Thanks for the tips guys. Going to brew a biere de garde here in a few hours. I'll check in and let you know how it went.

the more sparges I do the higher my efficency. When I do 12.5 gallon batches I get 83% because I do two or more sparges. When I do 6 gallon batches I usually would get abt 72 % eff. I use the water needed calculator in promash and try to break my sparge additions into equal parts. Making sure your sparge water is really hot also helps(190+).

okay, mashed in, doing a 11 gallon batch of biere de garde. got about 30 minutes before my first sparge, think i'll try 2 today. so far, so good.

HOORAY!!!!!

shit... my efficiency was worse than before. under 60%. I just do not get it. I THINK i did everything right... Oh well, back to fly sparging in my converted keg system on Saturday. If i hit my typical 79% efficiency there at least i can rule out mill and scale issues (which i'm 99 percent sure aren't problems).

I'm going to take a one week break from batch sparging, read up on it, and hit it again mid next week.

I must be missing something fucking huge... I just don't get it. I have customers mashing in a bag that get 65%!

um.... NOT HOORAY!

Are you stirring after you throw the water in?
Are you letting it sit for 15 minutes at an adequate temp after doing your water infusion?
What's your water temp?
Are you running off slowly or quickly?

I'm curious about your process because your situation doesn't make sense to me.

Good luck on the next brew.

i do stir

i am not letting it sit.

okay, there's one issue.

I'm running off relatively quickly, maybe 3/4 of the way. how slow should i run off?

my water that i infused was 190 in the kettle, so after i pumped it up to the mash tun it was aound 185.