n00b All grain question

[somelikeithoppy]

Hey all-

New to all grain brewing.

My understanding of basic all grain brewing from reading palmer.

You mash a batch of grains. Begin draining after an hour or so. Recirculate the water for the first bit of it. Drain remainder into brewpot. Begin sparging when mash water reaches an inch or so above the grainbed w/ 170 degree water. Then you sparge until you're draining out 1.008 liquid from your tun or you hit volume for your boil (6 gal?).

Now the (potentially stupid?) question:

If you're hitting your target boil volume before you're getting your sparge run-of down to 1.010 or 1.008, is it a good idea to heat up some of your previously collected wort and recirculate more of it through the grain-bed to improve efficiency?

Or is hitting target volume before sparging has completely rinsed your grains typically a non-issue?

 

[bob1852]

I usually shoot to hit my target pre-boil volume. That leaves me with a grain bed that usually could put out at least some more 1.020 stuff, but I don't bother once I get my ~6.5 gallons.

Besides, I feed the spent grain to the goats, and they like it a little sweeter.

I was reading a chapter in a designing great beers last night about how Guiness was one of the first to really push for sparging; but that he also thought he could run the really low ~1.008 last runnings in his steam system and eventually get it concentrated enough to use it - that part didn't work so well apparently.

Also, you seem to be talking like you'll be fly sparging - if this is your first AG, I would recommend a double batch sparge using water hotter than 170 (check out Bobby_M's all-grain primer). The reason fly spargers use 170 is because they generally "mash out" - which raises the grain bed temp to ~168. If you batch sparge without a mash out, your grain bed will be at mash temperature, so you want to sparge with hotter water to get the grain bed temp up to 168*. I generally shoot for 185* sparge water.

 

[cactusgarrett]

I batch sparge and typically only care about my boil volume. I use my batch sparge additions to try to reach 170F grainbed, but if it doesn't happen i usually couldn't care less. Important thing to me is the boil volume.

Batch or fly, if you sparge and you have some sweet(er) wort still remaining after you've hit your target boil volume, save it anyway in case you wanna do volume adjustments during the boil, or (typically what i do) save it for future yeast starters.