I have been diagnosing possible issues with my brewery and wanted to take a poll to see how people felt about my sparge volumes.
Here are the current figures for the latest beer I brewed, a 10.25 gallon Cream Ale. For this beer I treated 15.5 gallons of water with the proper mineral additions to maintain a pH of around 5.3. Grist weight was 15.5lbs and I use a 1.3qt/lb ratio for mashing in which is about 20.16 quarts of water or 5.04 gallons. I do a double batch sparge and just split the remaining volume in half and use each halved volume for a single sparge at 168'F. So in this particular case I did roughly a 5.1 gallon sparge each time to eventually gain 13.25 gallons of pre boil wort.
My question for everyone is this, do you feel that I am over sparging? I do 90 minute boils and due to liquid to air surface area I boil off approximately 3 gallons during this time frame so if I am over sparging I may need to look into obtaining a taller pot which would cut down on the liquid to air surface area.
I haven't picked up a pH meter yet to monitor the pH of my sparges but I have been using Palmer's spread sheet to calculate the proper water profile for the SRM beer I am brewing and so far have maintained great efficiency and do not perceive a harsh tannin bite in my finished beer, it's more of a paper/cardboard flavor and finish. The flavor may even be possibly phenolic in nature as my bavarian wheats that are brewed with wlp3068 seem to turn out pretty good but the taste is still definitely there just not as pronounced as other styles I have brewed lately.
Here is the water profile I used for this beer, again all water is pretreated with minerals and constantly mixed during use. Water was built from distilled/deionized water.
Ca - 65ppm
Mg - 11ppm
Na - 0ppm
SO4 - 73ppm
CL - 71ppm
HCO3 - 20ppm
SRM range for profile = 2-7 SRM
Estimated beer SRM = 4.1 SRM
Here are the current figures for the latest beer I brewed, a 10.25 gallon Cream Ale. For this beer I treated 15.5 gallons of water with the proper mineral additions to maintain a pH of around 5.3. Grist weight was 15.5lbs and I use a 1.3qt/lb ratio for mashing in which is about 20.16 quarts of water or 5.04 gallons. I do a double batch sparge and just split the remaining volume in half and use each halved volume for a single sparge at 168'F. So in this particular case I did roughly a 5.1 gallon sparge each time to eventually gain 13.25 gallons of pre boil wort.
My question for everyone is this, do you feel that I am over sparging? I do 90 minute boils and due to liquid to air surface area I boil off approximately 3 gallons during this time frame so if I am over sparging I may need to look into obtaining a taller pot which would cut down on the liquid to air surface area.
I haven't picked up a pH meter yet to monitor the pH of my sparges but I have been using Palmer's spread sheet to calculate the proper water profile for the SRM beer I am brewing and so far have maintained great efficiency and do not perceive a harsh tannin bite in my finished beer, it's more of a paper/cardboard flavor and finish. The flavor may even be possibly phenolic in nature as my bavarian wheats that are brewed with wlp3068 seem to turn out pretty good but the taste is still definitely there just not as pronounced as other styles I have brewed lately.
Here is the water profile I used for this beer, again all water is pretreated with minerals and constantly mixed during use. Water was built from distilled/deionized water.
Ca - 65ppm
Mg - 11ppm
Na - 0ppm
SO4 - 73ppm
CL - 71ppm
HCO3 - 20ppm
SRM range for profile = 2-7 SRM
Estimated beer SRM = 4.1 SRM