Krotch fly-sparges and was telling me about how he adjusts his mash tun valve and his sparge valve carefully so that out = in. Like this:
My (bright?) idea was to take the mash tun output hose and instead of running it through a valve into the boil kettle, just raise it up the side of the mash tun so that the water level in the hose before it goes downhill equals the water-over-grain level, like this:
The beauty of this is that the level in the hose would equal the level in the mash tun. As you add sparge water, the mash tun hose would just overflow and keep up. It'd need an air port to prevent siphons, but I don't see why this won't work just great. The advantage is that you'd only adjust the sparge water valve and the mash tun output would automatically equal it.
If you want to empty the mash tun at the end just lower the hose. No more dual-valve jockeying during the sparge...
Am I nuts? Am I drunk? (don't answer that last question) ...and if you fly sparge, don't comment since this doesn't apply to you.
