I like testing, I like questioning. I don't want a three vessel system, I like BIAB. I don't need a roller mill, my blender works fine. I'm not criticizing guys who stay with tradition, but I want simplicity and cost savings. Sometimes it works, (Re-hopping a faded IPA in the bottle) sometimes less so (I gave up fermenting in SS pots).
Please post your findings Mash.
Do you really need to heat your sparge water?
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Re: Do you really need to heat your sparge water?
Making beer and stew for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Never mind, there it is.
Never mind, there it is.
Re: Do you really need to heat your sparge water?
To bring this back around... 
Perhaps the sparge temperature question is better answered by looking at the soluability of maltose in water... While a number of sugars are made available via saccrification, for our purposes it is maltose that would seem most important so below is a table of soluability for same...
(Warning, Science approaches...)
As you can see, the amount of maltose that can be disoloved in solution increases with temperature...
Now, I understand that the mash is gonna be up around 148-154°F (64.4-67.8°C) already... So a good amount of sugars are already entering solution which is also why biab works well...
Increasing the temp of the sparge water to 169°F (76.1°C) and using it, usually at a ratio of about 1.5 times the wort volume, raises the overall mash temp thus allowing a higher percentage of maltose to enter solution. And that is whar sparging or 'rinsing' our grains is... An attempt to cause sugars to move from the grain solids into our wort solution.
It would seem to me that using a cooler sparge temp would work against you, limiting to a small degree the percentage of additional sugars that could enter the wort solution as it is cooling the overall wort somewhat...
Now, empirically this may not cause a perceptable difference but may result in a slight reduction in overall specific gravity of the sweet wort. Edit: For the most part, we homebrewers are using modern, highly modified grains... Conversion is very good with these grains... Presumably, there might be more of a concern when using more traditional, less modified malts.
Not a problem at normal homebrew levels (5-15 gallons per batch) but certainly might be an issue for commercial brewers at the multi-barrel level and above... Not sure... Thoughts?
This section is from the book "Experimental Cookery From The Chemical And Physical Standpoint", by Belle Lowe. Also available from Amazon: Experimental cookery.
I found it on http://www.chestofbooks.com
Solubility Of Maltose In Water (gillis)
Read more: http://chestofbooks.com/food/science/Ex ... z45crB6Tjs
Perhaps the sparge temperature question is better answered by looking at the soluability of maltose in water... While a number of sugars are made available via saccrification, for our purposes it is maltose that would seem most important so below is a table of soluability for same...
(Warning, Science approaches...)
As you can see, the amount of maltose that can be disoloved in solution increases with temperature...
Now, I understand that the mash is gonna be up around 148-154°F (64.4-67.8°C) already... So a good amount of sugars are already entering solution which is also why biab works well...
Increasing the temp of the sparge water to 169°F (76.1°C) and using it, usually at a ratio of about 1.5 times the wort volume, raises the overall mash temp thus allowing a higher percentage of maltose to enter solution. And that is whar sparging or 'rinsing' our grains is... An attempt to cause sugars to move from the grain solids into our wort solution.
It would seem to me that using a cooler sparge temp would work against you, limiting to a small degree the percentage of additional sugars that could enter the wort solution as it is cooling the overall wort somewhat...
Now, empirically this may not cause a perceptable difference but may result in a slight reduction in overall specific gravity of the sweet wort. Edit: For the most part, we homebrewers are using modern, highly modified grains... Conversion is very good with these grains... Presumably, there might be more of a concern when using more traditional, less modified malts.
Not a problem at normal homebrew levels (5-15 gallons per batch) but certainly might be an issue for commercial brewers at the multi-barrel level and above... Not sure... Thoughts?
This section is from the book "Experimental Cookery From The Chemical And Physical Standpoint", by Belle Lowe. Also available from Amazon: Experimental cookery.
I found it on http://www.chestofbooks.com
Solubility Of Maltose In Water (gillis)
- image.jpeg (40.91 KiB) Viewed 1025 times
Re: Do you really need to heat your sparge water?
Temperature certainly affects how much can be dissolved into a solution. It is actually a combination of Time, Temperature, and PH that ultimately drives it and also what compounds can be extracted, it is not just temperature. (of course given equal time and equal ph, then it is just temperature). There is no doubt about that in my mind.
But the real question here is more along the lines of how much there actually is left to dissolve into solution. If the amount is small (and it is, I might gain 4-5% if I sparge my BIAB oven mash typically), then it's ability to be dissolved at low vs. high temps effectively is very possibly a quite minor and unnoticeable difference. (the higher temperature matters more if you are trying to build a more concentrated solution, and there is enough solute left to bring into solution).
Another thing to consider in this, is that, at least in my thin BIAB mashes, some (possibly most) of the sugars we are talking about were already potentially dissolved into a water solution, it's just that that solution is stuck in what amounts to a "sponge" of sorts, needs to get rinsed out of the grain (unless you go a squeezing). That is a different thing then getting the sugar initially dissolved into a solution, which your mash did to some extent. It is potentially more of a dilution of the already existing solution to get it free running (like adding water to thickened honey so you can pour it more easily).
So I do think it's quite possible that cool vs. warm could be quite minor difference really. At least with my thin BIAB style mashes.
