Batch Sparge / Fly Sparge

Hi all.

I've been trying to get my mashing setup together recently and am still having problems with the mash.. Last time round, Even though I tried to pre-heat the cooler mash tun, it still mashed at a low temp and then I struggled with sparging. I attempted a batch sparge in the end for simplicity but it basically all went wrong and I wound up with a pre-boil gravity of something stupid like 1.025 (after taking temps into account).

I'm thinking for my next attempt to keep it simple but I have some questions...

I have a new 45 litre igloo cooler for mashing and am using my kettle to provide the water.

I'm going to pre-heat the cooler with 75 - 80 degree water. Question.. How long do I need to leave the water in pre-heating for?
Next up I need to fill the mash tun with water for approx 6kg of Grain. Beer smith reckons adding 17.8 litres of 75 degree water. I think this is what I followed last time and the mash temp seemed low. Are these numbers that everyone else follows roughly?
I'm not sure if I will do a 60 or 90 min mash yet but at the end, I think I'll batch sparge. Problem is, I've read several accounts on how to do this and all seem different and slightly confusing!

First off. Should I add boiling water to do a mash out? Will that help the temp of the grain bed rise for sparging?
If I do mashout, should I be adding the water and stirring the grain bed? Beer smith seems to suggest no mash out for a batch sparge.

Beer smith also reckons 2 step batch sparging. 1st with 5.6L of 75.6 degree water and then 2nd with 17.4 degrees of 75.6 degree water.
When batch sparging, do I drain the tun completely then add the 1st of the sparge water?
Is 75.6 degrees enough considering it may be hitting a grain bed that is sat at 67 degrees or less?
Should I stir it all up once I've added the sparge water?
How long do I leave it before draining again?
I'm assuming I need to Vorlauf each time I drain?

I do have a sparge arm but am thinking that will complicate more at present with trying to get levels and temps right!

Thanks in advance! I'm getting a bit sick of ruining my mash as everything else it all fine!

I'm a batch sparger myself. I get pretty good efficiencies with the amount of grain I use. My efficiencies seem to drop the more grain I use.

I pre heat for as long as it takes to boil my strike water. I estimate that the grain will take 8-10 degrees out of the strike water. You can adjust the mash temps with cold or boiling water to fetch it into the right area. I've done it loads of times.

Dave

I have also found Beersmith strike temperatures to be a bit low, even with some dodgy alterations (specific heats). I think there are plenty of ways to get heat loss that aren't accounted for. But the better news is mashing performs quite acceptably at 63-70C (different flavour outcomes perhaps, but that's something you can muck about with a few years down the line), so don't get too concerned. Heck, my last mash was about 65C, not 67, and I've got some pretty smart kit! Trouble with all this "Beersmith",etc. malarkey is that it presents far more stuff to get worried about, whereas a few years ago you stuck some dodgy thermometer in and said "close enough".

Forget about the "mash out" stuff until you are more confident: Some even suggest there's nothing to gain from "mash out".

As for batch/fly sparging. Batch sparging was something we used to do when sparging wasn't working because the mash was "stuck". There was no mention of "batch sparging" and "fly sparging", just "sparging"! And we would worry what harm we'd done by stirring the mash to fix a stuck mash!

Your biggest enemy to messing up a brew, is worrying about messing up the brew and piling on the un-necessary "corrections"!

Cheers Dave. Should I be draining the tun completely before and between sparges? Also, should I be stirring all of the Grain up when I do it and how long should I leave it before draining?

Cheers,
Rich

I do a double batch sparge in a cool box. I give it a good stir when I first add the sparge water, leave it for 10 - 15 minutes then another good stir. I also use a grain bag and don't worry about vorlauf. First sparge water is at about 85c. Grain bag prevents stuck sparges, much cleaner and easier to deal with and allows you to lift the grain and drain the last of the wort.

spook123_uk said:

Cheers Dave. Should I be draining the tun completely before and between sparges? Also, should I be stirring all of the Grain up when I do it and how long should I leave it before draining?

Cheers,
Rich

Click to expand...

I drain the mash off as much as I can. I then add the sparge water, give it a gentle stir then leave for 20 minutes. I give it another gentle stir before collecting a couple of run-offs to settle the grain bed, then drain off into the boiler.

