How precious is your time?
Am I the only one who thinks batch sparging is harder, or at least a lot more labour intensive??
I have a large enough kettle and mash tun to do a single fly sparge. My HLT is thermostatically controlled (ie it is an urn with a plug on it
). So I can have a fair degree of confidence in the consistency of the sparge temp.
From experience with my system I am pretty good at setting the inflow and outflow rates (more through trial and error than scrupulous clock watching
).
Mind you, I tend to be more concerned that the sparge level stays above the top of the grain bed than making sure inflow and outflow are exactly calibrated. There are lots of things to be anal about in brewing, but I have found it to be a very forgiving pastime also.
When sparge time comes I set the taps running and can pretty much go and do something more interesting for a while.
Most of the brewers I know batch sparge. They spend a
lot of time recirculating, sparging. Bringing sparge atter to temp, adding sparge water, mixing, recirculating, sparging. Bringing sparge water to temp, adding sparge water, mixing, recirculating, sparging. and so on, for however many sparges it takes.
And, they tell me it is a lot less less work and more time efficient than a fly sparge.
Being more time efficient, I may be prepared to agree with. But if I have devoted enough time to have an all grain brew day, an extra few minutes, maybe even a half hour or more, with my feet up reading a book about beer or brewing, is not going to kill me.
As for less work, I cannot see this argument for the life of me. You swap one process for multiple ones.
Mind you there is another reason I don't batch sparge. After hand cranking my grain in a porkert/corona mill, I am too knackered to contemplate all the labour intensive recirculation and mash stirring batch sparging entails
awrabest, stu
