Brewed a 10 gallon batch with expected SG of 1.049. 20.5 lbs of grains, 6.33 gallons of strike water, 10 gallons for fly sparge. Mashed at 152° and sparge ran from 170°-168° through out the fly sparge. Mash was at 5.1 ph. Brewed, cooled and transferred to a reading and got 1.040. Looking for some possible causes that I missed My SG by so much
Yeah, that’s a little low, but not terrible. Are you using a hydrometer? If so, check the calibration with distilled water. Should be zero at 68F. My efficiency suffers if I don’t stir my mash every 10-15 minutes. How long did you mash?
Your mash is quite thick. It can be difficult to make sure that grains are properly incorporated with water when the mash is that thick. I prefer to mash at 1.5 qt/lb.
True. Grains may not have been mixed adequately. Mot used 1.26qt/lb. I regularly use 1.0qt/lb without problems.
Other possibilities: 1) You ran off too fast. With fly sparging, slower is better for max efficiency. 2) Your boil was less vigorous than expected, thus your post-boil volume was greater than expected, thus your beer is more dilute.
It’s extremely useful to measure pre-boil gravity and volume. These numbers are very useful. If you knew these numbers you could easily determine if this was a mash/runoff issue or a boil issue.
Your liquor:grist ratio is fine, you can take that off the table as a reason. But stirring the mash every 10-15 minutes does indeed help squeeze out a little more sugar.
Wort stratifies very quickly. If you didn’t mix the kettle before checking specific gravity, you might have misread what the true specific gravity was.
I did a 60 minute mash. How long should it take to fly spaerge about 10 gallons?
I’d say at least 30 min., maybe 60
Ok I definitely may have fly sparged too fast, I’m thinking it took 20-25mins. After reading the link I should be sparging way slower. This was my 2cd fly sparge, previously I was batch sparging. Thanks for all the replies!
I am unable to crunch all the numbers but it looks to me that you didn’t use quite enough grain and sparged with too great a volume. If your final post boil volume was high at all, this could be purely a dilutionary effect.
I did some quick crunching. It looks like you were only expecting about 51% yield, which is extremely low in itself. A very conservative 70% yield – easily achieved with a conventional (I hate the term “fly”) sparge and your ratios – should get you an OG north of 1.067. I would guess there are two issues. First, at your water-to-grist ratio of 2.6:1 (1.23 qt/lb) it may have been difficult to adequately stir a 10 gal, 20 lb batch. (5 gal, no problem.) Could have left dry spots, even. Then there’s the speed of your sparge. I’d say you should try a thinner mash – at least 3:1 or 1.45 qt/lb – and slow down the sparge. The proper rate for sparging is really dependant on the depth of the grain bed, not the total weight or volume. If your depth is on the order of a foot, recirculation and runoff should take probably an hour or so. Really, let the rate set itself: find where it flows smoothly and crystal clear by gravity without pulling solids through the filter bed. Thoroughly mixing the mash, periodically stirring it to help sugar migrate into solution, and letting the sparge percolate through more slowly should get much more extract out.
(Fixed typo)
Thanks, I’m going to brew this weekend and I’ll follow your advice and do a 1.45qt per lb
I’m curious, why did you switch from batch to fly sparging? Just to try it, or for other reasons.
Dude, you’ve brought out my inner pedant…why is fly sparging “conventional” and batch sparging is not? Batch sparging was around for a long time before fly sparging. I’d argue that it’s more “conventional”. Actually, I’d argue to not even use the word “conventional”…cal them by what they are. If you don’t like “fly”, how about “continuous”?
I vote for “decreasing rate of return sparge” instead of Fly Sparge, simply “Sparge” instead of Batch Sparge, and instead of No Sparge you just dont mention sparging at all.
I just don’t like “fly.” Pet peeve. The other complication is that I add my “continuous” sparge in 2 or 3 “batches,” not a continuous flow, so I used to call that batch sparging… Really the only distinction is between 1) draining completely and reflooding the mash, or 2) adding water while you’re draining. And there are so many variations of both. (As for my inner pedant, if I’m not mistaken, the term “sparge” was introduced in 18th century Britain to mean the radical, new idea of using rinse water, by any means, in a single wort, rather than the old methods that either just drained the tun, leaving lots of extract behind, or re-mashed the grains.) So if by “batch sparge” we mean all the drain and refill variants, everything where you add water on top while you drain from the bottom needs a collective name, and I don’t think “fly” or “continuous” really captures it. (Know what I kinda like? Courtesy of Buffalo Bill Owens, “slip ‘n’ slide!” Ok maybe fly is no worse… ??? )
And Jim, my preference for, um, fly sparging is because I only have to vorlauf once, so the diminishing rate of return doesn’t bother me. It’s the simplest option given that my tun volume precludes no-sparge. As for that rate of return… In the end I guess it’s all X amount of water passing through Y of grain, and the mechanical details are trivial, as is what you call it. “Fly” might grow on me.
I only have to vorlauf once too! Maybe we should call batch spargers poly-vorlaufers?
Wait, except for when I double mash… then I vorlauf twice, but only once per mash.
I’m confused now. I dont know which sub subculture I belong to.[emoji41]
Let’s forget names and assign stats. We’ll just add the vorlaufs and divide by the number of mashes to get the EVA (earned vorlauf average.) That will also account for stuck mashes where the (formerly so-called) fly spargers have to start up again. 8)
So can I call no sparge instead fully diluted mashing?
You could just call it simplicity. Would if I could. (But I wouldn’t BIAB, still want that 1.0 EVA for crystal clear wort, and Cy Young contention.)