I have serious doubts with sparging. Lets say i want to make 5 gallons of a 1.052 ale. thats like 10 pounds of grain,.so I preheat 1.25 qts of water per pound (thats like 3 gallons). That amount of water doesnt cover the whole grain though...(dont know how sugars convert there). So I add it all in the tun and wait one hour, (the grains has sucked a lot of water so it isnt much left) after that I add double the quantity of water in the tun as sparge (3 more gallons) but what if the pre-boil gravity is lower than my desired one? what do I do? can I raise it some how? please help me
Sparging... difficult
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drkaeppel
Well-Known Member
First of all, your pre-boil gravity will always be lower than your post-boil gravity due to evaporation that will occur during the 60+ min boil.
Sounds like you've pretty much got the mashing/sparging process correct. Allow your initial mash to sit for 60 mins and then drain. If you are batch sparging: refill with sparge water, stir, vorlauf again, then drain.
I usually add an extra pound of base malt to my recipes just in case I end up with low efficiency, then top up as needed at the end. Some brewers may also keep DME on hand in case OG ends up low.
Cheers
Sounds like you've pretty much got the mashing/sparging process correct. Allow your initial mash to sit for 60 mins and then drain. If you are batch sparging: refill with sparge water, stir, vorlauf again, then drain.
I usually add an extra pound of base malt to my recipes just in case I end up with low efficiency, then top up as needed at the end. Some brewers may also keep DME on hand in case OG ends up low.
Cheers
Toecutter
Well-Known Member
The grain wont really absorb that much water. What type of sparge are you doing ? I brew 10 gallon batches and fly sparge, and almost all my brews are about 1.052. For 5 gallons I would use about 11 pounds of grain. Strike with about 4 gallons of water. then sparge with about 3 gallons. you will probably lose less than a gallon of water in the grain, and lose less than a gallon in the boil. If all goes well you shoild hit around 1.052
jvend said:
You can mash at 1.5qts/lb as well but also be sure you are stirring well as you dough in to be sure the mash is well
Mixed.
If your pre-boil gravity is lower than desired then you can add DME or boil longer to hit your desired post boil OG
Grain will absorb approximately .12g/lb over a 60 minute mash. Once you collect your first runnings then sparge with the proper amount of water to hit your desired pre-boil volume. There is no longer an absorption factor as the grain is already saturated at this point.
JuanMoore
Getting the banned back together
1.25 qts per lb is more than enough to completely submerge the grain. I've mashed a lot of higher gravity beers at 1 qt/lb, and even that covers all of the grain. What makes you think otherwise? To give you a frame of reference, many people here store their grains in 5 gal buckets, and it's well known that a 50# sack of grain just barely fits in 2 buckets. So if 25# fills a 5 gal bucket, 10# would fill 2 gal, which you're covering with over 3 gal of water.
How much water the grain absorbs during the mash will vary some depending on the crush, moisture content of the grain, etc, but will usually be close to 0.10-0.12 gal/lb. For your example this would equal a loss of about a gallon.
If you're going to batch sparge, you'd drain off the first runnings at the end of the mash, but before adding the sparge water. The easy way to calculate sparge volume for batch sparging is simply take the difference between your desired pre-boil volume and how much you collected from the first runnings. So in your example the first runnings would likely be just over 2 gal, and if your desired pre-boil volume is 6.5 gal, then you'd need just under 4.5 gal of sparge water. You can either add it all at once, stir, vorlauf, and then drain, or split it into 2 additions for a double batch sparge.
Until you've gone through the process a couple times you won't really know what the efficiency for your system is, so you probably won't hit your OG perfectly. Once you've brewed a couple AG batches, you should know your efficiency, and be able to adjust the grain bill to get really close to your numbers every time.
If you come in low, you can simply live with a lower gravity beer (maybe adjust the hopping a little), or boil for a while before starting the hop additions and have less beer at the correct gravity, or add a little DME/LME to hit the correct gravity. If you end up high, you can either live with a bigger beer, or water it down and have more beer at the correct gravity. For the first time doing AG, many people calculate the grain bill based on 65-70% efficiency.
How much water the grain absorbs during the mash will vary some depending on the crush, moisture content of the grain, etc, but will usually be close to 0.10-0.12 gal/lb. For your example this would equal a loss of about a gallon.
If you're going to batch sparge, you'd drain off the first runnings at the end of the mash, but before adding the sparge water. The easy way to calculate sparge volume for batch sparging is simply take the difference between your desired pre-boil volume and how much you collected from the first runnings. So in your example the first runnings would likely be just over 2 gal, and if your desired pre-boil volume is 6.5 gal, then you'd need just under 4.5 gal of sparge water. You can either add it all at once, stir, vorlauf, and then drain, or split it into 2 additions for a double batch sparge.
Until you've gone through the process a couple times you won't really know what the efficiency for your system is, so you probably won't hit your OG perfectly. Once you've brewed a couple AG batches, you should know your efficiency, and be able to adjust the grain bill to get really close to your numbers every time.
If you come in low, you can simply live with a lower gravity beer (maybe adjust the hopping a little), or boil for a while before starting the hop additions and have less beer at the correct gravity, or add a little DME/LME to hit the correct gravity. If you end up high, you can either live with a bigger beer, or water it down and have more beer at the correct gravity. For the first time doing AG, many people calculate the grain bill based on 65-70% efficiency.
JuanMoore
Getting the banned back together
After you've let the grains soak for an hour (or however long your mash was), you drain off all of the liquid (if batch sparging). This liquid is called the first runnings. You then add more water to your grains, known as sparge water. After stirring and recirculating, this liquid (second runnings) is also drained and added to the first runnings. Once all of the sparges have been completed, and all of the runnings have been collected in the boil kettle, you start the boil.
Denny Conn has some great easy to follow instructions for batch sparging on his website here-
http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/
