Batch sparge v fly sparge

[Earth Titan]

Which is most efficient?

Been brewing for a round six months now and fly sparging so far. Can never seem to reach the predicted OG so looking to see where I can improve. I feel I'm not getting an efficient mash so could it be the sparge which is causing the reduced efficiency?

Should I move to batch sparging and if so, what should the process be?

[mickoh]

Hi ET

I too have been into AG for about 6 months and have only ever done anything but batch sparge

The whole thing just seems so much easier (calculating volumes etc is odd at first but it soon starts to make sense) and I from a practical point of view it just seems a more reliable way of getting the rest of the sugars etc of the grain than fly sparging

I have only ever come under on one occasion and that was by two points and was actually because of miscalculation rather than technique

One word of advice I would give though is to get/make a separate HLT - I was trying to batch with just a single boiler to heat sparge water and wort and it is a bit of a faf using FVs to hold wort in while you have done sparging. I made and used a dedicated HLT this weekend and it made the whole thing a breeze

Mick

[Scooby]

In theory continuous sparging is more efficient.

Do you check you mash Ph? If it's outside the 5.0 - 5.5 range it can affect efficiency.

Continuous sparging requires a fair amount of skill to get the correct bed temp, balance of inflow/outflow while maintaining the level in the tun to prevent channeling.

Batch sparging may not be the answer to your inefficiency but if you want to try it there is a calculator if you click 'hint and tips'.

You basically mash, top up and drain. Top up again and drain. The volumes being such that both batches are equal and the total of them the correct pre boil vol.

[confused]

Scooby's point about mash pH is probably the most important, but the rate at which you fly sparge will have a big impact too. I moved from 5g to 8g batches about twelve months ago and was finding my sparge taking too long. So of course I tried to increase the rate of flow and my efficiency fell from mid 80s to low 70s.

Keeping the grainbed covered is also important, I used to try juggling the inflow and outflow rates to maintain enough liquor in the mash tun to just keep the grainbed covered, but have recently started to cheat and now use a u bend in the outflow pipe to control water level in the tun. I can then limit the rate of sparge by controlling the rate of flow to the sparge arm.

Throughout the sparge I keep the HLT at or close to 80c by switching on and off, but plan to add an electronic control to do the job automatically.

Typically I get around 83 - 84%, though my last brew was 88% which I put down to a finer crush, as I also had problems keeping the sparge running at times.

[Barley Water]

Just a couple of comments about mashing efficiency and sparging. First of all, in my humble opinion, the crush you get on your grain makes a gigantic difference (assuming everything else stays the same). If you have your homebrew shop crush the grain for you then you have no way to control how well or poorly it was done (or even if there was any consistency between ingredient purchases). Having said that though, efficency is not any where near as important as consistency unless you are in the hobby solely to save money. I am personally on a mission to produce the perfect pint (ain't done it yet though) so my main interest is to hit my gravity projections.

I agree with the previous poster in that fly sparging is more efficient than batch sparging but again, your crush trumps that difference. I also agree that efficiency will suffer as ph rises during the sparge but here also is, in my opinion, one of the benefits of batch sparging. During fly sparging, the ph of the grains is going to rise with will cause efficency to decrease. As this happens, the risk increases that you will start extracting tannins from the husks of the grain (and this problem will be exacerbated by allowing the sparge water to get too warm). As noted by a previous poster, fly sparging is also more difficult because one must balance the sparge water entering the mash tun/sparge vessel and the sweet wort entering the boiler. Finally, batch sparging can take a little less time since you just run the wort through as quickly as you can drain it from the mash tun/sparge vessel without getting a stuck mash.

Anyhow, I am a big user of that 5.2 stuff. It guarantees that my ph will be correct without having to measure or worry about it. What I do is add some when I dough in. Once I have converted, I run out the wort until all the liquid on the grain is in the copper. I then add a little more 5.2 powder and add enough hot water to get the proper volume of pre-boiled wort in my boiler. In that way, I can be assured that the ph will be optimal at all times since it does not change during the run-off (by the way, my water is moderately hard so it is naturally slightly basic to begin with). My efficiency is ok while at the same time, since the ph is correct, I don't get tannin extraction even if my water was a little hot going onto the grains. Even more important though, I get pretty consistent results each batch which is really my goal to begin with. I also know from experience that I will get a couple of extra gravity points per pound of grain if doing a decoction so I just factor that into my grist formulation.

At the end of the day though, trying to get maximum extraction %'s is probably going to result in less than optimal beer mostly because of tannin extraction. If you think about it, a few % points one way or the other is only worth a dollar or two spread over the whole batch. I would rather leave a couple of bucks in the mash tun rather than risk making astringent tasting beer.