BIAB Verlauf/fly sparge *Theoretical thread*

[ol-hazza]

I Have been BIAB brewing for a while and constantly seeking to improve my brewing or at least tinker with the process and kit.

I brew with a 30L (8 gal) kettle which is too small and this is forcing me to experiment with sparging techniques. I know I should just get a bigger kettle and will soon enough but that answer isn't enough to stop my interest in this idea (lets call it an academic thread).

My current process is fairly standard, heat 24L (5gal) of strike water, add grist, mash. Heat 8L (2 gal) of sparge water, Pull grains dunk and drain in the wort a couple of times then dunk in sparge water, drain over kettle, repeat 4-5 times. This gives me 26l (ish) (7gal) pre-boil with last runnings still in the 1.020's. This reading isn't entirely accurate as during the dunk/drain process some sugars do get left in the sparge water which turns it to wort, last time measuring 1.010 for the last wee bit which got thrown.

I can just boil 26l without boil over, and then dump it all into my fermenter with a supposed brewhouse efficiency of 80%. However Trub usually accounts for 10-15% of volume into the fermenter so really my efficiency is around 70% which can certainly be improved on.

This got me thinking that the dunk in the sparge water is inefficient and i need a way to mash and sparge with a max of 27L going into the kettle.

I figure that by placing a water spreading device on top of the mashed grains in the bag and plumbing it to a pump I can vorlauf and then fly sparge which should A) help clear my wort resulting in less trub in the fermenter and B) increase efficiency by allowing for better extraction.

The device itself I'm imagining to be circular, 6" diameter, with holes in it similar to a showerhead, or literally a showerhead. Connect to a pump and vorlauf from the kettle and then fly sparge from the HLT.

Thoughts?

And yes I know I should buy a bigger kettle because whats the point in BIAB if it's not a single vessel set up.

Also if anyone is not happy with the accuracy of the terms vorlauf or fly sparge in this application there is no need to tell me.

View attachment vorlauf.pdf

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Sounds like a viable approach, but you'll get better effeciency if you mash full volume rather than mash thick and dunk batch sparge multiple times or mash thick then fly sparge.

If you're thought is that you're getting some grain dust or particles in the wort after the mash, maybe look into a tighter woven grian bag? I've had great success with wilserbrewers bags.

 

[ol-hazza]

Problem with full volume is that I can't mash full volume due to the size of my Kettle.

A Wilser bag is on the cards, I havn't been able to up until now due to shipping to NZ essentially doubling the price, however i do have some friends heading over to the States later in the year so it is a possibility.

The grist should also help with the filtration in addition to the bag. In a traditional vorlauf it is the grain acting as a barrier filter more than the actual screen filtering the wort or so i have been led to believe.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

I do BIAB with a sort of fly sparge. I use a 9 gal tall boy BK with a basket for my grain bag. I typically reserve 8 - 10 qts from my mash water for my sparge. I heat it up in my old 5 gal BK. I cut the bottom 12" off a HD bucket and drilled VERY small holes in the bottom. Once my mash is done I raise the basket (pulley helps) and rest the HD bucket in the top of my BK basket above the grain. It fits perfectly. I pour the sparge water in there and it trickles through at about 1 gal/15 min. It upped my efficiency by over 5% and I can brew up to about 1.080 without added sugars.

Edit: Sorry. Don't know why that posted sideways.

 

[ol-hazza]

This is very similar to what I was thinking but I don't have the basket. Have you found any improvements with clearer wort?

 

[Iseneye]

I'm only parroting what I read on here but I don't believe clear wort makes any difference to the beer. Any extra stuff that gets brought through should settle out at wort cooling time. However, you put all of your wort into your fermenter so it might make a difference to you.

I BIAB and have super clear beers and don't vorlauf (or BIAB equivalent). If you're worried about final beer clarity you shouldn't. I don't know if it has any other effect on the beer though - I assume not.

