Lurks
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 15/11/11
- Messages
- 133
- Reaction score
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As I discussed in the AG forum (erroneously), I had a crack at using the ghetto lauter bucket-in-bucket system in a brew. Overall it worked but only after I literally poured my sparge water into it - up to that point it was completely stuck.
John Palmer's How to Brew discusses this situation. His point is that letting the grain bed settle, by draining off all the first runnings, will result in exactly the stuck sparge scenario I experienced. So how to solve it?
One of the problems I see is that there's a lot of dead space in the bottom bucket. Pouring the grains in is really going to drain out a few litres even with the tap closed. I was thinking that adding a couple of litres of sparge water immediately with the tap closed might keep it nice and wet.
Then maybe just cracking the tap slightly to recirculate, keeping a water layer on top of the grains (which is slightly counter-intuitive) might keep it all peachy. Palmer specifically talks about keeping water on top of the grains. What I saw on the YouTube Babbs system wars video was essentially draining the grains and using a defuser (theirs was a drilled plastic lid) to evenly distribute recirc/sparge water over the grain bed. Keeping some water on top of the grains would, makes that slightly redundant. Anything floaty to stop from pouring right into the grain bed should be okay.
My first go ended up sparging very quickly after it became unstuck with all the water sat on top, resulting in a low-ish efficiency of 75%. I think a slightly opened tap with a slow addition of sparge water might get the whole sparge thing working like it's supposed to. Well I hope so anyway.
John Palmer's How to Brew discusses this situation. His point is that letting the grain bed settle, by draining off all the first runnings, will result in exactly the stuck sparge scenario I experienced. So how to solve it?
One of the problems I see is that there's a lot of dead space in the bottom bucket. Pouring the grains in is really going to drain out a few litres even with the tap closed. I was thinking that adding a couple of litres of sparge water immediately with the tap closed might keep it nice and wet.
Then maybe just cracking the tap slightly to recirculate, keeping a water layer on top of the grains (which is slightly counter-intuitive) might keep it all peachy. Palmer specifically talks about keeping water on top of the grains. What I saw on the YouTube Babbs system wars video was essentially draining the grains and using a defuser (theirs was a drilled plastic lid) to evenly distribute recirc/sparge water over the grain bed. Keeping some water on top of the grains would, makes that slightly redundant. Anything floaty to stop from pouring right into the grain bed should be okay.
My first go ended up sparging very quickly after it became unstuck with all the water sat on top, resulting in a low-ish efficiency of 75%. I think a slightly opened tap with a slow addition of sparge water might get the whole sparge thing working like it's supposed to. Well I hope so anyway.