I hope this will benefit someone.
I was getting abysmal efficiencies (sub 60%) which I have fully attributed to sparging too quickly. How quickly is too quickly? Without getting volumetric, if you can see the water level going down, it's probably sparging too quickly. I recently brewed a 10 gallon batch of BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde and purchased 20% more grain to account for my bad eff. Turns out after a much slower sparge, I was able to get around 82% efficiency without changing much else at all. Needless to say, I had to dilute the cooled wort with 20% more water to get it in the neighborhood of the proper gravity.
Did anyone else learn this the hard way? Or can everyone else read?
I was getting abysmal efficiencies (sub 60%) which I have fully attributed to sparging too quickly. How quickly is too quickly? Without getting volumetric, if you can see the water level going down, it's probably sparging too quickly. I recently brewed a 10 gallon batch of BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde and purchased 20% more grain to account for my bad eff. Turns out after a much slower sparge, I was able to get around 82% efficiency without changing much else at all. Needless to say, I had to dilute the cooled wort with 20% more water to get it in the neighborhood of the proper gravity.
Did anyone else learn this the hard way? Or can everyone else read?