So I am new to all grain and getting ready for my first all grain brew (5 gallon ipa batch). However, I have a question about sparging. I have a 8 gallon brew kettle and 52 quart cooler mash tun. (no pump, ball valve with silicone hose)
1.) Heat 4 gallons of water to 163 so I can mash at 148 (I anticipate a 15 degree temperature loss)
2.) Transer 4 gallons of water to the cooler
3.) Add the grain to cooler
4.) Stir the mash to make sure no lumps/dough balls
5.) Once that is mixed, close the lid of the cooler for an hour
6.) While that it is happening, heat up 3 gallons of water to 170 degrees to use as sparge
7.) After an hour, open the ball valve a little bit and let the wort come out and use the hose to pour it over the top of the grain bed. Doing this for 5 minutes
8.) Then pour the 170 water over the grain bed
9.) Transfer from cooler back to kettle using the ball valve hose until I have 6 and a half gallons of wort in my brew kettle
10.) Proceed with boil as I’m used to.
After reading a few things, I think my sparging technique is wrong. I have a quart pitcher Id be using for pouring the water onto the grain. Should I just do no-sparge and use more water to start with? Any and all info would be appreciated.
so I cant sparge with just my kettle and my mash tun. I need another vessel to either hold the sparge water or hold the wort that comes out of the mash tun?
should I just do no sparge and add more water to the mast tun at the start?
You can either do a full no-sparge or a modified one in this fashion (kind of like a single batch sparge…).
Heat strike water in kettle to desired temp and transfer to mash-tun with grain. Conduct mash rest.
Meanwhile, heat remaining water needed to reach full kettle volume pre-boil and add to mash -tun to reach a desired mash-out temp. Let rest for 15 min, vorlauf (if desired) and drain into kettle for boil.
With this process you only need a mash-tun and boil kettle.