Grain bag sparging

[grubac]

Hey Guys

I'm going to introduce my brother to all-grain brewing over the Christmas holidays. In order to cut costs and make things a lot simpler for him, I thought I'd purchase a grain bag to do the mash. I don't, however, have any experience with a grain bag.

1. How is the sparge carried out? I heard you just the lift the bag so that it's resting above the wort and slowly sprinkle a few liters of water over it. Can anyone confirm this?

2. Is it still possible to get a 70-80% efficiency?

Let me know your thoughts.

Grubac

[EoinMag]

Hey Guys

I'm going to introduce my brother to all-grain brewing over the Christmas holidays. In order to cut costs and make things a lot simpler for him, I thought I'd purchase a grain bag to do the mash. I don't, however, have any experience with a grain bag.

1. How is the sparge carried out? I heard you just the lift the bag so that it's resting above the wort and slowly sprinkle a few liters of water over it. Can anyone confirm this?

2. Is it still possible to get a 70-80% efficiency?

Let me know your thoughts.

Grubac

Have a read of the brew in a bag section of the forum, the methods etc are outlined there.

[Bobba]

Hey Guys

I'm going to introduce my brother to all-grain brewing over the Christmas holidays. In order to cut costs and make things a lot simpler for him, I thought I'd purchase a grain bag to do the mash. I don't, however, have any experience with a grain bag.

1. How is the sparge carried out? I heard you just the lift the bag so that it's resting above the wort and slowly sprinkle a few liters of water over it. Can anyone confirm this?

2. Is it still possible to get a 70-80% efficiency?

Let me know your thoughts.

Grubac

(I'm assuming you're meaning a Ritchie style grain bag, rather than a net curtain for BIAB).
You can batch sparge fine with a grain bag no problem. At the end of the mash, simply top it up with 80-85C water, stir and wait 10 mins, then drain off the first wort using the tap of whatever container you're holding the bag in, then top the bag back up with 80-85C water, wait 10 mins, then drain it off. There's a calculator in the links at the top of the page for the volumes for batch sparging.
Works well in my experience, easily 70% - the only reason it was lower than my now false bottom was a large dead volume beneath the bag.

[Bribie]

What sort of boiler are you using? If you have invested in one of those popular bruheat or similar boilers, then you can actually get a 'sparge bag' designed to fit. Some of the suppliers will even chuck in a bag for free if you buy the boiler. Mash in the Bruheat and drain the runnings into a second vessel, Do a batch sparge in the bruheat with extra hot water then lift the bag up, drain and pour the first runnings back into the Bruheat as well, then crank it up to the boil.
It's a very old method, used to do it that way in my Bruheat boiler in Cardiff back when Pink Floyd were just getting a go on and I always got great efficiency. If you've got a bigger boiler (say over 25L) I'd look at Brew in a Bag (BIAB) that doesn't need sparging as such.

[dave-o]

There is no reason the mashing process should be any different with a grain bag. It just works like any other strainer.

I've always used one that fits inside my insulated mash tun. It's a pretty simple process although there is an extra stage than with true BIAB. My efficiency is usually about 75% or slightly more.