[quote=“ChuckVug”]Trying to get my head around the process. It seems to make sense for the most part, but not sure about the water volume.
With extract kits, I measure out my water, whatever size boil, and then top off to get to the 5 gallon batch after the boil. With all grain/ BIAB, i’m gathering that you have to add water volume for the grain soaking up, so when/if you sparge, are you doing that with “fresh” hot water (liquor, right), or are you sparging with the “runnings” from your wort? So if I follow some of the examples, you have the grain bag hanging above the brew kettle, do you sparge with liquor until you have your wort volume where you want it pre-boil, or just top off to the desired level pre-boil?
I guess that’s why the larger kettle is helpful. If you want a 6.5 gallon pre boil volume, with all the grains added in it’s probably tight in a smaller 30 quart kettle.
edit: just read through Denny’s page on sparging. seems to make more sense now.[/quote]
You had it right the first time. You sparge with fresh hot water (usually around 170*-180* if I’m not mistaken), not with the runnings from your original wort collection. There are two type of sparging methods, batch and fly.
From the all the things I’ve read, batch sparging seems to be the easiest. Once you have recirculated the wort from your original mash to settle the grain bed (after 60 min mash), you collect your first runnings from the mash into your boil kettle. Then you introduce your sparge water (liquor) and stir to rinse the remaining sugars still in the grain bed. You need to use enough sparge water to get to your boil volume. Then recirculate again and collect those runnings.
Fly sparging is where instead of stirring your sparge water into the grain bed, you trickle your sparge water from a hot liquor tank through a sparge arm. This gradually rinses the settled grain bed at the same time you are collecting the runnings. Again, sparging until you hit your target boil volume.
Not really sure, but I don’t think you want to top off your wort with just plain water to hit your target boil volume. I’m sure that would dilute your end product. You will need a boil kettle to handle the full volume. I brew 5 gallon batches and I just an 8 gallon MegaPot 1.2 for my brew kettle.
Hope that helped. I’m still pretty new to the process as well. :cheers: