Batch Sparging. What's your efficiency?

[RipC1ty]

I have been brewing for a few years and now really trying to be as efficient and consistent in my brewing as possible. With that said, I do batch sparging by rinsing the grains once, and during the mash have my water way above my grain bed (I am now aware that I only want my water to be a couple inches above the grains if possible.) After I vorlauf and drain everything into the brew kettle for the boil I dump remaining water (170ish degrees) over my grains, with my spigot open, so it goes straight through the grains into the brew kettle until it reaches my desired amount before the boil. However, this process is getting me about 65% efficiency and I would like to be up in the 80s.

Now onto my question... When batch sparging, what is your process and what is your efficiency at? For example, do you drain out your mash into your kettle, then add water so it's a couple inches above your grains and let it steep for 20mins and then drain it and you're done, or do you sparge it a couple of times each letting it sit for 10-minutes?

Thanks for any help provided.

 

[mongoose33]

When I batch sparged, a typical process was this:

I'd have 10-12 pounds of grain to mash. I'd put 4 gallons of water in my mash tun (a cooler), add the grist, then let it mash for an hour, stirring twice. Meanwhile, I'd have another 4 gallons--the sparge water--in my boil kettle and get it to 170 degrees.

After the hour, I'd lauter--draw off the wort slowly into a 5-gallon kettle (called a grant). When it's done--took about 10 minutes to 15 minutes--I'd then transfer the other 4 gallons of the 170-degree water that I'd heated in my kettle into the mash tun.

I'd stir well, let it sit for a couple minutes, stir then lauter it off. During that couple of minutes, I'd pour the first runnings from the grant into my boil kettle and start it heating. Then I'd lauter the sparge water into the grant, and pour that in the boil kettle.

Sparging is rinsing. You don't need to wait 20 minutes or anything. In fact, you don't even need to heat the water. I just did that so it would accelerate the boil process.

I'd get about 80 percent efficiency doing this.

 

[dmtaylor]

I can get whatever efficiency I want up to about 94%, based mostly on extent of grain crush. To avoid stuck sparges, I opened the gap on my mill to average about 82%. I don't intend to ever change my settings ever again. It crushes wheat and rye malt which have smaller kernels so it's pretty consistent with any malt I want to use.

Another key besides the crush is to collect every single drop out of the first and second runnings, and try to keep first & second running volumes equivalent, 50% from each. Or yeah, you could sparge twice and do 33/33/33, for big beers >1.085 I do that sometimes. Any wort left in the mash tun = efficiency lost. Tilt the tun and keep on collecting all the way through the boil if necessary, and add it all into the kettle, no waste. Usually by about the first third or half of the boil, I've collected almost everything humanly possible and call it a day. But I know if I drain the tun in this manner and then leave the mash sitting overnight then try to collect more the next morning, I can get another cup or two out of it. So theoretically you could get even higher efficiency if you spent a lot of time like that on collecting runnings. Is it really worth it? You be the judge. I don't bother. Occasionally I do collect the leftover wort to make starters with if I have another recipe on deck. Otherwise it's wasted.

But really... the crush will get you most of the way there. Every other variable you can think of are tiny compared to the quality of the crush.

EDIT: Now wait a second..... your description that follows is more like a fly sparge than a batch sparge!? There's a problem right there. You're losing efficiency...

I dump remaining water (170ish degrees) over my grains, with my spigot open, so it goes straight through the grains into the brew kettle until it reaches my desired amount before the boil. However, this process is getting me about 65% efficiency

What you really should be doing is keeping the valve shut, add your sparge water, MIX EVERYTHING REAL WELL, then vorlauf and runoff same as you did for the first runnings. Otherwise there's channeling going on, and.... not efficient.

Hope this helps.

 

[GPP33]

I sparge twice by closing the valve, filling, lightly stirring then draining. I get around 75% but have seen as much as +/- 7%. I know I get a lot of variation from my LHBS in the crush but not enough to justify dropping the money on a grain mill, I just roll with the punches.

 

[BrewInspector]

I did what the above posters mention.
Add sparge water knowing the amount I will need to reach my pre-boil volume
Stir
Vorlauf
Drain

Sometimes split sparge with roughly equal volumes

Sounds to me that you are confusing BATCH SPARGE
With
FLY SPARGE
And combining the two.

