Recommendations for sparge water kettle.

[kohalajohn]

Looking for a five gallon 110V electric kettle for sparge water.

I don't have access to a stove to heat water, just electric outlets.

I mash and boil in a Brewzilla Gen 4 25l.

I just need a container that can maintain 170F water for gravity pour sparging.

I'm tired of dealing with plastic buckets and immersion heaters. I'd like to go more upscale.

Thanks

 

[sibelman]

fwiw, it's been stated authoritatively that sparge water need not be hot. That said, a big coffee urn might do the trick.

 

[kohalajohn]

Yeah, Sibel I'm going to do more reading on this issue of sparge water not being hot.

I'm coming back to brewing after many years away and so many things that were dogma back in the day are being challenged.

Apart from that, I see Grainfather makes a sparge water heater. Just an 18 liter coffee urn.

 

[kohalajohn]

I see Doug293cz says it. I'm starting to see that dude as pretty authoritative.

The issue of the cold sparge water making it take longer to reach boil, is not an issue for me. I have a little Brewzilla 35l with a big 220V heater.

I actually experimented in my last batch with a cold rinse. The temp in the boiler kept climbing as if it was laughing at the cooler water.

 

[IslandLizard]

fwiw, it's been stated authoritatively that sparge water need not be hot. That said, a big coffee urn might do the trick.

I'm quite sure there are measurable differences in the end product among sparge procedures, from no sparge to squeeze sparge to fly sparge, from cold to warm to hot sparge, etc.

In most homebrewing those differences can be subtle, going (mostly) undetected due to many other variations in the brewing/fermenting process.

If the sugar composition ("profile") in the wort is critical, paying some extra attention and knowledge to how the mash and sparge are performed may help to reach that goal, and succeed in creating the beer you had in mind.

One thing I always think of when performing the mash is to lock in the sugar profile I am after as much as possible. So I always (batch) sparge with very hot water to slow down or stop conversion at the "right" time.

[ADDED] I also heat the runnings as soon as they are collected, about a gallon at a time.
When critical, I mash in the kettle and do a solid mashout with direct heat and good stirring and scraping the bottom. Then transfer to the mash tun for lautering and (batch) sparging.

 

[sibelman]

lock in the sugar profile

Me too. I fly sparge after HERMS recirculation, and usually mash out at 170°F.

Consistency can de achieved by sticking with a process. That could be a cold sparge process.

 

[kohalajohn]

A cold sparge process is what I am going to do.

I like having just one heat source. I'll have a five gallon plastic bucket raised up for gravity sparge. Will do proper fly sparge keeping the grain submerged during the sparge. I can make my pump very slowly move the wort to a second plastic bucket as the sparge water rains down.

when sparging is done return the wort to the boiler and boil.

It seems I am turning my Brewzilla into a 3v system. That's ok.

 

[doug293cz]

If the sugar composition ("profile") in the wort is critical, paying some extra attention and knowledge to how the mash and sparge are performed may help to reach that goal, and succeed in creating the beer you had in mind.

One thing I always think of when performing the mash is to lock in the sugar profile I am after as much as possible. So I always (batch) sparge with very hot water to slow down or stop conversion at the "right" time.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of homebrewers have no clue what our sugar profiles (molecular weight distributions) are. About the only thing we can measure is apparent attenuation, which is affected by the sugar profile and yeast strain. For this reason, I agree with @sibelman that what is most important is consistency of process which is necessary to be able to recreate a previous brew.

Brew on

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Gee, I was voting for the five gallon coffee urn. No telling when you want to brew up five gallons of coffee!

 

[kevin58]

I'm in the no need to use hot water for sparging camp. Keep it simple.

 

[kohalajohn]

I think I could use a five gallon urn of coffee this morning....

 

[mac_1103]

No telling when you want to brew up five gallons of coffee!

At our place, we call this "morning."

 

[Bobby_M]

It seems I am turning my Brewzilla into a 3v system. That's ok.

It hurts my brain to watch you taking a simple one vessel system and do everything you can to complicate it. Have you even tried to do a full volume, no sparge in that thing to rule it out?

 

[kohalajohn]

No, I have not. I just bought this machine and have only done one batch. I just did a cold pour over. Which turned out pretty good, actually.

I assume from full volume you mean add the entire say 22 liters of cold water, heat it, dough in, do a thin mash, then mash out, then just lift out the grain bed and boil.

Seems too good to be true. Surely some sugars are thrown out with the spent grain bed. Is the idea that in our small batches, the loss of a few ounces is a trivial amount? It may be.

Or is it that this new to me system of continuous vorlauf is so efficient that it makes up for the loss of sparging?

Or is it that there is a loss, but the loss of one dollar's worth of grain is worth it, to gain back half of a Saturday in work time? I mean, I might agree with that.

 

[RM-MN]

Yes there is a loss when doing full volume, no sparge but it is in the range of 5-10%, hardly worth adding much time to the brew day. With that said, I always sparge but not for the efficiency. I sparge because my brew kettle is too small for a full volume mash.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

No, I have not. I just bought this machine and have only done one batch. I just did a cold pour over. Which turned out pretty good, actually.

I assume from full volume you mean add the entire say 22 liters of cold water, heat it, dough in, do a thin mash, then mash out, then just lift out the grain bed and boil.

Seems too good to be true. Surely some sugars are thrown out with the spent grain bed. Is the idea that in our small batches, the loss of a few ounces is a trivial amount? It may be.

