On the hunt for a sparge arm

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davidmpye

On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by davidmpye » Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:57 pm

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

Stoat on a rope

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by Stoat on a rope » Tue Feb 09, 2010 8:42 pm

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

Image

davidmpye

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by davidmpye » Tue Feb 09, 2010 8:46 pm

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 :shock:

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

Scotty

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by Scotty » Tue Feb 09, 2010 8:48 pm

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.
I think it is about 500ml above the arm to get it to spin, not sure though.

Stoat on a rope

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by Stoat on a rope » Tue Feb 09, 2010 8:53 pm

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.
Scotty Mc wrote:I think it is about 500ml above the arm to get it to spin, not sure though.
if that is the case (and it wouldnt surprise me now i think about it), thats nothing really.

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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dcq1974
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Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by dcq1974 » Wed Feb 10, 2010 12:03 am

What kind of efficiency do you get out of this sparge arm? Above 80% ?
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crookedeyeboy

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by crookedeyeboy » Wed Feb 10, 2010 9:55 am

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?

andysmok

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by andysmok » Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:02 pm

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

delboy

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by delboy » Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:06 pm

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
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.

Stoat on a rope

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by Stoat on a rope » Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:59 pm

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%!

albacore

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by albacore » Wed Feb 10, 2010 4:43 pm

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
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?

crookedeyeboy

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by crookedeyeboy » Wed Feb 10, 2010 4:46 pm

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?

Stoat on a rope

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by Stoat on a rope » Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:33 pm

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?

crookedeyeboy

Re: On the hunt for a sparge arm

Post by crookedeyeboy » Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:44 pm

Thanks. Thats what I thought, there is that little coming out of the MT in the first place I dont think its that detrimental....

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