Technical Questions
- Thread starter Edindie
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I did a brew this weekend with a friend whos been brewing for years. His method involves mashing (biab style) in about 12 litres of water before sparging and running the kettle off into a FV until the runoff is clear. The sparge adds about 6 litres to the brew which resulted in about 15l to boil (the grain taking up the rest). After the boil he then cools the brew with an immersion chiller and by adding cold water until the brew is up to the 23l batch size (so its mostly cooled by the cold water).
He only brews for him and his wife and this method works fine for him. He is not that interested in the science, however I am. So, a few questions about the pros and cons of this way of brewing:
He only brews for him and his wife and this method works fine for him. He is not that interested in the science, however I am. So, a few questions about the pros and cons of this way of brewing:
- Can you over sparge and what are the implications of this?
- Is it better to mash with the full volume of water if you can? Ive heard that it can be hard to extract all the sugars if you mash in too much liquor.
- Cooling by adding cold water seems like a very quick way of chilling but why is this not normal practice?
- If you end up with too much liquor in the boil from over sparging, is there any problem with boiling it off before you add you first batch of hops?
- Is it better to mash with the full volume of water if you can? Ive heard that it can be hard to extract all the sugars if you mash in too much liquor.
- Cooling by adding cold water seems like a very quick way of chilling but why is this not normal practice?
- If you end up with too much liquor in the boil from over sparging, is there any problem with boiling it off before you add you first batch of hops?
Springer
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Don't you know Ed, all the talent has gone to new pastures, that's where you will get answers I would think ? Also I believe all the characters work over there, so I am told :thumb:
S
Springer
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Sorry I forget to mention that unfortunately I am not clever enough to answer your questions or I would have. :thumb:
abeyptfc
Landlord.
your going to need a big mashtun if you want to mash with 25L of water, plus all you grains, then there will still be sugars in the grains that you need to sparge out, leaving you with even more wort to boil.
if you end up with too much then you can always boil off. When I brewed my extract beers I only had a 20L boiler, so you could safely put 16/17 litres in it to prevent a boil off, then by the time your boil is finished your maybe down to 13/14L. that will be quite concentrated obviously so I topped mine up with water to 20 odd litres to chill and to dilute it and never had a problem. hope this helps.
abeyptfc
Landlord.
boil over not boil off.
Shame the edit button had gone missing :lol:
over sparking creates tannins etc
i stop at 1.010 or even higher sometimes
some people stop lower
don't be tempted to over sparge to get more wort into your boiler
If the runnings get really thin, it's time to stop sparging
i stop at 1.010 or even higher sometimes
some people stop lower
don't be tempted to over sparge to get more wort into your boiler
If the runnings get really thin, it's time to stop sparging
I only do one sparge with about 8 litres of water, I measured the og of it on my last brew and it was 1024, I gave the bag a gentle squeeze and then added it to the boil, about 7 litres all in.
Ps where has everybody gone, I've not seen a posting as to which website they've moved to but I thought it was quieter on here.
Ps where has everybody gone, I've not seen a posting as to which website they've moved to but I thought it was quieter on here.
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