Or is it that this new to me system of continuous vorlauf is so efficient that it makes up for the loss of sparging?

Or is it that there is a loss, but the loss of one dollar's worth of grain is worth it, to gain back half of a Saturday in work time? I mean, I might agree with that.

Have you done any research on this system? It seems like you don't know much about it's capabilities or designed purpose. You seem to ask a lot of questions you should have answered before diving into this brewing system. The idea behind a system like that is to use just it to brew beer.

Is it too good to be true? I think they are. I brew on a four vessel system and it takes up a lot of room so I can safely say a Brewzilla would be too good to be true. Many folks own them and love them. With a few more batches you will too.

As far as lost sugars, we all have that. No system extracts all of the potential sugars, it's just a loss we expect from brewing.

 

[Willy]

I used to heat the water over a propane flame burner until someone suggested a cold sparge works aok.

After that I went to pulling out the bag from the AIO and into an old brew kettle (I too use Brewzilla Gen 4) . Once there, I will put in about a gallon or two at a time and dunk it like a tea bag, squeeze it and put the wort back in the kettle.

Personally, I have found it hard to do a no sparge with a Brewzilla due to a lack of volume. I do 6 & 11 gal batches (with extender), mostly 5% or more abv. I can do the no sparge on my English brown and my stout because they are like 4% ABV and I have room.

Btw... The cold water you sparge with gets pretty dang warm quickly when u pour it thru and squeeze.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

I used to heat the water over a propane flame burner until someone suggested a cold sparge works aok.

After that I went to pulling out the bag from the AIO and into an old brew kettle (I too use Brewzilla Gen 4) . Once there, I will put in about a gallon or two at a time and dunk it like a tea bag, squeeze it and put the wort back in the kettle.

Personally, I have found it hard to do a no sparge with a Brewzilla due to a lack of volume. I do 6 & 11 gal batches (with extender), mostly 5% or more abv. I can do the no sparge on my English brown and my stout because they are like 4% ABV and I have room.

Btw... The cold water you sparge with gets pretty dang warm quickly when u pour it thru and squeeze.

Still less equipment to deal with right?

Anyone using the Brewzilla is helpful to the OP. I can't offer any experience other than the differences I know not using one.

 

[kohalajohn]

I'm doing my research now.

I'll try full volume next time. I only do 4 gallon, 15L batches so I should be ok in a 35L brewzilla

 

[Willy]

I'm doing my research now.

I'll try full volume next time. I only do 4 gallon, 15L batches so I should be ok in a 35L brewzilla

That should work I think.

 

[Bobby_M]

No, I have not. I just bought this machine and have only done one batch. I just did a cold pour over. Which turned out pretty good, actually.

I assume from full volume you mean add the entire say 22 liters of cold water, heat it, dough in, do a thin mash, then mash out, then just lift out the grain bed and boil.

Seems too good to be true. Surely some sugars are thrown out with the spent grain bed. Is the idea that in our small batches, the loss of a few ounces is a trivial amount? It may be.

Or is it that this new to me system of continuous vorlauf is so efficient that it makes up for the loss of sparging?

Or is it that there is a loss, but the loss of one dollar's worth of grain is worth it, to gain back half of a Saturday in work time? I mean, I might agree with that.

I started brewing in 2006 and went crazy building all kinds of complicated systems and having plenty of fun with that (until I got tired of spending more time cleaning than brewing). I converted to single vessel/no sparge brewing nearly 10 years ago now and I'm never going back. My beer immediately improved and my brew days are 4 hours long including cleanup.

Yes, the extraction goes down which is one VERY SMALL compromise to make for improved wort quality. I'm not joking about wort quality. Sparging without pH control can make some pretty terrible beer and full volume mashing definitely benefits people who don't know they have that problem.

Don't get hung up on getting every molecule of sugar out of the grain. Sometimes it's OK to eat chicken and throw the bones in the trash without making soup.

 

[Bobby_M]

I'm doing my research now.

I'll try full volume next time. I only do 4 gallon, 15L batches so I should be ok in a 35L brewzilla

Yes, the 35L system can do almost any gravity 4 gallon batch as full volume with no sparging.

With the BrewFather equipment profile set to 70% mash efficiency, it looks like you can get just under 14 pounds of grain in there with 7 gallons of starting water for a max OG of 1.087 and getting a full 4 gallons (9%ABV) into the fermenter.

 

[kohalajohn]

Thanks Bobby. I am reassured.

I'll try a full volume for sure.

With these newfangled machines, I don't even know why its called Brewday at all. It should be Brewmorning.

 

[kevin58]

Don't get hung up on getting every molecule of sugar out of the grain. Sometimes it's OK to eat chicken and throw the bones in the trash without making soup.

Amen! I always tell folks that mash efficiency is not a race or competition. You will see people brad on the forums that they get XX% efficiency and other brewers will think they have to achieve the same. Nonsense! The key to mash efficiency is A) consistency and B) knowing what your efficiency is. Then just tune your process, software equipment profile, etc. to match.

 

[kohalajohn]

I like Bobby’s analogy of chicken soup. That’s exactly it.

 

[kohalajohn]

Back when I was 3v we all believed the ultimate goal was to imitate the commercial breweries.

Now I see that our small batches are a better way. We don't have accounting departments yelling at us about lost efficiencies and profit margins.