Do most people batch or fly sparge?

[onlooker]

Did you not say that your efficiency isn't the greatest? If you're running off and sparging that quickly I'd suggest you might not giving the sugars enough time to dissolve in the sparge liquor before it's through the bed and in the boiler, or you might be channeling.

That was in relation to a high gravity beer , my normal efficiancy is ok. There is also a anomaly in my set up where some of my last runnings seem to hold alot more sugars than my mid runnings.

My second run with the same high gravity recipe yealded much better results which resulted in me having to dilute to get down to a managable og of 1115!!

As for clarity my beers are often bright, occasionally polished without any recirculation and an addition of irish moss.

[mik82]

Hi Mik - a few of us tried a stainless braid as a manifold and got stuck mashes. Obviously you get on fine with yours - would be interesting to find out why others (myself included) had problems....

I think it was a braided toilet hose from homebase that I used. I ripped both connectors off, pulled the rubber tube out of the middle, twisted shut one end, jammed the other end into half of one of the connectors and then used ptfe tape to stick that into the back of the red plastic tap.

I have had a couple of mashes stick. However this has been at the end of a bag of pre-crushed grain (loads of little bits) and when using too many oats. However I've been able to quickly unstick the mash by gently blowing back through the tubing attached to the tap until I get a few air bubbles going through the braid. I don't allow too much air to be blasted through for obvious reasons.

The tun cost me less than £25 to build and is identical to the Hop and Grape one except for the braid manifold.