During the all grain brewing session on Friday night, Brew Dude Mike gave some batch sparging tips that we captured on video. The tips are focused on how much sparge water is needed to hit our boil volume target. The volume of sparge water is calculated based on how much we expect to get out of our mash tun in our first runnings. Watch the video to learn more about what you need to keep in mind when batch sparging.
Although our mash was a little thin, our extraction was pretty high. I think when we checked the specific gravity on the first runnings, it was over 1.080. I think it was due to the fact that we had such a fine crush…which we talked about in other posts.
hopshead
You explained that you planned on 6.5 gallons pre-boil volume and that you would evaporate approximately 1 gallon of wort during the boil leaving 5.5 gallons “in the fermenter.” My question is are you transferring all the contents of the kettle to fermenter (i.e. hot break, cold break, and hops)? If so, how do you think this impacts the beer, better, worse, or neutral. I use a batch sparge in my all grain brewing and I have adapted my process to have about 9.5 gallons pre-boil, boil for 90 min. with an evaporation rate of 1.85 gallons an hour (I know that is bit high), leaving 6.5 gallons at knock out. Then I plan to transfer 5.5 gallons to the fermenter with 1 gallon of waste (hops and break). Let me know what you think.
Mike
For most ales and short fermentation periods (where the beer is racked off the trub and cake in a couple weeks) I don’t think it matters all that much. I do try to reduce the carry over form kettle to fermentor. Most of my recipes are planned to end at 6-6.5 gallons volume and I leave a gallon behind in the kettle.
But for Johns first session we tried to simply maximize his return due to the diffilculty we had with the sparge. Ultimately we left about half a gallon of hop debris in the kettle.
Normally though I prefer to get some seperation of kettle break and hops from wort into the fermentor.
Cheers, BREW ON!
M
Steve
I filter my wort through a paint strainer bag as I transfer it to my fermenter. This has proven to work really well at filtering out stuff I don’t want in my fermenter. Plus I don’t have to leave any extra wort in the kettle.
Jason
I used the numbers that you gave and it seemed to work out right for me too.