Sparging too fast?

[boganll]

I love first wort hopping

and the efficiency increase is enough to mean the difference between getting two batches out of one bag of base malt vs. picking up a new sack every brewday.

Good enough reasons for me to fly sparge instead of batch.

 

[max384]

LOL! Hope that goes well! I'm still waiting on that one myself. I think I'll be dead before that happens!

Back on topic, I fly sparge (gravity) and shoot for an hour whether it's a 5 or 10 gallon batch. I have had the unfortunate incident of grains getting under the false bottom in the MT and completely clogging, forcing a time-consuming process of sorta-batch-sparging 20 lbs of grains with strainers. This resulted in painfully low eff, but I just called the beer an "extra light", modified the false bottom in my MT so it wouldn't happen again, and moved on. Good times.

For those of you that recirc during mash, I assume that would cut down sparge time and help with efficiency. But do you do anything to keep grains from getting into your pump or do you just not worry about it? I really want to try this, and I have a pump I could use, but I'm just a little scared to try it.

If this ever happens again, connect a tube to your outlet drain (if you don't already have one attached), and blow air into it. I use an air compressor, since the hose is right next to where I brew, but I've also just blown on it with my mouth. Either way has eventually unstuck even the most stubborn stuck sparges. Sometimes you need to Vorlauf and re-Vorlauf to get the grains out, but it'll eventually clear.

 

[Lbm]

Yup. Tried the air. It was so bad it didn't work. It was completely packed when I took it all apart. I think somewhere in the process the false bottom got skewed and all the grains packed in there.

 

[max384]

Yup. Tried the air. It was so bad it didn't work. It was completely packed when I took it all apart. I think somewhere in the process the false bottom got skewed and all the grains packed in there.

Oh, yikes! I've never had one stuck that bad.

 

[kev211]

If this ever happens again, connect a tube to your outlet drain (if you don't already have one attached), and blow air into it. I use an air compressor, since the hose is right next to where I brew, but I've also just blown on it with my mouth. Either way has eventually unstuck even the most stubborn stuck sparges. Sometimes you need to Vorlauf and re-Vorlauf to get the grains out, but it'll eventually clear.

Ya, my last brew got stuck bad enough to where I had to hook up to the compressor. It was completely my fault though. I was about halfway through the mash when I realized I had forgotten to attach my bazooka screen. So about 10 layers of latex gloves and dang near burning myself later, got it attached and then the grains that were in it already stuck my vorlauf. Air compressors are awesome. Best piece of equipment in my garage

 

[motobrewer]

For those of you that recirc during mash, I assume that would cut down sparge time and help with efficiency. But do you do anything to keep grains from getting into your pump or do you just not worry about it? I really want to try this, and I have a pump I could use, but I'm just a little scared to try it.

I recirc while doughing in, then recirc 10 minutes before mashing out.

Some grain gets to the pump but eventually the filter bed sets and it comes clear. I don't worry about it

 

[cantrell00]

man, I feel like an ********. No wonder it didnt make sense to me, now it does :smack:

:fro:

It's good man...

 

[jbaysurfer]

I'd like to dispute that fly sparging takes so much longer than batch. There are a couple things you can do when fly sparging to even the playing field:

1) I mash at 1.5qts/lb typically. This means that there's a good 1-2 gallons of wort above my grain bed. When I begin sparging, I run this out at a pretty fast clip - maybe not full bore but run it out in five minutes.

2) Once the liquid level reaches the grain bed, slow the flow down to about 1qt/minute and then begin adding sparge water. You'll have already collected about 1/3 of your wort at this point.

3) The other thing that nobody takes into account when they compare fly and batch sparging is the amount of time it takes to get to boil. Sure, with batch sparging you can get the wort out of the mash tun quickly, but now you have the entire mass to bring from 150 to boil. How long does this take? When I fly sparge I heat as I go, so when the last few drops come out of the kettle I'm ready to boil.

With both methods running optimally I do think batch is faster, but it's only by about 15 minutes.

I think this is a great and informative post, so please take this one minor dissenting comment with a grain of salt: Batch sparging requires draining the mash tun completely of the wort then filling with your first "batch" of sparge water. I usually have this first runnings nearly at a boil by the time I drain the sparge water on my "batch". So I don't think the heating time is all that different in the two disciplines.

Sidenote: I actually do two batches when I batch sparge, and I have a direct fired mash tun with a pump to recirculate the wort. I oversimplified above, but I basically do a mash out while recirculating, than empty the Mash Tun, put my first batch in, recirc, empty and then the second batch, recirc, empty.

By the time I put that 2nd batch of wort into the boil kettle, 2/3rds to 3/4 of my total boil volume is at 200F

That's all academic though, thanks for the post. Was very thorough.

 

[Gerry_P]

I didn't see anyone mention it (maybe I didn't look hard enough) but have you tried the "hybrid" fly-sparge?

Cheers

This is funny. My last batch my technique was almost identical to this, pretty much by accident. My efficiency was 73%, which was much better than previous AG attempts. I thought I invented something, then yesterday I coincidentally I found this thread from 2008. Then, even more coincidentally, it's mentioned in another thread today. Whoa....

 

[motobrewer]

So, I did a long, slow sparge yesterday on a bock. 1 hour to collect 8.1 gallons (2 hour boil). My final runnings - 6P!

The funniest part was my mash efficiency was 81%. So I really don't know what to do about it.

What do your sparge arms look like?

 

[motobrewer]

Brewed an ESB sunday. 88% MO, 12% medium crystal.

Did a proper mashout and a 45 minute sparge. 80% brewhouse efficiency. pretty happy with that.