On the hunt for a sparge arm
On the hunt for a sparge arm
Hi guys,
Am after a sparge arm for a square coolbox being converted into a mash tun - any tips as to where I can find a decent priced one?
Cheers,
David
Am after a sparge arm for a square coolbox being converted into a mash tun - any tips as to where I can find a decent priced one?
Cheers,
David
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
Ive got the Hop and Grape sparge arm http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/catalog/de ... OTH2156036 and it does me well, though a few points...
at £35 i dont know if it is what you would call a good price
and i run it from a pump, if you were going to gravity feed the water i dont know how much pressure is required to make it spin. with the pump though it doent take much water coming through to make it spin.
i chose this sparge arm through a lack of options really, there isnt much else available, and i dont know how much luck people have had in the past trying to make their own. i think the majority of folk would suggest sparging in a different way, but i like the sparge arm and would ultimately recommend it.
this is mine in action
at £35 i dont know if it is what you would call a good price
and i run it from a pump, if you were going to gravity feed the water i dont know how much pressure is required to make it spin. with the pump though it doent take much water coming through to make it spin.
i chose this sparge arm through a lack of options really, there isnt much else available, and i dont know how much luck people have had in the past trying to make their own. i think the majority of folk would suggest sparging in a different way, but i like the sparge arm and would ultimately recommend it.
this is mine in action
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
Looks exactly the kind of thing I'm after to be honest.
Price - well, after what I've spent getting the rest of the stuff sorted out, it's probably not a huge amount extra
I'll give h&g a shout and ask them about pressure as I'll be intending to gravity feed it - hopefully a pressure head of a couple of feet will be enough to make it twizzle!
David
Price - well, after what I've spent getting the rest of the stuff sorted out, it's probably not a huge amount extra
I'll give h&g a shout and ask them about pressure as I'll be intending to gravity feed it - hopefully a pressure head of a couple of feet will be enough to make it twizzle!
David
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
I think it is about 500ml above the arm to get it to spin, not sure though.Stoat on a rope wrote: if you were going to gravity feed the water i dont know how much pressure is required to make it spin.
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
thats pretty much why i didnt care about the price in the end, was a fraction of what i had spent all together.
that should be ok, you can see there isnt a huge amount of water coming from it there and it was spinning at a nice rate at hardly any pressure. i usually restrict the flow until it is just enough to spin the arm, generally about 1 revolution a second.
EDIT
forgot to say, it comes with the support frame shown there, and this is the same item at h&g but with proper pic and description
http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/catalog/de ... HA20225648
that should be ok, you can see there isnt a huge amount of water coming from it there and it was spinning at a nice rate at hardly any pressure. i usually restrict the flow until it is just enough to spin the arm, generally about 1 revolution a second.
if that is the case (and it wouldnt surprise me now i think about it), thats nothing really.Scotty Mc wrote:I think it is about 500ml above the arm to get it to spin, not sure though.
EDIT
forgot to say, it comes with the support frame shown there, and this is the same item at h&g but with proper pic and description
http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/catalog/de ... HA20225648
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Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
What kind of efficiency do you get out of this sparge arm? Above 80% ?
DCQ Ph.D
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author in
Handbook of Alcoholic Beverages: Technical, Analytical and Nutritional Aspects, 2 Volume Set, 1204 pages, edited by Alan J Buglass
**OUT NOW**
To find out more and buy online, go to
http://as.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle ... ption.html
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
Im thinking of going down this route soon too. Any comments on a spinning sparge arm being used in a rectangular box with regards to the water not reaching all the malt as say it would in a round one?
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
I'm no expert but i think you sparge just the right amount of flow so you get a thin even layer of water above your gains, surly this would cause a good extract of sugars
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
Thats exactly how you do it, the sparge arm really only serves to diffuse the flow of water so that it doesn't upset the grain bed.andysmok wrote:I'm no expert but i think you sparge just the right amount of flow so you get a thin even layer of water above your gains, surly this would cause a good extract of sugars
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
yup i set the flow so it just turns the arm and when ive got a nice layer of water on the grain bed (prob about 5-10mm) i set the run off to the same constant to keep the layer of water, as was said previously this means the sparge water is sucked through the grain bed evenly. it does need tweaking throughout though so you cant just leave it to do its own thing. sometimes i pause the sparge for a few minutes here and there so i can slow the run off for a bit as the whole process seems to take less time for me than is usually recommended.
as for efficiency mine have been 85% + so far, one was 95%!
as for efficiency mine have been 85% + so far, one was 95%!
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
If that's the case couldn't you just trickle the water down the side of container, so it spreads out a bit and doesn't disturb things?I'm no expert but i think you sparge just the right amount of flow so you get a thin even layer of water above your gains, surly this would cause a good extract of sugars
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
Nice one thanks. What about the issue of Vorlaufing, or pouring the first runnings back into the mash? TBH I was thinking of scrapping it anyway as it doesnt take long for my setup to run clear and Ill be removing alot of protein with Protofloc and also auxiliary finings once brewed anyway.
I just wondered if people who fly sparged did put the runnings back in or just let it all run out?
I just wondered if people who fly sparged did put the runnings back in or just let it all run out?
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
ive not recirculated my runnings before, ive wanted to but as you can see the problem is with the sparge arm (or certainly mine) is it runs directly from my boiler, so i do just let my runnings all run out and they soon go clear. ive not had any probs with cloudy beer and all i do is use gelatin finnings (though 1 more batch of that and im ditching it and im gonna use protafloc instead). so i wouldnt worry too much about it unless there is some other reason that you would filter out that protein that im so far unaware of?
Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm
Thanks. Thats what I thought, there is that little coming out of the MT in the first place I dont think its that detrimental....