the gravity at 1.132 it was clogging the easymasher. I had to keep scraping the sides of the easymasher with my boil spoon to keep it flowing. It took me about an hour to drain 5 gals of wort! I ended up wasting about a 1/2 gal becuase I could not keep it flowing. Next time I brew a beer that big I'll need another drain set up. This is definately the biggest beer I have ever made.

The 2nd beer went much better, added the additional grains to the grains left from the barleywine and did another mash out to 170 deg. That was a 90 min boil for the 80 schilling scottish ale. That ended up with an O.G. of 1.049 only 2 points off from what I wanted. That was 5 1/2 gal for the primary and it flowed normal speed and filled the carboy in less than 5 mins.

Hardy clone is already starting to ferment. Scottish ale was taken downstairs and should be fermenting by tomorrow.

This was a frustrating brew day but I did learn what to do different next time. I'll use a 1/2 " stainless fittings and ell to reach the bottom of the keg. Around the nipple that goes to the bottom I'll use a stainless screen basket I made to strain out the hops. The holes on that screen are bigger than the easymasher and should allow the thicker gravity to flow through.