Sparge temp question, better to err on the side of...?

[petemoss]

Hey gang,

Currently I only have one burner and kettle. So I use it for heating strike water, sparge water, and for the boil. I manage this by shifting wort around in buckets and storing my sparge water in an extra water cooler. The problem I run into is that my sparge water is usually a little on the low side after it cools some in the cooler. I try to counteract this some by overheating the water prior to draining it into the cooler. I don't have this down yet though. I generally shoot for 168 for the sparge water. My question is, if I am going to miss this temperature, is it better for it to be too low or too high?

Thanks

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

yes most people don't actually heat the grain to 168 the entire sparge, mine starts out that high but I turn off the heat and it lowers into the 150's at some point, it's fine

 

[RM-MN]

Hey gang,

Currently I only have one burner and kettle. So I use it for heating strike water, sparge water, and for the boil. I manage this by shifting wort around in buckets and storing my sparge water in an extra water cooler. The problem I run into is that my sparge water is usually a little on the low side after it cools some in the cooler. I try to counteract this some by overheating the water prior to draining it into the cooler. I don't have this down yet though. I generally shoot for 168 for the sparge water. My question is, if I am going to miss this temperature, is it better for it to be too low or too high?

Thanks

The temperature of the sparge water is of little concern. The idea was to "mash out" by heating up the mash to about 170F to stop enzyme action before starting to draw off the liquid in a fly sparge but if you have full conversion it won't matter. If you are batch sparging, don't even bother heating the water for the sparge. Tap water temperature gets you nearly the same sugar extraction and avoids the "one-burner two step waltz".

 

[Sadu]

Anything less than 78c is good. I think that's like 170f. Warmer is better, all things being equal, because you don't have to wait as long to get to a boil. In terms of extraction it doesn't seem to matter so much.
Over 78c you start extracting tannins which give astringent flavours, which you want to avoid.

 

[petemoss]

Great information. Thanks guys. Also, I may have to try a batch sparge brew pretty soon to see if it compliments my current system better.

 

[passedpawn]

I have done lots of batch sparges with room-temp water. The change in efficiency was a couple of % - at that number, it could have been caused by lots of things.

I've also sparged with near-boiling water with no ill effect.

 

[kevin58]

Could your water cooler be used as your mash tun? That way you could heat your strike water in your kettle... mash with that water in the cooler leaving your kettle free to heat sparge water. I'm guessing the kettle you heat water in is also your boil kettle so you would need to transfer that sparge water to a bucket so that you could drain your first runnings into the kettle. (assuming a batch sparge process here btw)

 

[petemoss]

Sorry if I confused the situation with my description. I currently have one burner and a kettle for it. I use this for water heating and for the boil. I also have a 10 gallon cooler that I use for a MLT. So when the mash is almost over I will heat my sparge water in the kettle and then transfer it to a separate 5 gallon water cooler. So at this point I have an empty boil kettle, full MLT, and 5 gallon cooler of sparge water. I can't really drain the MLT into the boil kettle as I would then have to lift a 30 lb kettle plus wort weight back up onto my stand. So instead I drain into two alternating buckets and pour their contents into the boil kettle. While this is ongoing I am also manually fly sparging by taking a pitcher of water at a time from the 5 gallon cooler and sprinkling it over the grains in the MLT.