First All-Grain, Question about batch sparging

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jaredkent

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So I'm finally getting into al-grain brewing. I've done all my research, read multiple books, watched quite a few videos. One thing that I can't get a complete grasp around is batch sparging. I see some people add a gallon of hot water to the mash with 5-10 minutes left, I see some people never even mention this. I see some people drain completely, add sparge water, stir, and let sit for 5-10 minutes before collecting 2nd runoff, I see some people do the same but let it sit another hour. I see some people heat their sparge water at or above 170°F, I see some people just get it warm, I see some people heat it to under 170°F.

I'm a little confused. Which of these is the best, or correct way to do things. I'm sure just like my research, I'll get just as many different answers from here, but it's worth a shot.
 
you'll always get more than one answer to a question. i drain. also, i would say that you want to hit 170 (so your strike water should be hotter than that, 180 or so) but you're really just rinsing the grain, the sugars have already been converted. i don't see a need to let it sit for any period of time.

also note that no matter which way you chose you will still end up with beer. its really a matter of tweaking your process to end up with the beer you want.
 
I watched this series, about 5 times, by Chris Knight before I started all grain.
 
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Take a course of action, and try it. If first you don't succeed, try again.

Before I rebuilt my system with HERMs and a pump I did this:

I did a vorlauf until relatively clear, drained my mash tun, added my sparge water, mixed it good, waited 10 min, did the vorlauf again then drained the mash tun again. I would average 76% extract efficiency which was good enough for me.
 
Yeah Creek. I was turned onto that vidseries early on in my brewing. I've probably watched it at least 10 times now leading up to all-grain. That seems the be the method I will go with.

One thing I left out is that I also see some people sparging only enough for their boil, around 6.5 gals for a 5 gal batch. I also saw one person who pulls off like 8 gallons and boils down to reach their desired pre-boil gravity.
 
Batch sparging is fairly foolproof as long as you stir well after each sparge water addition. Adding very hot water before starting the sparge is called doing a mash-out, and is intended to raise the temp of the grain bed to ~170F. This is an important step for fly sparging, but IMO is a waste of time and sparge water volume when batch sparging. Some people make the first sparge addition very hot in place of a mash-out. Assuming full conversion, sparge water temp has zero effect on efficiency when batch sparging, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

FWIW this is my usual double batch sparge process:

1) After saccharification rest is complete, recirc/vorlauf and drain into boil kettle.
2) Subtract volume of 1st runnings from desired pre-boil volume to determine sparge water needed (I always have a gallon more than I think I'll need prepared).
3) Add 1/2 of the required sparge volume to the MLT from the HLT (using my HERMS this water is typically only a couple degrees higher than the mash rest temp was).
4) Stir like crazy, vorlauf, and drain (no need to wait).
5) Add second half of sparge water, stir like crazy, vorlauf, and drain.
 
Take a course of action, and try it. If first you don't succeed, try again.

Before I rebuilt my system with HERMs and a pump I did this:

I did a vorlauf until relatively clear, drained my mash tun, added my sparge water, mixed it good, waited 10 min, did the vorlauf again then drained the mash tun again. I would average 76% extract efficiency which was good enough for me.

same process i use, and i hit 78% routinely. works very well
 
So basically if my mash is 4.5 Gal and I want a 6.5 gal boil my sparge should be 2 gallons? (for examples sake we'll say there's no grain absorption just to make the math easier.)

But there is grain absorption, which is why I check what the actual volume of the first runnings is, and then determine how much sparge water I need. At this point the grains are already saturated, so whatever volume you add is exactly how much you'll collect. If you collect 4.5 gal, and want a 6.5 gal preboil volume, then yes you'd want to sparge with 2 gal. For maximum efficiency, you should aim to have the run-off volumes close to equal if possible. This means mashing slightly thicker for larger beers, and thinner for session beers.
 
There is never grain absorption with any form of sparging, ever period. It is impossible. Your grain is already soaking wet and has absorbed as much water as it will ever absorb. The whole point of sparging is to

1) stop the enzymes from acting by getting the temp to 168-172 for about 10min (not important in a home brew setting where the boil happens very shortly after the collection of the wort)
2) To rinse all of the grain to get all of the sugar, or as much as possible.

With batch sparging, I always use as much water as I did in the strike water. If I mash with 5G, I sparge with 5G. You are under no obligation to gather all of the water, some only gather up to 6.5G and boil from there. The last runnings are generally very low in gravity and you spend much more energy boiling thin water then you would if you had added another pound of grain etc. I will not get into that debate here. Bare in mine that any drop of water that you sparge with will come as runoff, but you want to completely cover your grain and then let it sit for 10min or so.

The reason for letting it sit is VERY simple, you need the grain bed to reset and actually have the husks provide the filter and have the rest of the stuff striate so that water will move. Otherwise you will get a stuck sparge and no good comes of that. Voluorfing (I can't believe that is a real word and has a specific meaning) basically sets the grain bed and the recycling bit is very useful for filtering very dense sugared water with quite a lot of other stuff in it.
 
Adding very hot water before starting the sparge is called doing a mash-out, and is intended to raise the temp of the grain bed to ~170F. This is an important step for fly sparging, but IMO is a waste of time and sparge water volume when batch sparging.

why would it matter for fly sparging and not for batch sparging?
 
Because Fly sparging takes a lot longer. Batch sparging you are getting the grain bed to 168, even if you hit about 166 or even 164, you are draining the MLT very quickly. Fly sparging takes a lot longer and if you don't stop the enzymes from working you change the profile of the beer.
 
I think one of the best resources for new batch spargers is Denny's writeup at http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/ This is a 'keep it simple' approach which is really helpful.

For what its worth, Denny is a member of the board of the American Homebrewers Association and even has a strain of yeast named for him.
 
It is so much easier than you think, do it once and you will find out. Here is what I do:

Recirculate about 2 quarts, drain, add the sparge water, mix well, let it sit for 20 mins, recirculate, drain.

I use Beersmith for water temps and volumes and while not perfect it is near as damnit and haveing done it 1.7 billion times I can adjust as needed.
 
why would it matter for fly sparging and not for batch sparging?

The main reason is that fly sparging relys on the long soak and very slow flow to dissolve the sugars into solution, which happens much more readily and efficiently at higher temperatures, resulting in higher lauter efficiency. For batch sparging the stirring is what gets the sugars into solution, which happens just fine at pretty much any temperature.

The secondary reason is locking in the wort profile. Since fly sparging usually takes close to an hour, if the grain bed and wort aren't brought up to denaturing temps the enzymes will continue to work and you can end up with a slightly more fermentable wort. It takes less time to batch sparge than it does to denature the enzymes, so doing a mash-out doesn't really have any effect on the wort profile for batch spargers.
 
Went smoothly today. It was mostly just stressing out over something that I knew in my head was going to be easy. I mashed my 12 lbs. of grain with 4.5 gallons of water at 148°F. It dropped to around 140°F by the end of the 60 minutes, which I wasn't necessarily happy with. I wanted a low mash temp, but not that low. I pulled off about 3 gallons of wort, sparged with 2 gallons of 175-180° sparge water. Pulled off the 2 gals and sparged with another 2 gallons, only pulling off the remaining 1.5 gallons I needed for my boil.
I got a 1.060 pre-boil gravity for my tripel. According to BeerAlchemy this means I had an 86% mash efficiency. This seems pretty high for my first time doing all-grain, almost too good to be true. Everything else went smoothly though. Hit my post boil OG of 1.080 to the tee, so I must of done something right.
 
Glad your numbers worked out well. I would consider anything >80% a great success the first time out. Congrats!
 
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