sparging method?

[Oslobrew]

I am about to bottle my first partial mash so I'm working out my plans to do my first all grain. For the parital mash the grain quantity was pretty small so I had the grains in a grain bag and teabagged them in the sparge water. I'm guessing this will be increasingly tricky as the grain quantity increases but I also was wondering if there were any other negatives to teabaging. While doing it I was thinking I could be getting a lot more of the undesirable compounds like tannins and some husk along witht the sugars. So is there anything wrong with lifting the grains from the sparge water rather than trickling the water through the grains?

thanks for any comments.

 

[billl]

Lots of people do this. Search for BIAB - brew in a bag.

The limiting factor is that wet grains are HEAVY! You need to think through how you are going to move and drain a heavy bag of steaming hot grain.

 

[inhousebrew]

As already stated, many people do this. I only do BIAB small 2-3 batches I can do on the stovetop and I prefer to mashin one kettle, heat up a bit of sparge water in another and then dunk my bag of grains in and stir in that sparge water. Then obviously mixing the two together. I've turned out some decent beers doing this method and many people have.

 

[bobeer]

I've done about 4 biab brews and I sparge with a 2 cup pitcher and pour the hot water over my grain bag until the desired boil volume is met. I brew 2.5 gallon batches so for a moderate OG beer (1.050-1.060) I do this. My shoulders do get pretty tired from holding the bag while sparging but it's worth it in the final product IMO. Last brew I got pretty good efficiency with 6.45 lbs of grain I hit an OG of 1.070 (was shooting for 1.060) Did a long and low mash, probably a little too low/long, (149 for 75 min) to achieve this, then sparged up to 3.5 gallons for the boil. Check out brew tv and their "jake's got a brand new bag" episode for more on biab. Lots of info on here too about it.

The dunk method or the pour-over method will work. It just depends what works best for you with your current setup. Some don't sparge at all as you'll see in the brew tv episode. Good luck!

 

[inhousebrew]

I like the dunking because it is easier than pouring and less messy for my setup.