Question about sparging

[MInoobbrewer]

Ok so I've done a few all-grain brews which turned out fine. This was after a few extract kits and Brandon_O's Graff which seemed more if a partial mash. Anyways when I do my sparging I'm a little confused cuz what I've been doing it's my boil in bag at 150 with 3 gallons (in a 7 gal pot) and then separately heating 2 gallons to 170 (in a 3 gal pot). Then when the boil is complete I take the grains up in to a collinder over the boil and pour the 170° water over it to sorta rinse it out. Is this right? Cuz all I have is a 7 gallon pot and a three gallon pot. So when it's 10lbs. Of wet grain it's sorta hard to fit it in to the three gal pot. So ya. Don't know if I'm doing this right at all.

 

[AnOldUR]

Then when the boil is complete I take the grains up in to a collinder over the boil and pour the 170° water over it to sorta rinse it out. Is this right?

Unless by boil you mean mash, no.

 

[buzzerj]

Yeah you are mashing at 150 degrees F for 30/60/90 minutes whatever then you sparge with an amount of higher temperature water to give a mash out temperature of 168 degrees F. But if you don't have a big enough boil pot guess what? You need to modify your process to fit your equipment or modify your equipment. Let's say you stay with a 7 gallon boil pot. Then try to limit the amount of malt in your process to 3 3/4 to 4 1/2 lbs. max. After the mash and sparge is done your total boil volume is say 4-4 1/2 gallons max. After the boil is complete and before you start wort chilling, add 3.3 lbs. of liquid malt extract and any additional dry malt extract if needed to achieve your O.G. based on a 5 gallon final volume. Stir like heck and wait 10 minutes for everything to pasteurize before chilling your wort. After collecting your wort in a fermenter add cool preboiled water to your 5 gallon mark (assuming you wish 5 gallons for a batch size) before your add your yeast. Measure your O.G. You should be fine. I've done many batches with a 4 gallon boil and 4 lbs. of malt with an extract kick at the end of the boil. It's the basics of a partial mash method. It worked great.

I've done all grain batches with my 8 gallon boil pot also but I use a 12 gallon mash tun I built out of an Igloo Cube cooler rather than a bag of grains soaking in a pot. Look into investing in a 10 gallon cooler to convert to a mash tun. It's a cheap easy way to go if you want to do all grain full wort boils. My concern is that for full wort boils of 60 minutes my starting boil volume is 6.5 gallons which is tight in a 7 gallon boil pot but works ok in my 8 gallon boil pot. Sounds like you need to adjust your process. Hope that helps.

 

[chickypad]

IME you may get less efficiency than a dunk batch sparge, but yes you can sparge the way you describe if your pots aren't big enough. I would max out your mash volume first though, many people mash thin with BIAB even going as far as a full volume mash. Sounds like you are aiming for 5 gal batches? With 10 lb of grain you should be able to fit almost 6 gallons of mash water - lets say 23 qts to be safe (that should take up 6.55 gal of space according to this calculator). Without squeezing you'd lose about 1.2 gal to grain absorption but it should be less than a gallon if you squeeze. So say you get close to 5 gal from the mash water, you'll only need to sparge about what you lose to boil off.

 

[MInoobbrewer]

Unless by boil you mean mash, no.

Yes mash. Sorry

 

[MInoobbrewer]

All this help. I want to k keep doing all grain recipes in five gallon batches cuz I love the flavor and flexibility of it. Plus there's just more recipes. So "chickypad" I may do what your talking about where I do a bigger mash quantity and just squeeze the grains afterward. I have heard the argument where people do that and sort of cut out sparging. Am I getting that right?

 

[chickypad]

Yes, that's correct. Many folks doing BIAB (or some in a traditional mash tun) do full volume mash - meaning you add all the water at once, mash, then squeeze the bag and you're done. You won't be able to fit in your 7 gal pot though. You'd probably need to boil at least 6 gal to end with 5, and even with aggressive squeezing will lose some to absorption. With the average grainbill you're going to max out with about 5.5 gal mash water, maybe just fit 5.75 gal as I mentioned. So you'll still have to do a sparge of about a gallon or a little more. I do 3 gal BIAB batches in a 5 gal pot and can't fit a full volume, so I dunk sparge in a second pot. It seems a good rule of thumb for full volume BIAB is a pot about twice your batch size.

 

[MInoobbrewer]

Thank you for the help. I really do appreciate it. I've only been doing this six months and there's a lot of opinions and ideas out there so I wanted the take from some people on here.