Mash In/Mash Out/Sparge

[TycoRossBrewing]

So I am a little confused about this mash.

I am brewing a five gallon batch of blonde ale with 8.25# total grain. I am doing a rest at 154 and then mash out at 170. Since I am using such a small grain bill how much am I going to sparge?
By my calculations of 1.5 quarts per pound (and when this even be a good ratio for a blonde ale) i will be heating 12.38 qts at 165.9 and then mashing out with 5.3 quarts at 212. Am i really gonna have to sparge all the way up to the 24 quart preboil i will need to get the five gallon batch final batch. With grain absorption this seems like one Helluva sparge. Any help here would be great...is my grain ratio too high, should i not be concerned with such a large sparge?

 

[JustLooking]

Batch sparge, continuous spare, BIAB?

Edit for if it's batch sparge . . .

For 5.5 gallons to your fermenter and assuming one gallon of boil-off, you’ll need 6.5 gallons pre-boil. That comes out to two equal runnings of 3.25 gallons. Add one gallon to that for grain absorbsion gives you 4.25 gallon of dough-in water and a single sparge with 3.25 gallons. That’s a ratio of 2 quarts / lb. There’s no need for a mash-out with batch sparging.

 

[hanuswalrus]

I typically use the calculator below to figure out mash and sparge water volumes. I usually mash in at a 1.5 qts/lb ratio as well. These numbers sound about right. You're going to need close to 8.5 gallons pre-boil. The calculator I linked below shows 3.09 gals for the mash, and 5.34 gals for the sparge. I've never added boiling water to perform a mash out. If I really feel the need to do one, I'll just add my sparge water at about 185F and that gets my mash temp up to 168-170. Took some experimenting on my system to figure this out, though. This is all assuming you are batch sparging.

http://www.brew365.com/mash_sparge_water_calculator.php

 

[hanuswalrus]

Sorry, another correction. You will need 8.44 gals of water, and should end up w/ 6.37 gals of wort pre boil.

 

[doug293cz]

Sorry, another correction. You will need 8.44 gals of water, and should end up w/ 6.37 gals of wort pre boil.

There's no way OP gets (8.44 - 6.37) = 2.07 gal of water absorbed by 8.25 lbs of grain. That'd be over 0.25 gal/lb apparent grain absorption. Typical grain absorption is usually 0.125 gal/lb or less. Can you justify your numbers? @JustLooking provided numbers that look much more reasonable.

Brew on

 

[TycoRossBrewing]

Thanks man...that really helps alot. I do like a double sparge kinda....i mash out and bring the mash to 170 for About ten minutes and then i Fly sparge to the needed volume...in this case that volume is 6.25 gallons. Which should yeild about five gallons after i Bring it to a boil.

 

[TycoRossBrewing]

Apparently if i hit 100% efficiency its better to not mash out and double sparge...if i dont hit that efficiency i should do the mash Out.

 

[doug293cz]

Apparently if i hit 100% efficiency its better to not mash out and double sparge...if i dont hit that efficiency i should do the mash Out.

You're not going to get 100% mash efficiency, but you may get very close to 100% starch conversion efficiency.

The purpose of the mash out when fly sparging is to stop the amylase enzymes from continuing to chop the poly-saccharides (which are not fermentable) into mono-, di-, and tri-saccharides which are fermentable. Doing a 45 min to 1.5 hour fly sparge without a mash out can lead to overly fermentable sugar profiles (resulting in dryer, thinner beer) than may be desired. This is because the amylase enzymes keep shortening the sugar chains until they are denatured (or all poly-saccharides are reduced to limit dextrins.)

Brew on

 

[hanuswalrus]

There's no way OP gets (8.44 - 6.37) = 2.07 gal of water absorbed by 8.25 lbs of grain. That'd be over 0.25 gal/lb apparent grain absorption. Typical grain absorption is usually 0.125 gal/lb or less. Can you justify your numbers? @JustLooking provided numbers that look much more reasonable.

Brew on

Those are just the numbers brew365 came back with when I plugged in OP's numbers. I totally forgot to adjust the "Equipment loss" variable. I think that's where I screwed up. This calculator automatically starts w/ 1 gal equipment loss, which is probably a lot more than most people typically lose.

My bad, thanks for catching that.

 

[doug293cz]

Those are just the numbers brew365 came back with when I plugged in OP's numbers. I totally forgot to adjust the "Equipment loss" variable. I think that's where I screwed up. This calculator automatically starts w/ 1 gal equipment loss, which is probably a lot more than most people typically lose.

My bad, thanks for catching that.

That makes sense. Thanks for checking.

Brew on