Oversparging question for low OG beer

[Mueltrain54]

I am working on a recipe for a 5 gallon batch with only 6 lbs of grain, that puts my boil gravity estimated at 1.023. I am a single step batch sparger, and typically brew much bigger beers so I have never given much thought to tannin extraction from oversparging. My online calculator has my strike water volume at 10.5 quarts (1.75/lb) and my sparge volume at 23.5 quarts. I can only assume that amount of sparge water will have the og down low enough to have some tannin issues, but I am at a loss for what to do to compensate and still keep my OG as low as I want it to be. Any ideas?

Oh and I have not gotten into adjusting my water profile and don't own a PH meter as of yet.

 

[dmtaylor]

You are correct, you are on the right path.

You'll need to acidify your sparge water, and/or, you'll need to add plain water to your boil kettle without sending it through the grain bed.

Your brewhouse efficiency will be like 90% if you crush and sparge well. If not, it will still be like 85%. If you don't care about efficiency, then consider what I said above and maybe skip part or all of the sparge. Then you'll get "normal" efficiency, without as much hassle of sparging. That's what I do for small beers.

Cheers.