Brewfun, thank you very much for sharing!!!
brewfun said:
From the seminar I noted above, I did come away with 1 nugget to share. The concept of a 1:1 sparge ratio. This was new to me. It simply meant that the amount of sparge water used should equal the amount of total mash water. The benefit is to maintain efficiency and reduce polyphenol (tannin) and protein pickup that increases at the end of sparge.
Additionally, allowing the mash to drain at the end of the sparge increased efficiency.
I'm going to put this into practice in my own brewery and report how well the results match the expectations above. I’d appreciate reports from anyone that uses the procedure as laid out.
Based on some articles I've read in the past (and perhaps the Braukaiser site (I am not sure)) pointing at a higher mash conversion at lower grain to water ratio's, I use a mash thickness default of 2,5 L/kg for my brews.
I would like to do the calculation to understand if I am doing things right according the findings from the seminar. I will take the recipe from the brew I have planned for tomorrow. My equipment set up shows me that I will use approximately both 14L of mash water and 14L of water for the batch sparge. I use to stir to distribute the heat and at the end I use to let the mash drain (drip) in another container and collect the wort during the time I slowly heat up the main wort to 100C. The fraction I collect I poor in the main wort when this starts to boil. Due to this procedure I've had to adapt my grain absorption ratio a bit in the past resulting in rather accurate pre-boil volumes (24,0L).
Run off volume is: 24,0 - 14,0 = 10,0L The post boil volume (hot) = 20,75L or cold 19,9L. (In line with that the volume of the runoff should be approximately 50% of the post boil volume).
Am I doing things right in my approach according the findings from the seminar?
Since I am not only brewing one type of beer, do I have to adjust the grain to water ratio accordingly to get the figures right?
I am asking this because today it was brewday and I dropped a question on this blogg regarding the use of torrified wheat in a Belgium Tripel. I had pump/filter problems due to a very thick mash and wheat sediment. It was the first time that I used torrified wheat and crunched it together with the other grains, perhaps causing this problem. I already increased the grain/water ratio in the recipe a bit on forehand knowing that wheat is a troublemaker. But during the mash I had to go to a ratio of 3,3 L/kg. That worked fine for the mash and the rest of the process. But in this case (wheat) the findings from the seminar are a real challenge, or...?
Regards,
Slurk