 

[ol-hazza]

I'm only parroting what I read on here but I don't believe clear wort makes any difference to the beer. Any extra stuff that gets brought through should settle out at wort cooling time. However, you put all of your wort into your fermenter so it might make a difference to you.

I BIAB and have super clear beers and don't vorlauf (or BIAB equivalent). If you're worried about final beer clarity you shouldn't. I don't know if it has any other effect on the beer though - I assume not.

Clarity of the beer isn't really a concern of mine. (Both in that its currently decent and I'm more interested in flavour/aroma)

Its more about reducing the amount of trub/break material in the fermenter.

Now I know that I can whirlpool to remove it, but it comes back to the kettle size and being limited in how much I can boil, so if I can reduce the amount of gunk/trub/break pre-boil by filtering it while in vorlauf while still getting the same amount of the same gravity wort then my efficiency is increased as I have more useable wort.

I know that it's still going to from hot and cold break and that trub is good for yeast (I've seen the exbeeriment) but I'm working on the idea that a vorlauf will reduce the amount of trub I end up with.

 

[doug293cz]

...

My current process is fairly standard, heat 24L (5gal) of strike water, add grist, mash. Heat 8L (2 gal) of sparge water, Pull grains dunk and drain in the wort a couple of times then dunk in sparge water, drain over kettle, repeat 4-5 times. This gives me 26l (ish) (7gal) pre-boil with last runnings still in the 1.020's. This reading isn't entirely accurate as during the dunk/drain process some sugars do get left in the sparge water which turns it to wort, last time measuring 1.010 for the last wee bit which got thrown.

...

Your process as you describe it is not well optimized for maximum sugar extraction. Dunking the bag in the wort doesn't do anything that can't be done more effectively by a thorough stirring before pulling the bag from the pot. The next thing you want to do is drain the bag for at least 10 minutes (you can be heating towards boil during this time.) The idea is to get as much wort as possible out of the bag before you go to a sparge step. The less sugar left in the grain prior to sparging, the higher your efficiency will be. If you can squeeze before sparging, that will provide an incremental improvement.

Once you have drained the bag well, you should place it in the vessel with the sparge water, open the bag, and stir for about five minutes. Then remove the bag from the sparge vessel, and again drain for at least 10 minutes. Squeezing at this time can also be beneficial. Don't reimmerse the bag in the sparged wort at all. Add all of the sparged wort to the boil kettle, and proceed with the boil. You will need to know your grain absorption in order to calculate how much strike and sparge water to use.

Give this method a try, and you may be pleasantly surprised by your efficiency.

You can fashion your own bag out of finer weave polyester voile material. This is sold either as shear curtains at home goods stores, or in fabric stores. As a previous responder said, a finer weave will keep more grain particles out of your wort and reduce the trub level.

If you want to proceed with your fly sparge plan, it should be workable. I considered doing exactly what @BlueHouseBrewhaus described (but have since gone to just full volume mash with long drain plus squeeze) and I expect it work fairly well.

Brew on

 

[joshesmusica]

I don't want to steal this thread or anything, but I have a question along the same lines. I too do BIAB and sometimes need to do a bit of a sparge due to size limitations of the BK. So i just do a pour over type of sparge, and just use a little pitcher that way i can make sure and try to cover all the grains with the sparge water.
But my question is, could I theoretically do this over like a 2-3 hour span? Basically I'm doing a weird experiment to replicate the way the farmers brew/brewed here in Norway, which is at least a 3-hour boil. But then I would need way more water than my BK could handle because of the boil-off rate. So if the grains sat for an hour (and then again another hour after that), could I still do a "sparge" in order to get more liquid into the boil that isn't just water?

 

[AnthonyUK]

I have added a vorlauf step to my process recently but not for efficiency reasons.
I BIAB using a 40l urn which has a concealed element. This has failed once due to buildup burning on after the mash so I now vorlauf to reduce this.
I have just made the first two batches since replacing the element and it never cut-out once and remained very clean both times.