Fly sparge is when you slowly add the sparge water and slowly drain at the same time while maintaining a specific amount of sparge water over the grain.
*A very simple explanation of the fly sparge method

 

[chickypad]

^ This. If you're batch sparging you need to stir the crap out of it (spigot closed) after adding the water, there should be no undisturbed water above the grain. Then you can let it rip when draining. You sound like you're doing a fast fly sparge, and likely getting channeling which doesn't rinse the grain well.

 

[Manufacturedevolution]

I use efficiency mainly for building recipes. I don't worry about maxing efficiency as much as consistency. I always mash in with 1.25 qts per pound and calculate a .5 qt per pound absorption rate unless I'm doing party-gyle. I know with my gap setting that if I mash low ~ 152 or less I average 83% and with a mash ~154 or more ~80%.. I then subtract my absorption from my mash volume along with an additional 1.5 qts for cooler loss to calculate my sparge volume. I also stir my mash every 20 minutes. Vorlauf well. Add sparge, stir, vorlauf... I guess I'm trying to say efficiency doesn't matter as much as consistency to me. My efficiency definitely increased when I started milling and became much more consistent.

 

[doug293cz]

All of the advice from the previous responders is excellent. To help you understand what affects efficiency, I offer the following.

Mash efficiency (the percentage of potential sugar in the grain that actually makes it into your boil kettle) has two components:

1. Conversion Efficiency: this is the amount of sugar actually created in the mash divided by the total potential sugar in the grain bill.
2. Lauter Efficiency: this is the amount of sugar that is collected in your BK divided by the amount of sugar actually created in in your mash.

Mash efficiency = conversion efficiency times lauter efficiency.

Conversion efficiency is affected by your mashing process, and the biggest contributor is the coarseness of your grain crush. A finer crush converts faster, and often more completely than a coarse crush. You should be able to get 95 - 100% conversion efficiency, if your crush is fine enough, and your mash time long enough.

Lauter efficiency is affected by your sparge process, your grain absorption rate, the amount of undrainable volume in your mash tun, and your grain bill weight divided by your pre-boil volume (larger grain bills have lower efficiency.)

As noted, your sparge process is not really a batch sparge, but rather a very inefficient form of fly sparge.

Also, as previously noted, a batch sparge is most efficient when the initial runnings and the sparge runnings have approximately equal volumes. You don't have to obsess about being "equal" as there is very little difference in lauter efficiency over the range of 60:40 to 40:60 initial to sparge runnings volume.

A well conducted single batch sparge will give you about 8% percentage points increased lauter efficiency vs. a no sparge process, and a double batch sparge will give about 3-3.5 percentage points over a single batch sparge.

The chart below shows how optimal batch sparge lauter efficiency varies with grain bill size. And if your conversion efficiency is close to 100%, then your mash efficiency will be close to what is shown in the chart.

Brew on

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I can get whatever efficiency I want up to about 94%, based mostly on extent of grain crush. To avoid stuck sparges, I opened the gap on my mill to average about 82%. I don't intend to ever change my settings ever again. It crushes wheat and rye malt which have smaller kernels so it's pretty consistent with any malt I want to use.

Another key besides the crush is to collect every single drop out of the first and second runnings, and try to keep first & second running volumes equivalent, 50% from each. Or yeah, you could sparge twice and do 33/33/33, for big beers >1.085 I do that sometimes. Any wort left in the mash tun = efficiency lost. Tilt the tun and keep on collecting all the way through the boil if necessary, and add it all into the kettle, no waste. Usually by about the first third or half of the boil, I've collected almost everything humanly possible and call it a day. But I know if I drain the tun in this manner and then leave the mash sitting overnight then try to collect more the next morning, I can get another cup or two out of it. So theoretically you could get even higher efficiency if you spent a lot of time like that on collecting runnings. Is it really worth it? You be the judge. I don't bother. Occasionally I do collect the leftover wort to make starters with if I have another recipe on deck. Otherwise it's wasted.

But really... the crush will get you most of the way there. Every other variable you can think of are tiny compared to the quality of the crush.

EDIT: Now wait a second..... your description that follows is more like a fly sparge than a batch sparge!? There's a problem right there. You're losing efficiency...



What you really should be doing is keeping the valve shut, add your sparge water, MIX EVERYTHING REAL WELL, then vorlauf and runoff same as you did for the first runnings. Otherwise there's channeling going on, and.... not efficient.

Hope this helps.

I'd like to hear more about your process that yields over 90%. I crush as fine as my mill will crush, I MIAB and squeeze the crap out of the bag, I match first and second runnings and my MLT drains all but about 1/2 oz...like almost every last drop. With that I get 70% (as calculated by Brewer's Friend). Tell us how you're getting over 90%....

