What do I do? (sparging)

[WaltG]

Ok,

Getting ready to brew tonight It's a Belgian strong so while at work I was running numbers. (5 gallon batch)

It's a 17lb grain bill. So at 1.25 qt/lb I'm looking at 21.25 quart mash. 10 quart mash out which gives me about 9 quarts fly sparge.

Now typically I run my sparge until it gets 1-2" above the grain bed then slow it to a trickle. at only 9 quarts of sparge water there's not much left to sparge with.

Should I skip mash out? Recirculate wort through my grain bed ? Less mash water?


This is the first big batch I've done so don't quite understand the numbers.

 

[stoneBriar]

I would recirculate, but maybe you can skip the mashout and just increase the temperature of your sparge water a bit if you feel you need to sparge. I'd keep in mind that plenty of good beers get made with no-sparge methods so maybe RDWHAHB.

You won't be sparging very much if you are sticking with your normal starting volume for regular OG beers. You could lower the grain used and sparge more, but you'd have to boil longer to evaporate enough water to hit your target OG. Or you could stick with your current plan and maybe consider sparging more and collecting the second runnings for a smaller beer (or pressure can the 2nd wort for starters, a nice pale beer like this makes excellent starter wort).

 

[doug293cz]

You could sparge more, and boil off the excess volume, or mash thicker to get more sparge water at the same volume. The second option is likely to lower your efficiency due to less conversion during the mash (thicker mashes convert more slowly.) You could also just add some DME or sugar to the boil to get your SG where you want it.

Recirculating the wort back thru the mash (in excess of a normal vorlauf) won't do anything to improve your efficiency. If you recirculated the wort after sparging, you would actually lower your efficiency.

Brew on

 

[bradleyhunt]

Anything worng with doing a full volume mash? Mash with 30.25 qts and your 10 qt mash out. 10 qt will have to be a slightly higher temp?