Sparge water temps

[James P]

I've started to use my (father in laws) Vacola Steriliser as an HLT, It's great, water up to mash temp in no time and no gas!

My question is how does everyone get their sparge water to temperature?

Are you adding cold water to hot like me? Let me know your secret so I can redefine my brewing!

[denimglen]

I'm using a hot water urn with adjustable thermostat, set the dial and away she goes.

[James P]

Are you heating up to 90 odd for mash out then cooling the urn down for sparge?

[denimglen]

I batch sparge and the mash process goes something like this - Heat up my mash-in water in the urn, mash in, top up urn with sparge water. Set the thermostat on the urn to about 80C and this heats during the mash. About 15 minutes before end of mash I heat my mash-out water in my boil kettle, dump in to my mash tun, stir, settle, recirculate, run off, and then by this time the sparge water is ready to go.

Hope that makes sense.

[James P]

Definitely makes sense. I was trying to use the one vessel for all additions, which was creating my issues at the sparge stage, when mash out water was higher in temp than sparge water....

I'll give that a try with the next brew... maybe tomorrow yet!

[MrC]

I don't mash out and I sparge with water from my kettle(s). Sparge water heated to 77c on the gas hobs in the kitchen, runoff around 65c. My runoff recepticle is a retired plastic Brewcraft fermenter and after the lauter I transfer the wort into my kettle(s) for the boil.

[Ian]

I'm really interested in the sparge temperature issue. My first AG brew my kettle doubled as my HLT which was fiddly. I got away with it I guess because brewing just 20L I was able to lift the various containers, but with a larger brew this wouldn't work I shouldn't think.
I have since bought (but not yet used in anger) an urn as a HLT. The thermostat on it with a trial run did not correspond to the temperature in real life, so I have calibrated it for that and volume.
For that last brew I used the same temperature for mashing (about 77C in which settle around 66C in the mash tun) and for the sparge. Is it bad practice to use the same temperature for both procedures and is it vital that the sparge water be hotter to flush all the sugars out, would be my questions?
Thanks for any comments.
Ian

[JoKing]

The sparge temp isn't fully vital - but it helps your brewhouse efficiency if you have it hotter. This is because the sugares are more easily soluble in hotter water temps. You can go up to around 80 degrees... which can be risky, as the hotter water will extract harsh tannins from the grains. As Mr Cherry states - 77 degrees is pretty good. I try to get it at 78, but with not having a thermostat it can fluctuate a bit.

[Ian]

Cheers Joking - that would be close to what I used to mash too, so when I get my thermostat in the urn just right (say 77C) I could just leave it there for both processes? Because in my mash tun (converted chilly bin with false ss bottom) this translated to my 66C in the tun.

[Ian]

Good comments - thanks.