Sparge? Yes or No

[zaxsan]

I have a simple setup and feel I produce good beer. The beers I enter into competition often come back with good grades in the low 30s. I expect that this is about as good as I am going to get because much of my process is not exact. I should better maintain fermentation temps and get better temperature measuring equipment, but what I have works and is ok. My results are good and I am not ready to step to the next level of "exactness" just yet.

So, based of the assumption that everything I do is "close enough" I was thinking that I might actually be harming my beer by sparging at all. My logic is this: The sparge is to rinse the granes and bring your pre boil wort OG to a specific number. I am not concerend if my OG is 1.05 or 1.055. Even 1.05 vs 1.06. As long as I am within the range I am happy. Sometimes I am more efficient, other times not as much. (I do not crush my own grains, so this leads to all sorts of unknowns in grain crush) Phenolic flavors is the bigest compaint I get from my judged beers. Phenolic flavors are most likly to be caused by sparging issues. (Water to hot, or sparge to long, hot side aeration). Should I stop sparging all together and just mash with the full volume of the boil needed inorder to avoid this pitfall? Perhaps I just need to sparge better by setting up a fly sparge system?

Any general thoughts would be great. Thanks.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Tannic phenols are a condition of water and pH.

How hot is your sparge? Any idea what pH you are at?

Phenolic flavors are often also a yeast derived product of fermentation management.

 

[Bobby_M]

Chlorine or chloramine in the source water would do it also. Not sparging would help only if your pH is too high during the sparge. That would only be discovered with pH strips or a meter.

 

[Rev2010]

Mashing with the full volume of water needed would make your mash too thin and would probably lead to efficiency issues unless you mashed for longer times and stirred often I would think.

I'm not sure how you came across the thought process that sparging is a problem, but let me just say that sparging has been done for centuries so I think you need to rethink things. And... get a grain mill!


Rev.

 

[zaxsan]

I do need a grain mill! That is for sure.

My "sparging" logic:

http://www.winning-homebrew.com/phenolic-flavors.html


Am I way off here? I live in WIlmington DE. The water is public, so it can not be that bad.....I guess I just need to test it to be sure...........

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

I live in WIlmington DE. The water is public, so it can not be that bad.....I guess I just need to test it to be sure...........

If you are using a municipal water source and are not treating it for chlorine or chloramine then your issu may likely be Chloraphenol.

You can treat teh water with Campden tablets (Sodium Metabisulfite or Potassium Metbisulfite) to eliminate the Chlorine/Chloramine (the latter liberates some ammonia but has not been found to be problematic).

 

[winvarin]

You could eliminate whether your water source is a possible cause of your problems by doing a batch or 2 with all distilled water. A tsp or 2 of gypsum or CaCl would be a suitable replacement for the minerals you'd lose. If you want to get real exact, you could start with distilled and one of the spreadsheets you can find in the Brew Science forum to custom build your water.

I routinely either blend my filtered tap water with distilled or just use distilled or the 1 gal jugs of drinking water you find in the store because my local rural water supply is very hard and has caused past quality issues with my beers.

 

[idahobrew]

Spring water at Walmart is .88 cents a gallon and is UV sterilized I believe.