I want to brew a Mild for march madness, but I’ve got a question. I have a wide diameter brew kettle and tend to boil off about 1.25 gallons an hour. My normal BV for a 6 gallon batch is around 7 gallons. But is running 7.5 gallons of water through 9 pounds of grain going to amount to over sparging and cause flavor issues?
I should mention that I batch sparge.
Any help is appreciated.
I don’t understand. This should be dependant on your grain bill and system. Therefore, it should be negligible.
What ratio are you mashing at?
1.3-1.4 qt/lb. So, about 2.8 gallons in the mash, but then I’ve got another 4.5-5 gallons left to sparge with to get my 6.5-7 gallon boil volume.
Maybe I’m not understanding it, but I thought there’d be a finite amount of starch to sparge out of the grist. But, since I’m dealing with such a small amount of grain, running my normal amount of water through the grain would increase the chances that I’d oversparge. Running 7.5 gallons through 12-14 pounds of grain is one thing, but 8 pounds is a fairly large difference.
I appreciate the response and look forward to the next.
If you’re increasing water volume due to boil off or whatever, you should scale the grain bill up to keep your target OG the same.
Your not sparging with 7.5gal. You’ll be sparging with 4.5gal. However, I must confess I don’t batch sparge.
Also, if you could, post yor recipe.
If you’re worried about it, you could mash with your full volume and not bother sparging. But your efficiency will suffer, so you may need to increase your grain bill. I’d just correct your sparge water pH to 5.4 and not worry about it, though. Oversparging is a concern when your grain loses its buffering capacity and pH rises too high, causing tannin extraction. Adjust pH and you’ll be fine.
Oversparging is not much of an issue with batch sparging.
With fly sparging, there is suppose to be a risk of extracting too much tannins from the grain if you oversparge, which is due to the pH rising too high as the run off gets thinner. When you batch sparge, the wort is uniform in composition so it doesn’t drop off in gravity and rise in pH as much. That said, you should still add some lactic acid to the sparge water to ensure you stay in the safe zone. Brun’water calculates how much you need.
When I batch sparge a very low gravity beer, I’ll typically dough in with enough water to get the thickness I want, then add more water (essentially a mash out) just before lautering. That reduces the amount of water needed for the sparge considerably.
Now here is where the refractometer is a great tool! I do monitor my wort as I sparge, not letting it git below 1.007…. And I have rarely gotten that reading, even on a small brew. Sneezles61
