Khirsah17 said:Usually when I sparge, I just add 165F water to the mash tun as needed to keep about an inch above the grain bed.
I must agree. My efficiency was lagging until I crushed finer. My other issue was alkaline water, but that is for a different post. SKaiser said:In addition to sparing with hotter water, I would suggest to mill finer. From what I can tell, many of the husks still hold endosperm in them which will not be reached by the mash/lauter.
Have a look at the Wiki page Brad suggested and compare it against the pictures there.
Kai
ajf said:If your final runnings have a gravity much greater than 1.010 - 1.015, then look to improving your sparging technique. If they are not greater, then the problem is in the mash.
Yes, the run-off speed for fly-sparging matters for two reasons. A faster run-off encurages channeling as there is a larger pressure difference between the top and the bottom which forces the wort to run faster and by doing so the wort is more likely to seek the path of least resistance. The second reason has to do with concentration gradients between the sparge water and grits of grain. As the low sugar concentration sparge water passes by high sugar concentration grain bits, the sugar slowly diffuses into the sparge water. The faster the water runs by, the less sugar it will be able to pick up and your efficiency suffers.Khirsah17 said:This last weekend I sparged faster, maybe in 25 mins or so. I only got 61% efficiency. I guess I wasn't super clear on sparging techniques, but apparently speeding things up a bit isnt a good idea if one is fly sparging. I think next time I might try batch sparging twice and see what happens.
One quick question on sparging. I always add hot water around 165-170F continuously to the mash tun. However, in How to Brew, Palmer says, "Mashout is the term for raising the temperature of the mash to 170°F prior to lautering." So does that mean I should raise the temp of the mash to around 170? That means the sparge water I would add would be significantly higher.
Khirsah17 said:Is this going to result in any tannin extraction?
BierMuncher said:
Hey...if it makes you feel better, I'm dialed in at a consistent 72%.Khirsah17 said:I appreciate all the responses guys! I'm pretty excited to try and brew soon and see what happens. If I can get a better crush and try a new, seemingly easier sparging technique to improve my efficiency, that would be great. Right now the only thing about brewing that has been bugging me was the low numbers.
If you end up with a high gravity in the final runnings when batch sparging, then you either have major sparging problems, such as inadequate mixing, low sparge temperature etc, or you are making a very high gravity brew where there just isn't enough sparge water to rinse out the sugars.Kaiser said:ajf,
I don't think that this will provide you much info for batch sparging and for fly sparging. In batch sparging, if your last runnings are above 1.015 then there is nothing you can do about it. Sure you could sparge more, but only to a certain point since you don't want to extend your boil to long. In fly sparging, the gravity of the runnings will not tell you if you had channeling. This you can only determine by adding lots of water, stiring it and taking its gravity. Basically batch sparging the spent grain to summ up the extract that you didn't sparge.
If his problem is the crush, then there is a percentage of the starches that didn't take part in the mash and won't be convered to extract that can be lautered.
Khirsah17,
You never mentioned if you are fly or batch sparging.
Kai
If you end up with a high gravity in the final runnings when batch sparging, then you either have major sparging problems, such as inadequate mixing, low sparge temperature etc, or you are making a very high gravity brew where there just isn't enough sparge water to rinse out the sugars.Kaiser said:ajf,
I don't think that this will provide you much info for batch sparging and for fly sparging. In batch sparging, if your last runnings are above 1.015 then there is nothing you can do about it. Sure you could sparge more, but only to a certain point since you don't want to extend your boil to long. In fly sparging, the gravity of the runnings will not tell you if you had channeling. This you can only determine by adding lots of water, stiring it and taking its gravity. Basically batch sparging the spent grain to summ up the extract that you didn't sparge.
If his problem is the crush, then there is a percentage of the starches that didn't take part in the mash and won't be convered to extract that can be lautered.
Khirsah17,
You never mentioned if you are fly or batch sparging.
Kai