Fly sparge equipment

[Zippox]

I've seen a few different ideas on equipment to use for fly sparging but I was wondering if there is a thread that covers all of these? Of course I'd like to do something that works fantastic while at the same time spending little money - upon first thought it seems like it shouldnt be hard to evenly/gracefully transfer water from one bucket to another.

So what do you guys recommend?

 

[eltorrente]

Cheapest way is to simply use a long tube that lays inside of the mash tun. As long as it's directing the water around the mash, instead of straight down into it, it will work fine. You could just clamp it or secure it in some way to hold it in place to the side of the mash tun, and this will work as well as any fancy setup.

 

[JonM]

Here's a nice writeup of a slightly different technique. Not so heavy on the equipment, too.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/hybrid-fly-sparge-technique-75454/

 

[dyqik]

I just put a plastic lid from a mixing bowl on the top of the water over the grain bed, and direct the sparge water onto the top of it. Prevents it from disturbing the grain, and it floats on top the water so there's decent spreading of the water on top of the grain bed. Open up the valve on the HLT to maintain the same rate as the run off, and it'll happily sit there sparging for 10-20 minutes without interference before I need to adjust the valves slightly. I can extend my sparge times out to 45 minutes or so like that.

This technique was stolen from piotr's post in the above link, and as discussed in that thread, the technique there is standard fly sparging, just with minimal equipment.