If you consider that both the Braumeister and Grainfather are fundamentally recirculating BIAB systems, you should feel comfortable that it is a viable approach.

I would do the same in your situation e.g. sparge to replace water lost to grain absorption.

 

[ol-hazza]

Your process as you describe it is not well optimized for maximum sugar extraction. Dunking the bag in the wort doesn't do anything that can't be done more effectively by a thorough stirring before pulling the bag from the pot. The next thing you want to do is drain the bag for at least 10 minutes (you can be heating towards boil during this time.) The idea is to get as much wort as possible out of the bag before you go to a sparge step. The less sugar left in the grain prior to sparging, the higher your efficiency will be. If you can squeeze before sparging, that will provide an incremental improvement.

Once you have drained the bag well, you should place it in the vessel with the sparge water, open the bag, and stir for about five minutes. Then remove the bag from the sparge vessel, and again drain for at least 10 minutes. Squeezing at this time can also be beneficial. Don't reimmerse the bag in the sparged wort at all. Add all of the sparged wort to the boil kettle, and proceed with the boil. You will need to know your grain absorption in order to calculate how much strike and sparge water to use.

Give this method a try, and you may be pleasantly surprised by your efficiency.

You can fashion your own bag out of finer weave polyester voile material. This is sold either as shear curtains at home goods stores, or in fabric stores. As a previous responder said, a finer weave will keep more grain particles out of your wort and reduce the trub level.

If you want to proceed with your fly sparge plan, it should be workable. I considered doing exactly what @BlueHouseBrewhaus described (but have since gone to just full volume mash with long drain plus squeeze) and I expect it work fairly well.

Brew on

The process as described did miss out a lot of the stirring and draining i do while th ewort is coming up to the boil, so the main difference is the bag squeezing (im a non squeezer due to the extra trub created, although my testing on this as a fact could be more scientific) and that i re dunked the bag into the sparge water. It then gets a stir, redrained and redunked. If i had only dunked it once my efficiency would have been lower.

My current bag i dont see as really adding to the problem, i will probably get a wilserbag as the design is better than mine which just has elastic at the mouth and the i can compare them.

Im thinking i might have to give the method a go just out of interest. Then compare to a dunk sparge (various methods) and full volume once i get my bigger kettle.

 

[ol-hazza]

I don't want to steal this thread or anything, but I have a question along the same lines. I too do BIAB and sometimes need to do a bit of a sparge due to size limitations of the BK. So i just do a pour over type of sparge, and just use a little pitcher that way i can make sure and try to cover all the grains with the sparge water.
But my question is, could I theoretically do this over like a 2-3 hour span? Basically I'm doing a weird experiment to replicate the way the farmers brew/brewed here in Norway, which is at least a 3-hour boil. But then I would need way more water than my BK could handle because of the boil-off rate. So if the grains sat for an hour (and then again another hour after that), could I still do a "sparge" in order to get more liquid into the boil that isn't just water?

I did something similar a couple of batches back where i did a single dunk sparge is a second kettle which i then added to the main boil as it evaporated. it was a bit of a disaster for me as i was missing my OG and ended up boiling for longer and messed up some hop additions, however after the initial attempt i would now wait untill all of my sparge wort is in the kettle before starting hop additions, which would probably lead to a 2-3 hour boil. Personally im not going to use the method again but you can sparge mid boil.

 

[ol-hazza]

I have added a vorlauf step to my process recently but not for efficiency reasons.
I BIAB using a 40l urn which has a concealed element. This has failed once due to buildup burning on after the mash so I now vorlauf to reduce this.
I have just made the first two batches since replacing the element and it never cut-out once and remained very clean both times.

If you consider that both the Braumeister and Grainfather are fundamentally recirculating BIAB systems, you should feel comfortable that it is a viable approach.

