Do most people batch or fly sparge?

[Horden Hillbilly]

Spinny sparging arm for me, before that I used a shower head connected to the fv filled with the sparge water, I also placed a fine stainless steel mesh over the grains to break the flow of the water.

If my spinny breaks I may have to go back to this!

[subsub]

Spinny sparging arm for me, before that I used a shower head connected to the fv filled with the sparge water, I also placed a fine stainless steel mesh over the grains to break the flow of the water.

If my spinny breaks I may have to go back to this!

I'm already back to this. Mine got trashed two weeks ago

[Garth]

I use a spinny sparger and I was thinking that too HH,

I can just imagine a load of us on brewday taking the precious 'Ye Olde Arme of Sparger' from a feather-lined fireproof safety deposit box with white gloves etc

Surely someone is going to start importing these things again, or better still someone start manufacturing them over here?

[KevG]

In line with many people I too use a Phil's spinny sparger and regard it as a good investment. Aren't there advantages in keeping the grain bed undisturbed, and reducing the amount of particulates washed out into the boiler ?

Kev

[tim]

Fly sparge with phils spinny.
Wouldn't really know how to go about batch sparging (in terms of techniques Etc) but would give it a go if people things there's an advantage
T

[louthepoo]

i'd love to use the spinny thing but i haven't got one and chances are i'm not going to be able to get one so i'm going to batch sparge from now on. Have used watering can!

[RabMaxwell]

[quote="mysterio"]Fly sparging with phils spinny sparger and slightly acidified sparge water. It only takes a few drops of phosphoric in 6 gallons of sparge water to get down to a ph of about 5. Although it's not necessary it means I can get away with oversparging, which is a concern with lower gravity beers.

Hello Mysterio i was looking at the bit you put about adding phosphoric to your sparge.What Kettle Ph do you get i am asking as i think you might get the same water supply as me. Do you get lock Braden water i know the craig mill brewery does. I get too low a mash ph when doing darker beers. I now add my darker grains 10 min before the sparge to prevent lowering the Ph below 5.2 at the beginning of the mash. Have you ever managed to get a water profile from scottish water. I have tried many times but found them very unhelpful

[Boo Boo]

I batch sparge. I don't feel the slight increase in efficiency that you are supposed to get outweighs the time I save. Grain is cheap enough that I can throw in an extra 1/2 Lb to cover the efficiency drop if there is one. I typically get 80 to 85% efficiency on my system.

[onlooker]

I fly sparge , I used to use a watering can, which works a treat, now I have a plastic box that sits above the mash tun which I have drilled multiple tiny holes in. I just fill it with sparge water and let it go. Im not sure about all this talk of long 45 min fly sparges , mine take 10mins. I have heard people push the idea that you should make your fly sparge long and slow, cant see the benefit myself when 10min seems to do the job.

I often think fly sparging is made to sound so much scaryer than it is. I also line my false bottom in stocking material, which I can grab at each end and manipulate in the uncommon occurance of a stuck mash.

[steve_flack]

for a 23L brew length and 4kg grain bill in a mash tun with 1L dead space, the first batch requires (11.5 L + 4L+1L)=16.5L for the second batch as the grains are now saturated 12.5L are required (or to allow for any errors in calculations and unexplained losses, subtract the volume collected in the first batch from the final required volume and add this volume to the mash tun).



is that right

Pretty much yes but you've forgotton the mash water so the formula for the first batch sparge is

(total volume required/2)+weight of grains+deadspace-mash water volume

All in kg or Litres

I wouldn't do the mash in the full volume as it'd be too dilute.

[Andy]

Yes.

All the Ken Schwartz comedy maths comes to the conclusion that it's "best" to have two equal batches. So for the first batch you need to top up the (normal liquor/grist ratio'd) mash with some sparge liquor before commencing the first runoff (stir in well and then leave to settle for 10 mins).

The quantity of liquor to add to the mash is therefore:-

wort volume required in kettle / 2 - mash liquor volume + grain weight (for absorbtion assuming 1L/kg) + deadspace volume.

For the second batch the quantity to add is:-

wort volume required in kettle / 2 (as the grains are saturated and the deadspace is full).

[steve_flack]

Presumably this way you don't get 2 identical run offs ? If I understand correctly though this doesnt really matter that much.

The aim is to get two run offs of the same size. The way I do it is mash as normal then add enough water so that your run off would be half the required total volume. Strir. Drain. refill with half the required volume. Stir etc. Drain.

[eskimobob]

Blimey
Glad I have my spiny sparger - all this maths is a bit rough on a Sunday afternoon...

[Andy]

Blimey
Glad I have my spiny sparger - all this maths is a bit rough on a Sunday afternoon...

Brace yourselves!

And open -> http://home.elp.rr.com/brewbeer/files/nbsparge.html

Always cracks me up does that page

[prodigal2]

Blimey
Glad I have my spiny sparger - all this maths is a bit rough on a Sunday afternoon...

Brace yourselves!

And open -> http://home.elp.rr.com/brewbeer/files/nbsparge.html

Always cracks me up does that page

Cheers Andy my head is about ready to explode
Oh well if I have a bad go of insomnia again I have a page to goto.
I thought I had got my head around sparging, well enough to start AG. And now reading this thread I'm more confused than when I started.

I thought all you had to do was extract as much of the starch based sugars as possible. I didnt realise you needed a masters in calculus too.