Thanks to Denny and all the others who’ve been giving great feedback over the past couple weeks. Today’s mash went very well. I mashed for 60 minutes @156F and batch sparged using Denny’s method. Not only did my sparge take significantly less time, but I hit my pre boil gravity dead on and got 82% Mash efficiency. I’m pleased
One small issue, I do half batches and my cooler is small, so I had to do a second batch sparge with about 3/4 gallon of water. On my first sparge I had a grainbed temp of 167F. unfortunately my second small one hit 175F. The second sparge took about 2 minutes so I’m hoping I had little tannin extraction. What do you think?
I sparge with 190F ish water and extract no tannin. It’s more of a pH thing IMO. If you control your pH well via Brunwater or similar, your sparge temp won’t cause you issues at all.
What about the sparge water ph? The mash ph is good for the mash but you’re draining all that liquid out and adding water with a different ph when you sparge.
At 175F I would not be too worried even if your sparge water ph was a little high. The mash was probably in the mid to upper 160s and 175F water, especially in that volume, is probably not raising the grain bed to such a warm temperature that you are getting problematic tannin extraction.
In my opinion, tannin and silicate extraction is a non-issue regardless of pH or temperature until the wort gravity gets low. So, its the end of the runoff and sparging that you really need to pay attention to. That is when the pH and temperature issues can bite you. I end runoff at about 3 to 4 brix to help avoid the problem.
If necessary, reserve some of the sparging water and add it directly to the kettle to top up the pre-boil volume to your target and avoid sparging the last few percent extract out of the bed.