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

You probably don't need yet another description of proper batch sparging, so I'll spare you. I will say that brew365.com has a very nice water calculator that has worked very well for me. It's great for setting up your mash thickness to get equal first and second runnings and it pretty much nails the strike/mash temp every time (usually within a degree or less based on my thermopen).

It takes batch size, grain bill size, grain bill temp, mash thickness and desired mash temp, boil duration and boil off rate, grain absorption, equipment loss and trub loss. Outputs strike temp, strike volume, sparge volume. Second runnings are always equal to sparge volume for me, so I just subtract that from the pre-boil volume to get the first runnings.

 

[dmtaylor]

I'd like to hear more about your process that yields over 90%. I crush as fine as my mill will crush, I MIAB and squeeze the crap out of the bag, I match first and second runnings and my MLT drains all but about 1/2 oz...like almost every last drop. With that I get 70% (as calculated by Brewer's Friend). Tell us how you're getting over 90%....

I do nothing different from you really... BUT, and this is a BIG BUT... what is your batch size and your boiloff rate? I must honestly confess that I do brew smaller batches of 2-3 gallons, so my boiloff rate ranges from 24-32%. As such, I need to sparge a lot more than the average brewer to hit my preboil volume. If you are brewing 5 or 6 gallons, or (god forbid) 10 gallons or more, with a boiloff rate <15%, then you will likely find it very difficult to achieve 90% efficiency with ease like I do. So I guess that's the third key part of it. Sorry I neglected to mention this previously, as I'm sure it does make a big difference. Anyone brewing 5 gallons or more could account for the sparge/boiloff volume effect on efficiency by sparging a lot more and planning a longer boil of perhaps 120 minutes instead of just 60 minutes or whatever. I boil for 60-70 minutes usually... but my boiloff is still crazy high near 25-30% because of the smaller batch size. More sparging = more sugar = higher efficiency.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I do nothing different from you really... BUT, and this is a BIG BUT... what is your batch size and your boiloff rate? I must honestly confess that I do brew smaller batches of 2-3 gallons, so my boiloff rate ranges from 24-32%. As such, I need to sparge a lot more than the average brewer to hit my preboil volume. If you are brewing 5 or 6 gallons, or (god forbid) 10 gallons or more, with a boiloff rate <15%, then you will likely find it very difficult to achieve 90% efficiency with ease like I do. So I guess that's the third key part of it. Sorry I neglected to mention this previously, as I'm sure it does make a big difference. Anyone brewing 5 gallons or more could account for the sparge/boiloff volume effect on efficiency by sparging a lot more and planning a longer boil of perhaps 120 minutes instead of just 60 minutes or whatever. I boil for 60-70 minutes usually... but my boiloff is still crazy high near 25-30% because of the smaller batch size. More sparging = more sugar = higher efficiency.

Ah, that explains a lot. I use larger sparge volume and longer boil to increase efficiency in my bigger beers. While 70-72% brewhouse is typical for a 6% IPA, I was able to maintain the same efficiency with a 1.128OG stout by increasing the sparge volume and doing a 3 hour boil.

BTW - typing 3 hour boil makes the theme song of Gilligan's Island pop into my head ("A 3 hour boil....a 3 hour boil".)

 

[ba-brewer]

I used to batch sparge in a 5gal cooler mashtun which required two rinses and my BHE was fairly close to 75% with 5gal 1050 type beers. Change to a RIMS setup where I only did one rinse and my BHE dipped to closer to 70%. Also went to electric about the same time so lower boil offs.

One thing that made my efficiency get stable was to use a refractometer to measure conversion. When I mashed strictly based on time my efficiency varied quite a bit, looking for complete conversion tighten my number within a couple points.

 

[Setsumi]

.....More sparging = more sugar = higher efficiency.

I do not agree. A batch sparge of equal volumes will rinse close to all sugars. The more you sparge the more the sugars dilute, in the beginning BIAB was said to be less efficient but today BIAB brewers report above 80%. Yes with a different crush... But sparging will always dilute even when rinsing.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I do not agree. A batch sparge of equal volumes will rinse close to all sugars. The more you sparge the more the sugars dilute, in the beginning BIAB was said to be less efficient but today BIAB brewers report above 80%. Yes with a different crush... But sparging will always dilute even when rinsing.

BHE takes volume into account...it's how much sugar you get out at the end...it doesn't matter if the same amount of sugar is in 3 gallons or 10 gallons. The OG with 10 gallons will be far lower, but if the same amount of sugar overall is present, the efficiency is the same.

