Help understanding sparge temperature.

[Beer-Baron]

Hi there,

I'm pretty new to All Grain brewing. I'm about 5 batches in and I've been playing with different ways of doing it and experimenting to see what works for me.

My most recent method I've been using is a variation of Brew in a Bag. I mash with most of my water, but then I have a second pot I use to sparge my grains in.

Basically, I complete my mash with about 23 Liters of water and then I take all my sparge water I need and heat it up to about 150 and "teabag" my grains in that for a bit and then combine the 2 pots. I've got some good results with this and got pretty good efficiency without having to squeeze out the bag at all.

Should I sparging up at the 168 mark? If so, why?

Why couldn't I just sparge with ice water if I wanted to?

 

[jetmac]

You want to stop the process of extracting sugars from the grain. 150F would just be adding more malt sugars leaving you with a higher gravity wort.

168F is pretty minimal. I usually have my sparge water @ 185F or higher.

I would think if you sparged with ice water, the pores would shrink up and you wouldn't get the grain properly rinsed.

 

[captainL]

I have been wondering the same thing too. I have done no sparge, mash out, and batch sparging like you. Can't really tell a difference (other than effec) and I like the idea of just doing a simple rinse with room temp water instead of having to heat up the sparge water.

As far as stopping the conversion.....I'm thinking its not that big of a deal in most of the beers I have been making...IPA's and wheats. But I don't really know or understand what it does...

I think there was a thread floating around here a while ago about doing cold sparge. I would think the sugars are already "extracted" and temperature wouldn't play that much of a role in getting them out.

Lets see what the pros think???

 

[Beer-Baron]

Well thats what I'm wondering too. Why do I care about stopping the conversion of sugars?

I guess if I was doing an hour long batch sparge it could make a difference, but in my case. I pull the bag, let it drip and drain. Then I teabag it in another pot, swirl it around for about 5 minutes, combine the 2 pots and let it drip and drain again. All the while, I've got my burner on heating up my wort.

So my sparge is about 5 - 10 minutes long before I start going for the boil.

So what I'm getting at here is that in my situation I really don't care about heating up my sparge water do I?

 

[Beer-Baron]

I would think if you sparged with ice water, the pores would shrink up and you wouldn't get the grain properly rinsed.

I don't actually want to sparge with ice water. I was just trying to make a point. lol.

I plan to just run my tap hot and sparge with that.

 

[Yooper]

Kai Troester (braukaiser.com) did an experiment showing that sparging with cold water was fine and didn't impact efficiency.

I think that sparging "hotter" is useful for me, though. It works as a mash-out, preserving the profile of the mash (if I haven't already mashed out), and in theory should make the sugars a bit more soluable and easier to extract from the grain.

Kai's experiments showed that you can get just as much extraction from the cooler sparge, though, so I'm probably wrong about that.

 

[Beer-Baron]

Kai Troester (braukaiser.com) did an experiment showing that sparging with cold water was fine and didn't impact efficiency.

I think that sparging "hotter" is useful for me, though. It works as a mash-out, preserving the profile of the mash (if I haven't already mashed out), and in theory should make the sugars a bit more soluable and easier to extract from the grain.

Kai's experiments showed that you can get just as much extraction from the cooler sparge, though, so I'm probably wrong about that.

Well thats cool. Anyone else have a problem with this? This would mean one less thing to do on brew day. I brew with my tap water so I'm just going to use warm to hot tap water to sparge with. SWEEEEET!

 

[AnOldUR]

If you had honey on your hands, would it be easier to rinse it off with warm water or cold water?

 

[Beer-Baron]

If you had honey on your hands, would it be easier to rinse it off with warm water or cold water?

That makes sense. Interesting thought.

 

[Yooper]

If you had honey on your hands, would it be easier to rinse it off with warm water or cold water?

Right! Maybe that's why I still always, but always, sparge at 168 (water is a bit warmer, but the grainbed is 168).

I KNOW I've read Kai's literature and spoken with him in person about it- but it just seems "wrong" to sparge with cooler water.

Of course, I would say that I've also missed mash-out temps and sparged with cooler water than 168, and only got my grainbed up to 160 or so, and did not notice a decrease in efficiency. I'm sure other brewers have also. But I always feel that I "should" sparge at 168 and I always attempt to.

If you want to sparge cooler, that should be a good test. If you could report back with your results, I'd be very interested!

 

[JuanMoore]

Kai Troester (braukaiser.com) did an experiment showing that sparging with cold water was fine and didn't impact efficiency.

I think that sparging "hotter" is useful for me, though. It works as a mash-out, preserving the profile of the mash (if I haven't already mashed out), and in theory should make the sugars a bit more soluable and easier to extract from the grain.

Kai's experiments showed that you can get just as much extraction from the cooler sparge, though, so I'm probably wrong about that.

Kai's cold water sparge tests were only done for batch sparging. When batch sparging it's the agitation from the stirring that gets the sugars to dissolve into solution so that they can be drained off. What his tests showed is that this process happens just as readily with cold water as it does with hot water. He did do a mash-out for his tests, but I've done the same test several times without a mash out and had the same results.

When fly sparging it's the long soak as the water very slowly moves through the grain bed that dissolves the sugars into solution. In this case hotter water makes the sugars more soluble and aids lauter efficiency greatly. For this reason, as well as preserving the wort profile, it's important to perform a mash out and use hot sparge water when fly sparging.

For BIAB dunk sparging hotter water will help extract a few more sugars since you're not stirring any. It's probably a minor difference though, so I don't think you should worry too much about it. You could probably boost efficiency a lot if you stirred the grain while it was in the second pot, which would also eliminate any need for hotter water. As for using hot water as a mash out to lock in the wort profile, it takes 20 min at 170F to denature the enzymes, so it's not going to make a difference for BIAB dunk sparging or batch sparging since they're so quick. You'll have the enzymes denatured in the BK faster than you would if you tried to do a true mash out.

If you had honey on your hands, would it be easier to rinse it off with warm water or cold water?

That's a great analogy. You need either heat and time (fly sparging) or agitation (batch sparging) to get the honey to dissolve.

 

[jetmac]

interesting