I’ve been slowly figuring out my 3-vessel eHERMS setup and have been creeping up on finally getting a 60-minute sparge. Tricky getting those valves set just right – have to mess with them a bit, but it’s doable. Question is; is 60 minutes too long? I ask, because the last couple of times I brewed a Kolsch, the final runnings were at 1.009 and 1.006 respectively. It’s all RO and the pH of my final runnings has never gone above 5.6 even when SG goes down to 1.006.
I like that I can pull what seems to be pretty much all the available extract from my grain, but do I really need to pull that slow – 60-minutes? Am I spending (wasting) an extra 15 minutes sparging just to get a couple more points out of my grain? Could I back off a couple percentage points on my BHE in Beersmith 2, add a few more ounces of grain, pull a 45-minute sparge and end up with the same volume in the BK and the same calculated gravity (about 1.038 pre-boil)? This last time where I pulled it down to 1.006, I wound up 3 points high for my pre-boil SG – hit 1.041 instead of the calculated 1.038. Yeah I got more extract, but how much is too much? Am I over-sparging?
I like that I can pull what seems to be pretty much all the available extract from my grain, but do I really need to pull that slow – 60-minutes? Am I spending (wasting) an extra 15 minutes sparging just to get a couple more points out of my grain? Could I back off a couple percentage points on my BHE in Beersmith 2, add a few more ounces of grain, pull a 45-minute sparge and end up with the same volume in the BK and the same calculated gravity (about 1.038 pre-boil)? This last time where I pulled it down to 1.006, I wound up 3 points high for my pre-boil SG – hit 1.041 instead of the calculated 1.038. Yeah I got more extract, but how much is too much? Am I over-sparging?