I would do the same in your situation e.g. sparge to replace water lost to grain absorption.

Have you noticed a reduction in trub/break?

 

[joshesmusica]

I did something similar a couple of batches back where i did a single dunk sparge is a second kettle which i then added to the main boil as it evaporated. it was a bit of a disaster for me as i was missing my OG and ended up boiling for longer and messed up some hop additions, however after the initial attempt i would now wait untill all of my sparge wort is in the kettle before starting hop additions, which would probably lead to a 2-3 hour boil. Personally im not going to use the method again but you can sparge mid boil.

Yeah, but that long of a boil is ok, because that's what I'm shooting for anyways. So you think I should just wait until I've boiled off the full amount of sparge before adding the rest of the wort?

My plan is to mash, drain and sparge until I hit my preboil max volume. Then I suppose I just sparge the rest of the way until I hit what my calculated preboil volume (according to beersmith) minus what's in the boil kettle. so if i was supposed to boil 25L but can only boil 16.5 in my BK, then I sparge out the rest of the 8.5 in a separate pot, then add it once my wort gets down to 8L?

I did plan on waiting to add the hops, but then I think waiting to add the rest of the wort might defeat the whole purpose of the long boil. Again I'm doing the long boil because it's what is traditionally done in the farmhouse brewing here.

 

[ol-hazza]

i would add the sparge water/wort as room becomes available for it, but bring it to the boil first so you can keep the rollin boil in your kettle

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

When I first started sparging, I just used a measuring cup to slowly drizzle the sparge water over the grains. The slower, the better. But once I got tired of my arm falling off, I came up with the HD bucket method. Keep in mind that if you do a slow fly sparge, you should do a mash out at 170F first to stop conversion and lock in the brew profile. The speed of the sparge really does matter. I tried just drizzling 8 qts over 10 minutes and got a small bump in efficiency. Once I started doing the 30+ min fly sparge, my efficiency went up about 6 points. I typically get about 80% now.

I also don't worry about trub. I dump the whole BK in the fermenter. There are others on this site that have done experiments comparing trub vs no trub (maybe Brulosopher?) and found no difference in beer clarity.

 

[AnthonyUK]

Have you noticed a reduction in trub/break?

Into the FV?
Not really as I tend to add late hops, whirlpool and leave to settle for 30mins as I use a plate chiller so try to reduce trub from blocking it.

 

[Bobby_M]

Sounds like a viable approach, but you'll get better effeciency if you mash full volume rather than mash thick and dunk batch sparge multiple times or mash thick then fly sparge.

If you're thought is that you're getting some grain dust or particles in the wort after the mash, maybe look into a tighter woven grian bag? I've had great success with wilserbrewers bags.

The theoretical math doesn't support this but the difference is pretty negligible either way. Given that grain absorption is a known fixed loss of GU (gravity units), a full volume mash's gravity will be slightly higher than that of a dunk sparge. However, since the absorption rate of BIAB is as low as it possibly can be, the difference is reduced from what a traditional mash tun would have.

 

[doug293cz]

The process as described did miss out a lot of the stirring and draining i do while th ewort is coming up to the boil, so the main difference is the bag squeezing (im a non squeezer due to the extra trub created, although my testing on this as a fact could be more scientific) and that i re dunked the bag into the sparge water. It then gets a stir, redrained and redunked. If i had only dunked it once my efficiency would have been lower.

...

I'm still a little unclear on your process. Are you redunking in the same sparge water/wort multiple times? Or are you dunking in some sparge water, adding all the sparged wort to the BK, and then future dunks start with fresh water?

Brew on

 

[wilserbrewer]

I think you are "academically" overthinking the process. With an undersized kettle, I would simply mash in somewhere below the kettle rim and rest the mash. Then I would add hot water to bring me near kettle capacity and stir well, rest a minute and stir well again. Remove the bag and conduct a small pour over sparge to reach preboil volume. It's not that difficult, don't try and make so.