A few points I've learned about mash temps:

Strike temp needs to be higher when the grain and /or mash tun is cold. Both are currently about 11℃ and I need strike temp of 75℃ to get a mash temp of 67℃.

At 75℃ it heats the mash tun then I add the grain. No need to replace the hot liquor.

The biggest improvement was when I invested £9 in an Ikea electronic cooking thermometer.

fwiw with my cold box tun i would simply use a couple of off the boil kitchen kettle fulls of water to prewarm the tun,

pour in one then reboil the kettle for the 2nd and then leave it to sit till the hlt liquor is ready to strike, then drain the tun add the grain and GO....

Spook, hi..did you measure the temperature in the mash after you'd added the stike water and mixed in the grain?? I've got a 33ltr coolbox mashtun and find 74-75 deg C stike water (18-20ltrs for 6kg grain bill) gets the mash to 67c assuming the grain and mash tun are at around 20deg c. Was your grain cold?? I bring my grain and tun into the kitchen the day before so the temperatures equilibrate. I ignore some of the spurious beersmith sparging comments and after fully draining the first runnings, add 15 ltrs sparge water at 75-80 and give it a very good stir...let settle for a few minutes then drain off completely. I normally get around 27 ltrs pre boil wort from this. If you are getting low gravity wort but the temperatures are OK (was the mash temp in 64-68 range?) then you could look to water....are you in an ultra hard water area which is impacting the ph?? As jeg3 did, I invested in a decent digital thermometer so take numerous measurements right at the start of the mash.

I was getting confused around grain temp as I got different readings depending on where I measured (after stirring). I didn't really measure it again until after 60 mins when it seemed to be at about 61 degrees. Grain was kept inside and so was around 20 when added.
Now, I do live in a hard water area (not ultra hard I don't think). It's Kidderminster, Worcestershire if anyone's in the know about water there. I'm a bit naive with ph. What should it be? I can test next time out.. Even better, can I test my water in advance to see how it would affect it?

As far as I know the water around Birmingham is quite hard, but Birmingham itself gets its water from the Elan Valley Reservoir system and its very soft. My water in Walsall is quite hard according to south staffs water

On the water front... This is the water quality for my area.. How's it look?

Analysis Typical value
Hardness Level Moderately Hard
Hardness Clark 13.87
Hardness French 19.81
Hardness German 11.09
Aluminium 5.77 μgAl/l
Chlorine 0.31 mg/l
Coliform bacteria 0
Colour 0.71 mg/l Pt/Co
Conductivity 391.00
E.coli bacteria 0 no./100ml
Fluoride 0.11 mgF/l
Iron 10.48 μgFe/l
Manganese 1.94 μgMn/l
Nitrate 33.44 mgNO3/l
Odour 0 Dilution Number
Pesticides 0 μg/l
pH 7.41 pH Value
Sodium 14.49 mgNa/l
Taste 0 Accepon Number

Thanks

"How does it look?".
Well it wont kill you! As with a lot of water reports, most is meaningless to brewing.
The various Hardness figures can all be expressed as one, and as brewers we'd like it as 80ppm Calcium (hardness is as if it contains 80ppm of Calcium ions, the figure doesn't tell you how much is due to Magnesium, etc.).
There's a bit of chlorine like everyone's mains water, but it doesn't tell you the figure may rise sharply in some knee jerk reaction to some isolated water situation (apt to do this unannounced on your brewday).
There's a bit of fluoride to moan about (on other non-brewing forums where they like griping about such things).
There's a pH value that might come in useful. But you can do it yourself on the day.
There's a Sodium value (15ppm) that might come in useful.
An alkalinity value (carbonate hardness or KH) is missing as usual and this figure would be useful (you can get cheap little titration kits off Ebay to do this yourself).
All-in-all there is nothing to suggest this water will make bad beer!

get yourself a salifert alkalinity test kit....about £5..easy to use then plug the alkalinity number into the old forum water treatment calculation to see if you should be stripping back the carbonates with CRS solution. Is your thermometer accurate???.

Got a new Therm & mash ph test paper on order. I reckon it's probably bugger all to do with my water and more to do with me getting the mash wrong on temps.
I'm going to try another mash next week and fingers crossed, I'll get it right!

Just wanted to check and make sure no one said that my water will ruin it no matter what I do!

Thanks,
Rich

yeah I think your probably right... 1.025 is such a big deviation vs target that it probably is temperature for the major part..