Beer Forum

This article-
http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2008/07/0 ... fficiency/
suggests to sparge with 178 degree water as a way to increase efficiency.

Any thoughts on that?

What temperature would be too high to sparge at?

Sparging at 178 is not a good idea. It might be OK for a little while - but once the mash gets over 170, or the pH gets too high - you will start to extract tannins from the husks. The 170 is not an "absolute" like everything else in the mash - but above that is where it starts.

A better approach is to figure out what volume and temp of infusion will get your entire mash up to 168, or mashout temp. Add it, and stir. The mash will be more fluid at that point, and your 170 degree sparge water will extract the sugars more efficiently.


Mylo

i'm gonna bet that is a typo, and that they meant to type 168. i know lots of brewers who mash out at 168, and then sparge with water that keeps that temperature constant. this can be a range of temperatures depending on the drop you get from your hlt to your mash tun. commonly i see it between 170 - 175.

The concept is that the warmer the sugar/water solution, the thinner it is and the more readily the sugar can be rinsed from the grain. You can adjust your sparge water chemistry to sparge at any temperature you desire without extracting tannins. Sparging at 180F would be the upper bound of what is considered acceptable for sparging with untreated water in the 7.0-7.9 pH range.

It is not a matter of temp over 170 OR pH over 7.0 extracting tannins... it's a matter of temp over 170 AND pH over 7.0 extracting tannins. One without the other is fine.

EDIT: Decoction brewing is a perfect example of my point.

Thanks all.

I posted a comment to the original blog post asking about tannin extraction at 178. He said it was a typo and adjusted the article.

This is an old thread. But in case anyone stumbles on it the original blog post has been updated. http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2008/07/0 ... fficiency/

Also, depending on your system 178F won't always be too high, especially if you batch sparge. I batch sparge and I need 185F or so to get up to 168/170F on a 10G batch becuase all the other hot water was drained out.

If you fly sparge you can start with that and move down. If the total temp in your MLT is below 170 you're laughing.

Since sometime after this post, I have started sparging (batch sparging) with 185-190 F water.

stadelman wrote:Since sometime after this post, I have started sparging (batch sparging) with 185-190 F water.

I do the same. There's an interesting read over at homebrewtalk.com. Kaiser did a sparge with cold water and had no drop in effeciency. Kind of mind blowing when you read it.