illinibrew04
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2007
- Messages
- 152
- Reaction score
- 0
Hi All. Forgive me if this has been asked before but I couldn't necessarily find what I was looking for with a search. Here's the situation: Last weekend I brewed Mr. Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Porter recipe. I normally batch sparge using a single addition of sparge water and hit my pre-boil numbers pretty accurately. This beer had more grain than I would usually brew with, so my first runnings were quite a bit more than my sparge water addition. I believe my sparge water addition was somewhere on the order of 3.5 gallons for 18.75# of grain. This left me with a pretty thick consistency for the batch sparge. I did have a lower mash efficiency than normal due to this. My question is this:
Rather than adding more sparge water and boiling for a longer period of time, would it help to drain only a portion of the first runnings (to equal half the pre boil volume), and then add my 3.5 gallons of sparge water to get a thinner consistency for the sparge step? Obviously then I would drain all of that into the kettle. Just curious if leaving a portion of the first runnings in the mash tun for the sparge step would give me any additional benefit. Thanks for the help.
Rather than adding more sparge water and boiling for a longer period of time, would it help to drain only a portion of the first runnings (to equal half the pre boil volume), and then add my 3.5 gallons of sparge water to get a thinner consistency for the sparge step? Obviously then I would drain all of that into the kettle. Just curious if leaving a portion of the first runnings in the mash tun for the sparge step would give me any additional benefit. Thanks for the help.