How to handle split sparge water adjustments

[mrkrausen]

I batch sparge and occasionally I do 10 gallon batches and if the gravity is high enough I have to split my sparge water in half. It's kind of a pain and I'm looking to upgrade to a larger mash tun in the near future. I have been splitting my adjustments between the two sparges. My question is, when I'm adjusting my sparge water with phosphoric acid and other flavor additions is this okay to do or should I be adding it all to the first sparge? Thanks

 

[ajdelange]

If you add all the acid required to neutralize the alkalinity of the whole volume to half the volume the pH will go too low but then when you add the second half it will go back up to where it should be. Is being to low for a few minutes a bad thing? I don't really know but the conservative approach would be to split the acid addition so the pH stays at the right level throughout.

 

[doug293cz]

I would think that when doing a 2X batch sparge, the sparge water acidification would be more important for the 2nd sparge, as it is at this point that the grain buffering power is at its minimum and any sparge water alkalinity could raise the bed pH too high and extract tannins. And if you add the bulk of the sparge water acid to the 1st sparge, most of it will be drained out of the bed with the second runnings. Flavoring ions are more for the final beer, so I don't think it would matter much how they are distributed among the strike and the two sparges.

Brew on

 

[mrkrausen]

Thank you for the responses. Hopefully by the time I'm ready to brew again I will have made my larger mash tun so it won't be an issue, but it is nice to have an idea. In the event I don't have it made by then I will probably keep splitting the acid addition. Thanks again guys.