Continual Sparging

[lethaldog]

I was reading up on the John Palmer site and he says that a good way for maximum yield is continual sparging, this is mashing then when you get to the end of the mash you recirculate then while draining into the kettle, keep the tun level at about 1 inch above the grain bed continuosly adding your sparge water to maintain this level until complete..At least this was my interpretation

My question is have any of you done this and what was the difference in results compared to batch sparging?

Cheers
Leigh

[Ed]

Lethal, yeah that's what I do. I started with batch sparging and moved to fly/flood/continuous sparging. Found efficiency moved up quite a bit. Difficult to put an exact figure on it because I didn't stick with batch sparging long and efficiency moves higher as experience grows anyway. At a guess I'd say maybe 7 to 10% higher for fly sparging?

The idea of fly sparging is there's a continual front of water being added which will capture more of the sugars as it moves through the grain bed. With batch sparging, there will be residual sugars left in the grain simply because it's not being continually rinsed. There's no need to keep an exact measure above the grain bed when continuous sparging, I just aim to keep it flooded.

Continuous sparging is a little slower to do than batch sparging and will add maybe 20 or so minutes to the brew day. I didn't find any difference in the actual quality of the brews. Devout batch spargers argue it gives a better result, and of course fly spargers disagree

Have a little bit of my process in this link if you want a look
http://edsbrewery.blogspot.com/

If you have any more questions on it, just fire away.

Cheers, Ed

[lethaldog]

Cheers Ed i knew i could count on a response from you mate, i figuered that this was also known as fly sparging but wasnt sure, as far as the extra time goes, well this is not a major concern for me so long as i get it right but if the efficiency is that much better then the extra time has to be worth it hey?
P.S love the picks mate

[Ed]

I'm going to be batch sparging for doing double batches, and sticking to continuous sparging for singles Why? My large 54 litre esky for doing double batches is rectangular and because the grain bed won't be as deep as in the cylindrical, I doubt there would be much to be gained from fly sparging. A deeper bed allows for more effective rinsing. I'll just put up with the loss in efficiency and make up for it by throwing in a few dollars worth of grain extra.

Cheers, Ed

[lethaldog]

Hey well mr palmer suggests the same and at the price of grain, who cares if you have to use a little extra, i may even whack in a little more just in case my efficiency is not as high as hoped, whats the worst that could happen, you end up with a beer thats a little higher in alc%,
damn what a shame

[beerdrinker]

ive got a 40L (i think) round esky and i went to put the 25L of sparge water in and it almost overflowed with about 21 would i be better off with 2 rounds of sparging to get the correct vol? or just top up with water? cheers also there was 8 kilos of grain in there never doing a kit again

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Last time I brewed (two batches and I'm already talking like an expert!) I used a 'dunk sparge' where I drained the bag then poured about 8litres warm water through the grain and dunked it like a teabag in the bucket.

As Men of Science, we know that several smaller rinsings/sparges will remove more goodness than a single large sparge (gotta lurve the alliteration). I guess that is a supporting argument for continuous fly sparging. What I don't know is what the down-side is apart from more farnarkling about.

I don't think it is about money, but it seems an awful shame to throw away protobeer if you don't have to...

[Duane]

Wow, have been away for a while and look at all the guys getting
into mashing . Well done,you wont regret it.

Beerdrinker, just use two equal size sparges.

[BierMeister]

ive got a 40L (i think) round esky and i went to put the 25L of sparge water in and it almost overflowed with about 21 would i be better off with 2 rounds of sparging to get the correct vol? or just top up with water? cheers also there was 8 kilos of grain in there never doing a kit again

8 kilos of grain eh. Nice. Are you talking about mashing 8kilos in 25 L or are you batch sparging with 25L? If you are trying to mash with 25L, don't as it won't work as you found out. you run out of room and it affects the process. I normally go for around the 2-2.5L of water per kg of grain to mash and then fly sparge as per Palmer keeping the grain afloat.

Lethal,

I can only agree with Ed. The one inch thing is to make sure you are keeping the water level higher than the grain to keep it floating and from clogging up your manifold.