I open mine about 1/4 the way for the first quart or two until there’s no more chunks coming out, and then slowly open the valve all the way. By slowly, I mean over the course of about 60 seconds. Works for me. The only time I might have an issue is with a lot of rye, oats, or corn, which are all pretty dang sticky. I don’t recall a stuck runoff with wheat although it’s been a while. Gravity or efficiency will not be impacted in the slightest. The main reason to start opening the valve slow is to prevent immediate compaction of the grain bed and stuck runoff. By opening it slowly, the grain bed will not compact quite so much (at least in theory) and prevent stuck runoff which is kind of a PITA but not the end of the universe either. Like DarkSide said, you can always stir and start over, and add rice hulls if you have them and need them, which in my experience is a very rare need.
+1. Same thing I do.
Thanks for resurrecting. My questions is to the 185-190 degree. Why that temp? I have been batch sparging with 168 deg.
If you add hot 190 F sparge water to a hot mash at ~150 F, the temperature will quickly average out to about 168 F (within about 5 minutes). Perfecto.
In theory you want to get the grain bed to 168-170 F. You need hotter water to do that.
Denny, I had a conversation with someone about this recently. They mentioned they are sparging with room temp. water with the idea that all of the conversion has already taken place during the mash. Any thoughts about this?
That should work just fine. You’re just not able to mashout if you use cool water… and that’s okay because mashout is typically pointless in a homebrew setting anyway since you can quickly get up to a boil in a matter of minutes. We’re usually not leaving sweet wort sitting around for hours while we stoke the fire to get 'er up to a boil.
It really depends on your set up and boil volumes. I do ten gallon batches, so I like to mash out because it takes as much as 40 minutes to ge to the boil for my beers.
+1
Saves 1/2 hour on the brew day if I only have to raise from 170, as opposed to the 140 it would be from room temp water. Also, IIRC, hotter sparge locks in the mash as it denatures enzymes, and sugar will go into solution much easier with warmer water…think of adding sugar to iced tea, as opposed to adding to hot tea then pouring over ice…
T
I raised my sparge water temp to 185 this weekend. Don’t know if this was a result of this, but I seemed to have a better and quicker hot break.