 

[1MadScientist]

Its more about reducing the amount of trub/break material in the fermenter.

Being from NZ, are you in the no-chill camp?

 

[ol-hazza]

When I first started sparging, I just used a measuring cup to slowly drizzle the sparge water over the grains. The slower, the better. But once I got tired of my arm falling off, I came up with the HD bucket method. Keep in mind that if you do a slow fly sparge, you should do a mash out at 170F first to stop conversion and lock in the brew profile. The speed of the sparge really does matter. I tried just drizzling 8 qts over 10 minutes and got a small bump in efficiency. Once I started doing the 30+ min fly sparge, my efficiency went up about 6 points. I typically get about 80% now.

I also don't worry about trub. I dump the whole BK in the fermenter. There are others on this site that have done experiments comparing trub vs no trub (maybe Brulosopher?) and found no difference in beer clarity.

Good to hear about the efficiency increase, as for trub the only reason I am against it is that for every litre of trub it is a litre less of wort, I'm not worried about having it in my fermenter

I'm still a little unclear on your process. Are you redunking in the same sparge water/wort multiple times? Or are you dunking in some sparge water, adding all the sparged wort to the BK, and then future dunks start with fresh water?

Brew on

I dunk in the same water multiple times. It's only a method I have done once and it go better efficiency than dunking once.

I think you are "academically" overthinking the process. With an undersized kettle, I would simply mash in somewhere below the kettle rim and rest the mash. Then I would add hot water to bring me near kettle capacity and stir well, rest a minute and stir well again. Remove the bag and conduct a small pour over sparge to reach preboil volume. It's not that difficult, don't try and make so.

To be honest I'm not overly phased by my current lack of efficiency, and it is fine with regular grain bills. The easiest and probably cheapest solution is a bigger kettle. I'm just interested in tinkering and design ideas. But the longer this thread goes the more I want to run an experiment.

 

[ol-hazza]

Being from NZ, are you in the no-chill camp?

Nooooope! I run an immersion chiller at full noise for as long as it takes. My part of the country has plenty of water for 95% of the year

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

I wouldn't worry too much about eliminating trub. At the prefermentation stage it's just a lot of particles in suspension and is still about 95% wort so it's really not taking up that much room. If you pressed all the wort out of it, I doubt it would amount to more than a cup or two and most of that would probably be hop sediment. You can always use a hop bag to reduce that. Plus I believe I read that there are some beneficial enzymes or other miscellaneous things in it that make the yeast happy. It really shouldn't effect the size of your batch since you should also have adequate head room in your fermenter. It's just one less thing to worry about.

 

[ol-hazza]

I wouldn't worry too much about eliminating trub. At the prefermentation stage it's just a lot of particles in suspension and is still about 95% wort so it's really not taking up that much room. If you pressed all the wort out of it, I doubt it would amount to more than a cup or two and most of that would probably be hop sediment. You can always use a hop bag to reduce that. Plus I believe I read that there are some beneficial enzymes or other miscellaneous things in it that make the yeast happy. It really shouldn't effect the size of your batch since you should also have adequate head room in your fermenter. It's just one less thing to worry about.

It's currently about 10-15% of my wort though. No problem in my fermenter at all. It's my kettle that I want to clear room in.

This really isn't a big issue, but as I said I like to tinker and think of improvements and other methods, so this thread is about the viability of a new method and largely theoretical. But now I want to do it anyway

 

[wilserbrewer]

Ok great....lets just assume your shower head, pump the wort back through the bag scheme works terrific, and you send brilliantly clear wort to the boil kettle, your thrilled to pieces and everything is wonderful. Then you boil the wort, and add some hop additions, and chill. Then your heartbroken that your nice clear pre boil wort is full of hot break, cold break and hops.

The gunk that is in your kettle post boil is not all stuff that slipped through the bag, it is also proteins that precipitated out of the wort, ain't no way to filter them in the grain bed, don't even try.

