shower head for sparge arm??

[Dgonza9]

Probably a brain fart, but I was thinking of building a sparge arm and I have an old shower head laying around. Don't know what it is rated for.

Anyone ever tried it?

 

[ThreeDogsNE]

All the shower heads in my house have plastic parts, which I would not trust with 172* water. It would also need to spray evenly over a wide area to give an optimal fly sparge. Maybe one of those shower heads the size of a dinner plate would work, if made out of stainless or brass, or a plastic that will take the heat. The little shower heads I have would not be desirable.

 

[DavidR]

Why go through the trouble. use a single high temp hose laying on top of the grain bed to transfer the water and keep 1-2" of water on top of it during sparging. I've done this in my own brew setup, as well as a micro brewery (sans the hose).

 

[Dgonza9]

Yeah, total brain fart.

 

[Sawdustguy]

Why do you need a sparge arm at all. Why not use just a length of silicone tubing? Being you are fly sparging and have 2 inches of sparge water above the grain bed simply have the tubing lay on top of the grain bed and it will float on top of the water. This is how Sabco does their Brew Magic. It will not drill down the grain bed because you will be maintaining 2 inches of water above the grain bed.

 

[3 Dog Brew]

I've modified my elaborate inverted spray head assembly sparge arm for the silicone tubing method described above. It really does function the best. I was using mine for recirculation and it kept getting clogged with small husk particles. Replacing it with a simple piece of tubing resolved all those issues.