Justin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 4/11/03
- Messages
- 1,517
- Reaction score
- 14
Greetings and salutations,
I have a question. I assume that most people are sparging with water around the 78oC mark (actual figure not important for this thread), but how hard are people striving to maintain this temperature at the grain bed. I understand that it should be 78oC water feeding onto the grain bed, but while brewing an English Pale ale on the weekend I noticed much to my distress that my sparge water was a lot closer to 50oC by the time it was hitting the grain bed (and my grain bed temp was also 50oC). Now in my system there is only possibly 30cm between HLT and grain bed (including tap and submerged sparging manifold) so it's not travelling a long distance but still the temperature drops considerably. The temp of my HLT was 78oC, but I'm now thinking that perhaps my HLT should be perhaps 85/90oC.
I don't cover my mash tun while sparging which may be a possible source for a great deal of the heat loss but I wouldn't have thought it would be that much. What are you other all grainers doing about this problem? Is this going to be affecting efficiency or the ratio of fermentable to non-fermentables in my wort, due to the fact I am not really achieving a mash out.
P.S. I know this is similar to the Sparge arm thread but I thought I would build on it a bit. Plus, if you are sprinkling your sparge water onto your grain bed I would be interested to see if you are experiencing an even greater temp loss.
Thanks
Justin
I have a question. I assume that most people are sparging with water around the 78oC mark (actual figure not important for this thread), but how hard are people striving to maintain this temperature at the grain bed. I understand that it should be 78oC water feeding onto the grain bed, but while brewing an English Pale ale on the weekend I noticed much to my distress that my sparge water was a lot closer to 50oC by the time it was hitting the grain bed (and my grain bed temp was also 50oC). Now in my system there is only possibly 30cm between HLT and grain bed (including tap and submerged sparging manifold) so it's not travelling a long distance but still the temperature drops considerably. The temp of my HLT was 78oC, but I'm now thinking that perhaps my HLT should be perhaps 85/90oC.
I don't cover my mash tun while sparging which may be a possible source for a great deal of the heat loss but I wouldn't have thought it would be that much. What are you other all grainers doing about this problem? Is this going to be affecting efficiency or the ratio of fermentable to non-fermentables in my wort, due to the fact I am not really achieving a mash out.
P.S. I know this is similar to the Sparge arm thread but I thought I would build on it a bit. Plus, if you are sprinkling your sparge water onto your grain bed I would be interested to see if you are experiencing an even greater temp loss.
Thanks
Justin