BIAB Sparge?

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buzzharvey22 said:
BIAB Sparge.

Do you do it? Nope, too lazy on a couple of counts - can't be bothered reworking my volumes and can't be bothered heating extra water.
How do you do it? It's as simple as adding hot water to a bucket and redunking your bag and draining again.
Reasons to sparge? You should get better efficiency with a slightly thicker mash and a sparge rinsing the last of the sugar from the grain.
Reasons not to sparge? Laziness. Pure and simple.

Thanks
Click to expand...
 
I have now done a good number of BIABs with sparging. This is what I do. I drain the grain bag with a gentle amount of squeezing, just to encourage the liquor out. I then get that bulk back on the heat. In the meantime I transfer the grain bag to an FV and open it up. I now add 6l of water at 75-80C. This I get by boiling a kettle of water and putting it in a 2l glas jug. I make this up to 2l with cold water. Don't need to check the temp. cos I've done it loads of times and know the temp. will be in the right area. I do this 3 times to get my 6l sparge. I give it a good stir the redrain the bag and add the liquor to the boil. It takes no extra time. I then sanitise the FV ready for after the boil.
The results of filling the time whilst waiting for the liquor to boil is around 10% improvement in efficiency. Don't mean to boast but my no dead space method gives me commercial brewery levels of efficiency. Higher than 3 vessel.
Most importantly my beer, after 28 AGs , is the best I've ever tasted. It's not better than it was without a sparge, though I have improved my recipes, especially the hopping, but I like to get the most out of my ingredients :thumb:
 
I do BIAB sparging and do it exactly as described by Duxuk. I tend to be a little more cavalier than Duxuk about the quantities of liquor used as my aim is to just bring the wart quantity back up to achieve my 23L final target at the correct SG for the brew.

Doesn't take long, I've rigged a pulley in the garage to facilitate the easy hoisting of the bag from the boiler.

DSC00074_zpsfb3a0a62.jpg
 
I too do BIAB sparge (after reading about Duxuk's method) and find that it does help my efficiency and also is a good way to ensure that I get the right amount into the boiler so I get my 23l into the FV. As stated, it doesn't add any time and you should get a bit more beer at the end of your brew. :cheers:
 
If you are doing full volume BIAB then there should be no reason to do a separate sparge, as all the water has 'seen' the grain. I think this has been discussed a lot at biabrewer.info. I don't sparge and get good efficiency.
 
Duxuk said:
Most importantly my beer, after 28 AGs , is the best I've ever tasted. It's not better than it was without a sparge, though I have improved my recipes, especially the hopping, but I like to get the most out of my ingredients :thumb:
Click to expand...

What is your hopping looking like now then, dux?
 
I've just started Biab and only have a 30 litre pot so I have to sparge to get 20 litres into the fv.
I put 18 litres of water into the pot with grain for the mash and lost 4 litres with the absorption from the grain, then sparged the grain with 8 litres of water at 80' which meant about 23 litres into the boil after a gentle squeeze on the bag.
20'litres post boil at slightly above the target og, so I was happy with that.
 
I sparge as I only have a standard FV boiler. Steps are:

Mash with 20L water
Prepare 10L water ready at end of mash at 70Cish
Pull bag and good squeeze to get as much liquid out as possible then into sparge water while first runnings are heating
Pull bag again with another squeeze then pour result liquid into boiler up to 23L mark as a safe limit
Top up boiler with sparge liquid during boil usually getting it all in by 45 minute mark

It seems people think squeezing the bag can cause issues with tannins etc. but I've never tasted any.
 

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