If course maybe with a thick mash, there is more of a need for the water to act as solvent then in my thin mash. Traditional BIAB uses full volume thin mashes for that very reason (to avoid having to sparge to build the solution you wanted due to levels of concentration vs. volume).
Doing it both ways would require 2 experiments. And to really test it accurately I think both would have to be done, because the thin vs. thick mash certainly does affect how much is already in solution.
But the real question here is more along the lines of how much there actually is left to dissolve into solution. If the amount is small (and it is, I might gain 4-5% if I sparge my BIAB oven mash typically), then it's ability to be dissolved at low vs. high temps effectively is very possibly a quite minor and unnoticeable difference. (the higher temperature matters more if you are trying to build a more concentrated solution, and there is enough solute left to bring into solution).
Another thing to consider in this, is that, at least in my thin BIAB mashes, some (possibly most) of the sugars we are talking about were already potentially dissolved into a water solution, it's just that that solution is stuck in what amounts to a "sponge" of sorts, needs to get rinsed out of the grain (unless you go a squeezing). That is a different thing then getting the sugar initially dissolved into a solution, which your mash did to some extent. It is potentially more of a dilution of the already existing solution to get it free running (like adding water to thickened honey so you can pour it more easily).
So I do think it's quite possible that cool vs. warm could be quite minor difference really. At least with my thin BIAB style mashes.
If course maybe with a thick mash, there is more of a need for the water to act as solvent then in my thin mash. Traditional BIAB uses full volume thin mashes for that very reason (to avoid having to sparge to build the solution you wanted due to levels of concentration vs. volume).
Doing it both ways would require 2 experiments. And to really test it accurately I think both would have to be done, because the thin vs. thick mash certainly does affect how much is already in solution.
Re: Do you really need to heat your sparge water?
Yup, I think we are saying the same things and reaching the same conclusions...
Warm sparge, cold sparge may have very little difference as much of the sugar is already in the wort...
Rinsing may be more a 'water as a solvent' thing than a soluability issue for what sugars remain in the grain bed or biab bag.
Just thought adding some science to that remaining portion of sugars might throw some contrast at the discussion up to that point. Again, it's a smaller percentage of sugars that are not already dissolved in the wort that we are talking about...
Clearly there is more than temperature and thus soluability involved, and I also think thinner mashes might be beneficial as well.
After all, biab works whether you drain, pour over sparge or squeeze so...
Warm sparge, cold sparge may have very little difference as much of the sugar is already in the wort...
Rinsing may be more a 'water as a solvent' thing than a soluability issue for what sugars remain in the grain bed or biab bag.
Just thought adding some science to that remaining portion of sugars might throw some contrast at the discussion up to that point. Again, it's a smaller percentage of sugars that are not already dissolved in the wort that we are talking about...
Clearly there is more than temperature and thus soluability involved, and I also think thinner mashes might be beneficial as well.
After all, biab works whether you drain, pour over sparge or squeeze so...
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ScrewyBrewer
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Re: Do you really need to heat your sparge water?
I enjoy reading Marshall's xBEERiments and find them to be entertaining, although admittedly subjective, his results aren't conclusive. In my mind I have to take pause when folks swear by his results as being gospel.HerbMeowing wrote:"Here are the results for the one time I did this" and qualitative evaluations are the blatant flaws in Brewsophistry's approach.
ezRecipe 'The easy way to awesome beer!'
'Give a man a beer and he'll waste an hour, teach him to brew beer and he'll waste a lifetime'
'Give a man a beer and he'll waste an hour, teach him to brew beer and he'll waste a lifetime'
Re: Do you really need to heat your sparge water?
Equally, when they swear that the results are wrong, or inapplicable. I think that Marshall would agree that his results are not gospel. But they do question the gospel of status quo, something I enjoy myself.
Making beer and stew for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Never mind, there it is.
Never mind, there it is.
Re: Do you really need to heat your sparge water?
We already know that many things that were assumed to be "the gospel" as such when it comes to brewing simply don't happen to us at homebrew scale and techniques some folks use now that bend those old rules are direct results of this observation. So I see no reason not to question and try other things to see if they might work. If so, then more testing is warranted to see if it continues to work in multiple scenarios, and with tightened up testing criteria / eliminating variables. That is actually science at work, once you do that. Denying that the test had any relevance is not. Flawed tests are flawed, but not irrelevant. They simply need to be refined and reproduced.John Sand wrote:Equally, when they swear that the results are wrong, or inapplicable. I think that Marshall would agree that his results are not gospel. But they do question the gospel of status quo, something I enjoy myself.
Plus I'm an old punk rocker. Questioning authority is in my genes.
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ScrewyBrewer
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Re: Do you really need to heat your sparge water?
Haha, I am still wrestling with the fact that Brian Hahn of Momentum Brewhouse brings his award winning 12% barley wine from kettle to tap in just 7 days! And the fact the Will Lawson of Naples Beach Brewing says that his fermentors have an opening to allow the wild Florida yeast to add character to his lineup of beers. I prefer to take people at their word, even if I find what they are saying to be harder to swallow than their beers, which actually tasted pretty good.mashani wrote:Plus I'm an old punk rocker. Questioning authority is in my genes.
ezRecipe 'The easy way to awesome beer!'
'Give a man a beer and he'll waste an hour, teach him to brew beer and he'll waste a lifetime'
'Give a man a beer and he'll waste an hour, teach him to brew beer and he'll waste a lifetime'