Clear wort preboil does noy yield clear wort post boil, and is not indicative of clear beer in the glass.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

Wilser said it much better than I.

 

[TexasWine]

The gunk that is in your kettle post boil is not all stuff that slipped through the bag, it is also proteins that precipitated out of the wort, ain't no way to filter them in the grain bed, don't even try.

This is exactly the point I was teeing up to write earlier, but had to get on a plane! The general term "trub" is made up of all kinds of stuff, only a small fraction that would be sediment from the grain. I'm not sure of exact proportions, but I'm confident it would be small compared to all the other components Wilser mentioned.

I think what you're going for is an increase in efficiency, turning a given volume of wort into more beer, and your not necessarily concerned about the impact of trub on your beer. You could ask one of our friends here on HBT that vorlaufs in a traditional type of set up and see if they make more beer for a given volume of wort than those who don't. I would guess that the answer is no.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

here's what I do most of the time, even though I have a 20 gallon pot I still bib most of the time, first divide your total water in half then recirculate for at least 60 minutes which somewhat replaces fly sparging then without lifting the grain out drain the wort into a bucket, close the valve and add 6ph fresh water then recirculate for 15 minutes, raise the bag up and drain then add the wort back in and boil, I get 80% to 85% do it this way

 

[joshesmusica]

I feel bad for the op who keeps insisting he's not worried about the trub nor necessarily efficiency but just trying to get maximum amount of wort in the bk. yet nobody is actually answering his question and instead keep telling him about clear beer. Poor guy.

 

[TexasWine]

I feel bad for the op who keeps insisting he's not worried about the trub nor necessarily efficiency but just trying to get maximum amount of wort in the bk. yet nobody is actually answering his question and instead keep telling him about clear beer. Poor guy.

But efficiency is EXACTLY what he's asking about. Look at his first post.

Also, how much wort you put in the BK is rooted in efficiency...

I figure that by placing a water spreading device on top of the mashed grains in the bag and plumbing it to a pump I can vorlauf and then fly sparge which should A) help clear my wort resulting in less trub in the fermenter and B) increase efficiency by allowing for better extraction.

And later on in the thread...

Good to hear about the efficiency increase, as for trub the only reason I am against it is that for every litre of trub it is a litre less of wort, I'm not worried about having it in my fermenter

If getting more beer out of a certain volume of wort isn't desirous of an increased efficiency, then someone please tell me what I'm missing. In the OP's situation they want to reduce the amount of trub in the fermenter, but maintain the same volume of wort, in hopes of reducing the amount of beer left in the fermenter at the end of the day.

OP, please chime in if I'm off base on what you're trying to achieve. Not trying to put words in anyone's, errr, fingers? But rather hoping to get to the root of what you're after to generate discussion that's beneficial to you.

 

[wilserbrewer]

This thread is like watching a puppy chase his tail.

Edit...I thought of the perfect solution, if maximizing volume out of the kettle is the goal, simply pitch yeast in the kettle, ferment and cold crash....transfer to keg or bottling bucket

 

[doug293cz]

Where you take your trub loss, and account for its effect on efficiency, doesn't really matter much. What does matter is how much of the available sugar/alcohol gets tossed with the trub. In general, the less liquid that gets tossed with the trub, the higher the efficiency. So, you want to let the trub compact as much a possible, which will result in the smallest trub volume with lowest liquid content.

Question for OP is: does leaving some flour, that might otherwise escape the bag, trapped in the grain result in less liquid absorption by that flour, than letting the flour pass thru the process and compact in the bottom of the fermenter? I don't know the answer, and can't think of a way to easily measure it offhand. It's not as simple as measuring beer yield out of the fermenter for two different processes, each using an identical amount of total water. There are so many other variables that are hard to control precisely, that you would have to do a large number of experimental replicates in order to average out the noise from the other variables, in order to get a statistically significant result.

