BIAB dunk sparge & water additions

[pfowl01]

Hey everybody,
I've been doing biab for the last 10 batches or so and loving it. Been doing 5 gallon batches and I use bru'n water for my water additions.
I'm getting ready to do some 10 gallon batches and was going to use the dunk sparge method. My question is.....How many of you add water additions to the sparge water if it's all RO water? I'm thinking I'll add the additions to sparge water after I put the grains in and stir, as I'm under the impression that they won't dissolve in just the water. My recipe calls for a total of 14 gallons of water......gonna mash in 11 gallons and dunk sparge with the remaining 3 gallons.
How does that sound?

 

[pfowl01]

Anyone?????

 

[acidrain]

You might get many opinions.
Mine is, you don't need to add any additions to the sparge.

 

[pfowl01]

Well if I put all of the water ( 14 gal ) into bru'n water it gives me x amount of additions to add. If I put 11 gal in the mash and 3 gal sparge, you get the same amount of additions just in two does. If I were to put all the additions into the 11gal of mash, I think it would throw my mash ph off.

 

[RM-MN]

Well if I put all of the water ( 14 gal ) into bru'n water it gives me x amount of additions to add. If I put 11 gal in the mash and 3 gal sparge, you get the same amount of additions just in two does. If I were to put all the additions into the 11gal of mash, I think it would throw my mash ph off.

Your mash is already done if you are sparging. You no longer have to worry about mash pH. I don't think you need any additions to your RO water for sparging. Put the mash amount into Bru'n water and use that for your additions.

 

[pfowl01]

Ok...so when I enter 11gal into bru'n water and use that amount to do my mash I will arrive at a given mineral content in my water. If I then sparge with just water and no additions, wouldn't that dilute my mineral profile? Wouldn't I need to add a littlte to maintain the mineral profile I had in mind?

 

[RM-MN]

You're going to use 11 gallons for the mash and then sparge with more water, then boil it back down to about 10 gallons. I don't think that would dilute the mineral at all and instead would concentrate it slightly.

 

[bigdongsr94]

The minerals don't boil away. But one reason they need to be there is for pH. So brunwater is looking at the mineral context for mash and not really the boil. As far as sparge goes, I would worry about the same problems that stem from bad pH in your mash if you have bad pH on your sparge. If your just going to dunk, I doubt that will pull any husky tannins from the grains with a bad pH. But if you are only sparging with 3 gallons over 14lbs..? Will that even submerge the grain or are you just rinsing? With that thick of sparge, I don't think you would need to worry about additions at all.
This is coming from somebody who can't get his own beers to work...although my pH comes out where I want and I do use RO. So keep that in mind.

 

[pfowl01]

I've brewed this recipe in a 5gal batch using bru'n water and it turns out awesome. All I'm doing is scaling it up to 10gal using bru'n water. Since I do BIAB I'm not able to fit everything in my keggle for a ten gallon batch. If my kettle was big enough I would just punch everything into bru'n water and use the amount of additions it tells me to for my given water profile ( same as 5gal profile ).
That being said...I would think that I need to add that to the batch. Maybe I'll add my additions for an 11gal mash and then just add the remainder to the boil.