I have been looking through the threads for some time now as I try to improve my all-grain process. Something mentioned almost every time with fly-sparging is to avoid exposing the grain bed. There is never any discussion on why this is bad though. I assume it is because you miss out on sugars at the top of the grain bed? What are the other disadvantages or reasons to avoid doing this?
There have been plenty of times in my numerous brews where I got side-tracked by something and let the sparge dissipate below the grains and I had to quickly increase the flow to bring it back up. So this leads to another question, is there any risk with increasing the sparge flow to the point where there is always plenty of sparge water on top of the grains? I am sure channeling could be an issue, but I think I have that under control with my equipment. I'm thinking 3-5 inches of water on top of the grains.
On a final note with sparging, I only have one cooler at the moment (used for a mash tun) and I use my kettle as the lauter tun. So the wort is going into a bucket which ends up in the kettle once the sparge is complete. Are there disadvantages to doing it this way that I don't know about?
Thanks everyone!
Mark
There have been plenty of times in my numerous brews where I got side-tracked by something and let the sparge dissipate below the grains and I had to quickly increase the flow to bring it back up. So this leads to another question, is there any risk with increasing the sparge flow to the point where there is always plenty of sparge water on top of the grains? I am sure channeling could be an issue, but I think I have that under control with my equipment. I'm thinking 3-5 inches of water on top of the grains.
On a final note with sparging, I only have one cooler at the moment (used for a mash tun) and I use my kettle as the lauter tun. So the wort is going into a bucket which ends up in the kettle once the sparge is complete. Are there disadvantages to doing it this way that I don't know about?
Thanks everyone!
Mark