 

[dmtaylor]

I've always advocated equal runnings (50/50, or 33/33/33)... but I'm not sure it matters either. Just to be "safe", I always do exactly equal runnings. I'll confess I'm not brainy enough to explain whether or why this matters but I do it anyway.

My point above is that the more total volume you rinse, the more sugars you're going to get out... but also the more you might need to boil down to get to the OG that you want. Like @Hwk-I-St8 says above, total sugar is total sugar. The sugar from your sparge is in there regardless of whether you keep it at 10 gallons and don't boil, or whether you choose to boil the 10 gallons down to 3 gallons or any other volume. Conversely, if you only runoff and sparge the same batch to 6 gallons instead of 10, you're going to have less total sugar, so if you rinse to an initial volume of 6 gallons and then boil down to 3 gallons, you won't have as much sugar as if you'd started with 10 and boiled down to 3.

 

[doug293cz]

... More sparging = more sugar = higher efficiency.

I do not agree. A batch sparge of equal volumes will rinse close to all sugars. The more you sparge the more the sugars dilute, in the beginning BIAB was said to be less efficient but today BIAB brewers report above 80%. Yes with a different crush... But sparging will always dilute even when rinsing.

Sorry @Setsumi , but you don't really understand mash efficiency. Efficiency is strictly a measure of how much of the potential sugar (extract actually, which also contains proteins, etc) you recover in your vessel (BK for mash efficiency, fermenter for brewhouse efficiency.) The amount of water in which the sugar is dissolved has zero effect on the efficiency (however the volume of wort is used to determine the amount of sugar from the concentration (SG) of the wort.)

Mash efficiency is 1 - the fraction of potential sugar left in the spent grain, MLT and any plumbing. A particular system has a fairly consistent undrainable volume + grain absorption rate. So, for any specific grain bill size, there is a constant volume of wort left behind in the grain and plumbing. The more dilute the wort left behind, the less sugar is left behind and the higher the mash efficiency. Sparging dilutes the wort left behind, and the more you sparge, the more dilute the left behind wort becomes, thus increasing the efficiency.

If you have a grain bill that has 10 lbs of potential sugar, and you get 8 lbs of that sugar into your BK, then your mash efficiency is 80%. It doesn't matter if you have that 8 lbs of sugar in 8 gal of wort or 15 gal of wort, your efficiency is the same.

Brew on

 

[Setsumi]

Sorry @Setsumi , but you don't really understand mash efficiency. Efficiency is strictly a measure of how much of the potential sugar (extract actually, which also contains proteins, etc) you recover in your vessel (BK for mash efficiency, fermenter for brewhouse efficiency.) The amount of water in which the sugar is dissolved has zero effect on the efficiency (however the volume of wort is used to determine the amount of sugar from the concentration (SG) of the wort.)

Mash efficiency is 1 - the fraction of potential sugar left in the spent grain, MLT and any plumbing. A particular system has a fairly consistent undrainable volume + grain absorption rate. So, for any specific grain bill size, there is a constant volume of wort left behind in the grain and plumbing. The more dilute the wort left behind, the less sugar is left behind and the higher the mash efficiency. Sparging dilutes the wort left behind, and the more you sparge, the more dilute the left behind wort becomes, thus increasing the efficiency.

If you have a grain bill that has 10 lbs of potential sugar, and you get 8 lbs of that sugar into your BK, then your mash efficiency is 80%. It doesn't matter if you have that 8 lbs of sugar in 8 gal of wort or 15 gal of wort, your efficiency is the same.

Brew on

Nope I do understand mash efficiency!

The problem with mash efficiency is a toss between how much sugar you rinse out and how much is left behind. My take is to recover all sugars takes less sparge water than is commonly practised. AND BIAB or full volume mash efficiency today support this statement. If you do a equal volume sparge you should be at high end of efficiency or recovered sugers/left behind. Yes there will be sugars left in the grist but to keep on sparging will not improve efficiency much.

Because the sparge while rinsong will dilute the sugars left behind... How much will you recover with every succesive sparge?

Edit the last paragraph in.

 

[spddmn6]

I am new to all grain, and on my first batch I tried to check efficiency. My problem was not knowing what exact grain (MFG/specs) I had in my all grain brew kit to determine my exact potential sugar. So I knew my efficiency would be off to start with. From now on I will be getting grain from local brew suppliers so I can hopefully get the info and have a closer figure. I have a feeling that there is a general tolerance in the industry for this.