Fly sparge time

[giantmetfan]

Today was my first all grain brewing experience. I did a lot of research before I did it and everything said fly sparking takes about an hour. I ran into two problems in today's experience. First when I tried to mash out I couldn't get the temperature to 170. So I decided to go right into fly sparking. My water for the sparge was at 185 and the whole sparge took only 15 minutes. Which shocked me cause most people said 45-60 minutes! After the boil I took a gravity reading of 1045 and with 8.75 lb of malt in a 5 gallon batch I plugged it into a efficiency calculator and it read 82% efficiency. My questions are should I worry that the time of the sparge only took 15 minutes even though I got a good efficiency and also is mashing out necessary?

 

[doug293cz]

The purpose of mashing out is to denature the amylase enzymes so they don't continue chopping complex, non-fermentable sugars into simple, fermentable sugars during a long fly sparge. A wort with a low level of complex sugars may ferment to too low an FG, and be drier and thinner than desired. If you are looking for a really dry, light bodied beer, then skipping the mash out would be ok. But, if you want a beer with some more body and a little sweetness to balance the hops, then you should consider a mash out to "freeze" the sugar profile after the mash, rather than let it continue to get more fermentable during the sparge.

Fly sparging too fast can reduce your efficiency. The greatest concern is the potential for channeling at high flow rates. In channeling, the sparge water takes the easy paths thru the grain bed, and does not come into contact with the bulk of the grain. Grain that doesn't see much sparge water ends up holding more residual sugar, than does well sparged grain. The other concern is that the contact time with the sparge water is insufficient for the water to pick up the maximum amount of available sugar. Since you can't stir during a fly sparge, you are depending on diffusion (driven by sugar concentration gradients) to get sugar to move out of the grain remnants and into the sparge water. More time allows for diffusion to bring the local concentration gradients closer to zero, which is the point at which you get maximum efficiency.

Brew on

 

[eastoak]

and don't worry too much about fly sparge times right away, heck some wackos even batch sparge with excellent results.

 

[doug293cz]

and don't worry too much about fly sparge times right away, heck some wackos even batch sparge with excellent results.

Batch sparge and fly sparge both work well, but the dynamics of what's happening is different for the two methods. Therefore, the way you optimize is different depending on the method. A well executed batch sparge will beat a poorly executed fly sparge for efficiency, but a well executed fly sparge will beat a well executed batch sparge. It is much easier to do a batch sparge correctly than a fly sparge, but a fly sparge isn't all that difficult to get right if you know what you are doing. Which you choose is a matter of personal preference, and what works best/easiest with your equipment. Both can make excellent (award winning) beer.

Brew on

 

[Spartan1979]

After vorlauf, I aim for a sparge time of 20 minutes (to gather 8 gallons). I get about 75% efficiency. I know I could do better if I took longer, bit I'd rather pay for an extra pound or two of grain and save 20-30 minutes.

 

[Natdavis777]

My current brew (going right now) I sparged for about 45 min to achieve 13 gal with 190F water ( the mash temp never went over 160F) and I hit 90%. My last batch I went a bit quicker and still hit 85% with the same volumes. Dont beat yourself over excessively long sparge times.