Sparging @ 180F?

[SanPancho]

I too second the dunk sparge for biab. Pouring water on top of mash to drain out doesnt seem to work as well. I drain to kettle and start heating, drop another gallon onto mash to loosen sugars, stir, wait 15min, then drain to kettle. Easy 80% efficiency.

 

[MT2sum]

I too second the dunk sparge for biab. Pouring water on top of mash to drain out doesnt seem to work as well. I drain to kettle and start heating, drop another gallon onto mash to loosen sugars, stir, wait 15min, then drain to kettle. Easy 80% efficiency.

That's been my experience, and why I was considering a dunk sparge. When I feed the spent grains to the chix, it seems like they are getting a lot of the sugars that i'd like to have in the wort! Thanks to you, z-bob and doug293cz, as well as other commenters, I'm going to try out the dunk sparge next time around (@ the 180F that the coffee urn puts out!).

As far as doug293cz's comment about dirty dishes I can agree somewhat, however, one thought I was having was that dunking would still leave a lot of those same sugars, so I was thinking that rinsing again with that same water would help - maybe instead, a double-dunk, with the second dunk having new water would be a good idea in that case, but then I'd have to boil for a couple of hours to get the right amount of end product.

I've been brewing 'MY WAY' for many years, so I'm kind of slow on trying out new ideas without getting opinions, weighing them in my mind, and then putting them into practice. I've been thinking about this dunking sparge for 3 or 4 years now, I just decided to bring it up during this thread. I guess I'm what they call a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to my brewing habits. Without the extra time/money to brew two batches side-by-side to be better able to measure the differences, I was having a problem trying to decide which would give me the best efficiency. Thanks to the comments here, I think dunking will be the best way for me to extract more sugars - at least for a batch or two for experimentation and for substantiation in my mind, (but allow some to escape to the chix), and still make a good beer (and I like the thought of 80% efficiency!).

I guess the chix are the winners in this kind of situation, (there's always going to be some sugars you just can't rinse out!) - the extra sugars are theirs!

 

[doug293cz]

To get the best efficiency from BIAB with a dunk sparge, you want to follow the following process:

1. Stir the grain well at end of mash to make sure the wort is homogeneous throughout
2. Raise the bag and let drain
3. Squeeze the bag like it owes you money
4. Place bag in vessel of water
5. Stir aggressively for about 5 minutes to homogenize the wort
6. Raise the bag and let drain
7. Squeeze the bag like it owes you money
8. Repeat steps 4 - 7 if you want a little extra efficiency

The following chart shows how different sparge approaches affect efficiency. All cases use the same total brewing water (strike + sparge) and have the same pre-boil volume. The solid lines represent what is typical for a traditional MLT (about 0.12 gal/lb grain absorption), and the broken lines represent what you can achieve with an aggressive squeeze (0.06 gal/lb absorption.) Adding a sparge step gives you 8 - 9 percentage points increase in lauter efficiency. Adding a second sparge can give you 2.5 - 3.5 percentage points better efficiency than a single sparge.

Brew on

 

[MT2sum]

3. Squeeze the bag like it owes you money
7. Squeeze the bag like it owes you money

Gave me a chuckle - Thanks for the post and the chart! Much appreciated!


@ San Pancho, z-bob, and doug 293cz - BTW, I don't know why most of my post above turned red, I even copied and pasted to Libre deleted it and re-did it, using black font - for some reason it still turned out red. I must have done something wrong .... Sorry all!

 

[Wolfbayte]

"@ San Pancho, z-bob, and doug 293cz - BTW, I don't know why most of my post above turned red, I even copied and pasted to Libre deleted it and re-did it, using black font - for some reason it still turned out red. I must have done something wrong .... Sorry all!"

They appear to be links to HBT profiles

 

[MT2sum]

They appear to be links to HBT profiles

Is that maybe because I hit the word 'quote' first? It mentions a multi-quote, but nothing shows up so then I remember to highlight and click on reply, which gives me the quote. I'll get it one of these days - thanks!