Brew on

 

[ArcLight]

Sounds like a viable approach, but you'll get better effeciency if you mash full volume rather than mash thick and dunk batch sparge multiple times or mash thick then fly sparge.

That has been the opposite of my experience.
Doing a dunk sparge will give you greater sugar extraction (10%) than mashing thinner.
I don't mash ultra thick, but I hold back a couple of gallons of water, or whatever it will take to over the grains so they are submerged after the bag is raised and gravity drained. (And squeezed a few time just for wilserbrewers benefit )

 

[ArcLight]

Your process as you describe it is not well optimized for maximum sugar extraction. Dunking the bag in the wort doesn't do anything that can't be done more effectively by a thorough stirring before pulling the bag from the pot.

I disagree.
I get 10% better efficiency by performing a dunk sparge than doing the traditional full volume mash. This will be more noticeable as you use more grain too.

Dunking absolutely extracts more sugar.
By dunking I put the gravity drained* bag in a second pot, and add a couple of gallons so the grain is submerged. I mix it around, then pull the bag, and again let it gravity drain.

* - I give it a few squeezes at the end, just be be manly

 

[doug293cz]

Your process as you describe it is not well optimized for maximum sugar extraction. Dunking the bag in the wort doesn't do anything that can't be done more effectively by a thorough stirring before pulling the bag from the pot.

I disagree.
I get 10% better efficiency by performing a dunk sparge than doing the traditional full volume mash. This will be more noticeable as you use more grain too.

Dunking absolutely extracts more sugar.
By dunking I put the gravity drained* bag in a second pot, and add a couple of gallons so the grain is submerged. I mix it around, then pull the bag, and again let it gravity drain.

* - I give it a few squeezes at the end, just be be manly

@ArcLight: You misunderstood my post. What I was talking about is dunking the bag back into the wort it was just pulled out of. From the OP's post, it sounds like that is what they are doing. Of course sparging with fresh water will extract more sugar from a mash that has been drained.

Brew on

 

[ArcLight]

@ArcLight: You misunderstood my post. What I was talking about is dunking the bag back into the wort it was just pulled out of. From the OP's post, it sounds like that is what they are doing. Of course sparging with fresh water will extract more sugar from a mash that has been drained.

Brew on

I did misunderstand, and agree with you, that redunking the bag in the wort won't accomplish anything (other than consuming time and adding more work).

 

[ol-hazza]

Ok great....lets just assume your shower head, pump the wort back through the bag scheme works terrific, and you send brilliantly clear wort to the boil kettle, your thrilled to pieces and everything is wonderful. Then you boil the wort, and add some hop additions, and chill. Then your heartbroken that your nice clear pre boil wort is full of hot break, cold break and hops.

The gunk that is in your kettle post boil is not all stuff that slipped through the bag, it is also proteins that precipitated out of the wort, ain't no way to filter them in the grain bed, don't even try.

Clear wort preboil does noy yield clear wort post boil, and is not indicative of clear beer in the glass.

This is the answer I'm looking for regarding the trub and break. I feel I get more trub than other people, and was hoping to reduce it. I'm aware that I'm always going to get break material though.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

I guess for absolutely minimal trub/break loss, you could cold crash to compact the "kettle trub" before beginning fermentation.

Start your mash like you're doing, transfer, recirculate during the mash, boil, use something like irish moss to get the break material to coagulate, transfer ALL to a fermenter, then cold crash for a week, then rack to a new fermenter, then begin fermentation...

However all of those steps to gain maybe a quart or so of liquid is not worth it IMO. YMMV.

 

[wilserbrewer]

Doing a dunk sparge will give you greater sugar extraction (10%) than mashing thinner

I take exception to this, assuming a normal gravity beer one can achieve 80 plus efficiency, to blanket statement that a dunk sparge adds 10% is a stretch.

I understand you love dunk sparging, but claims of 10% gain regardless of gravity are optimistic and unrealistic.