jdoiv
Well-Known Member
Ok, I've been doing AG for about 6 or 7 years and have always fly sparged. I had the opportunity when I got into AG to buy a system from Morebeer and it came set up for fly sparging, so that's what I did.
Well, last night I was mashing in a 5.5 gallon batch of porter and decided, let's give batch sparging a try. So, when the mash was done, I set up my pump and started recirculating the mash as I brought it up to mash out. Unhooked the pump, vorlaufed, and drained the tun. Guesstimated what half the volume of my sparge water was, added it to the tun, stirred, vorlaufed and drained again with no rest. Repeated and ended up with almost 8 gallons in the kettle. Took me about 15-20 minutes to finish the sparge tops. That easily cut out 45 minutes of time from my normal 5.5 hour brew session. Wow, that was fast.
Boiled, chilled, transferred to fermenter, took reading and pitched yeast. Ended up with 76% efficiency. Not as high as I thought it would be. Recipe was set for 80% and doing fly I'll routinely get 87+% on medium gravity beers. I think if I had sparged one more time, I probably could have gotten more out of it, but then my preboil volume would have been huge.
All in all, I think I'll continue to do fly sparges on my 11 gallon batches as I can set the recipe at a higher efficiency and save a good 3-4 pounds of grain. But for 5.5 gallon batches, which I normally do to test a recipe, I'll just set me efficiency to 75% and use a little more grain and batch sparge. It was really easy and super fast.
I've got a SNPA clone set to go next and is a staple recipe I've brewed over and over. I have the recipe for it set at 87% and will fly sparge it. I was planning on doing a repeat brew of it and pitching on the yeast so I would have an ample supply running into spring. I think for the second batch, I'll set the recipe to 75% and try a batch sparge and compare the results between the two. Looks like it will be about 3 pounds heavier on the grain bill.
Well, last night I was mashing in a 5.5 gallon batch of porter and decided, let's give batch sparging a try. So, when the mash was done, I set up my pump and started recirculating the mash as I brought it up to mash out. Unhooked the pump, vorlaufed, and drained the tun. Guesstimated what half the volume of my sparge water was, added it to the tun, stirred, vorlaufed and drained again with no rest. Repeated and ended up with almost 8 gallons in the kettle. Took me about 15-20 minutes to finish the sparge tops. That easily cut out 45 minutes of time from my normal 5.5 hour brew session. Wow, that was fast.
Boiled, chilled, transferred to fermenter, took reading and pitched yeast. Ended up with 76% efficiency. Not as high as I thought it would be. Recipe was set for 80% and doing fly I'll routinely get 87+% on medium gravity beers. I think if I had sparged one more time, I probably could have gotten more out of it, but then my preboil volume would have been huge.
All in all, I think I'll continue to do fly sparges on my 11 gallon batches as I can set the recipe at a higher efficiency and save a good 3-4 pounds of grain. But for 5.5 gallon batches, which I normally do to test a recipe, I'll just set me efficiency to 75% and use a little more grain and batch sparge. It was really easy and super fast.
I've got a SNPA clone set to go next and is a staple recipe I've brewed over and over. I have the recipe for it set at 87% and will fly sparge it. I was planning on doing a repeat brew of it and pitching on the yeast so I would have an ample supply running into spring. I think for the second batch, I'll set the recipe to 75% and try a batch sparge and compare the results between the two. Looks like it will be about 3 pounds heavier on the grain bill.
