This was my first time fly sparging and little disappointed I fell 14 pts low in my OG. First I have a 75 qt Coleman rectangle. cooler the screen or braid is Lhbs bought, it is 16 in long and just reaches the middle of the cooler, it took me about an hour to sparge to collect 12 1/2 gals for a 10 gal batch. When I was removing the spent grains I noticed a good bit of sweet wort half way through the grain bed. I expected to see none to almost clear water. Should I have a longer hose braid to cover the entire cooler? I did tilt the mash tun until the runnings stopped. Recipie called for 158 mash in temp then 168 sparge temp should the water been a bit hotter to make the wort more soluble. Just trying to figure out why my OG was so low could be one of these equipment adjustments. Thanks!!
What did you use to sparge? Sounds like you had channeling which is a major crusher with fly sparging. Also you wouldn’t want to tilt the cooler as the sparge water is going to take the path of least resistance therefore not sparging grain furthest from the tilt, which would also promote channeling.
I have never used a braid as I have a false bottom so I can’t comment but I think with fly sparging you want to draw wort from all areas of your MT. You may want to consider making a manifold like in how to brew.
Actually I thought the sparge went well i used a plastic tray with many 1/16 holes drilled in it.the tray straddled the top of cooler so I matched the income to the output with a hose from the HLT I didn’t see any channeling I did slide the tray every so often from side to side thinking I was distributing the water, it was only near the end of collecting the wort I placed a book under one end
Why fly sparge? Your setup sounds ideal for batch sparging. I have not fly sparged in a long time but when I did I was using a false bottom and feeding water lightly from above/gently rinsing grains. I have since perfected my batch sparging technique so well I might even get better efficiency from it than fly sparging…
When you say the wort was half way through the grain bed was it evenly distributed across the entire grain bed?
Yea pretty much. i was wondering if hotter water temp could have washed it through better?
I wonder if your braid was floating and the wort was below that. Like I said I’ve never dealt with a braid.
No the braid is pretty ridged it was in the same location when i was scooping out the grains
From my experience and what I recall reading, others say sparge temps are not overly critical. There is probably a fluid dynamics science explanation, but I think braid is mostly associated with batch sparging and false bottoms in fly sparging.
I agree 100% with zwiller regarding batch sparging. I haven’t fly sparged in almost four years. It’s not woth the effort and too many variables can go wrong, i.e., temp gets too hot, over sparge, time spent sparging ect.
I have noticed that I can replicate batches with ease by batch sparging.
I fly sparge all the time with my braid set ups. No issues whatsoever and I get 75-90% brewhouse efficiency. The key for me is to keep an inch or two of water above the grain bed and that’s it. Tip the cooler near the last few gallons to get all the good stuff out.
[quote=“MullerBrau”]I fly sparge all the time with my braid set ups. No issues whatsoever and I get 75-90% brewhouse efficiency. The key for me is to keep an inch or two of water above the grain bed and that’s it. Tip the cooler near the last few gallons to get all the good stuff out.
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+1 keeping the water above the grain bed should insure no channeling.
Your cooler is set up for batch sparging, so you’re getting channeling when you fly sparge. why not just try a batch sparge before you go to the effort of reworking your cooler?
Greg, the difference is that your braid is set up for fly sparging and his is not. The easiest thing for him to do right now is batch sparge and see what happens.
