Confusion... Mash and Sparge

Few things to note. I would get a bazooka/torpedo screen or something to help with the floating SS braid. Much better. http://www.love2brew.com/Mash-Boil-Screen-12-p/plw035.htm

Second, I typically mash between 1-1.25 quarts per pound of grain leaving extra room in the final boil volume to sparge.

Do you stir your mash while it is going?

How fast are you draining off? You may be going to fast.

Finally, there are many ways to sparge, I usually find that heating water to boiling and mixing it in before draining off helps me to get to the 167-170 range.

 

Would mashing much thicker and sparging more help?

It depends, I can help with a few things:

You might consider a false bottom, everyone makes one for the 10 gallon cooler. Your pickup is an elbow right about the center of the bottom.

Mash thickness, temperature, and efficiency are all related and IMO complicated. If you can wade through it, here's a pretty good discussion on managing your mash thickness. If you have a scientific bent, here's a more in-depth experiment with a lot of parameters on mash thickness. If you finish both of these I think you will agree there's a lot involved. Practically, I have learned from experimenting and keeping good notes.

In your last batch you said you missed your initial temp and added water which took you up to 1.8 ratio. At this point if you don't recompute your batch sparge amount/temp your mashout temps will be off (low). Almost sure this is what kept you at 160 when you were shooting for 168. (you can guess how I know about this).

Final running of 1.030 does seem high, did you adjust correctly for temps?

 

Grind your grain finer.

 

According to Kai Troester’s white paper a thinner mash will result in better conversion efficiency:

“A significant difference was however found in the efficiency. The brewhouse efficiency of the thick mashes remained almost constant between 58 and 60% over the temperature range of the experiments, but the brewhouse efficiency for the thinner mash showed a strong dependency on the temperature and was always better than the efficiency of the tick mash. That leads to the conclusion that thinner mashes perform better and allow for better extraction of the grain. Briggs also reports that thinner mashes can convert more starch but that most of the conversion potential is reached at a water to grist ratio of 2.5 l/kg [Briggs, 2004]”

Cheers!

 

Maybe the below quote will be helpful:

“A significant difference was however found in the efficiency. The brewhouse efficiency of the thick mashes remained almost constant between 58 and 60% over the temperature range of the experiments, but the brewhouse efficiency for the thinner mash showed a strong dependency on the temperature and was always better than the efficiency of the thick mash. That leads to the conclusion that thinner mashes perform better and allow for better extraction of the grain. Briggs also reports that thinner mashes can convert more starch but that most of the conversion potential is reached at a water to grist ratio of 2.5 l/kg [Briggs, 2004]”

If you look at the graphs that illustrate Kai Troester’s experimental results it clearly represents that a thinner mash (5 liters/kg vs. 2.57 liters/kg) yields a greater efficiency. The maximum efficiency for the thicker mash (2.57 liters/kg) is 60% while the maximum efficiency for the thinner mash (5 liters/kg) is 68%.

As to the ‘contradiction’ with the Briggs quote of “thinner mashes can convert more starch” vs. “most of the conversion potential is reached at a water to grist ratio of 2.5 l/kg” I really do not know. Maybe the critical word is “most” in that sentence? I do not have the book Brewing Science and Practice so I really can’t comment further.

Cheers!

 

The crush of your grain will have a greater impact on efficiency than the thickness of your mash.

Grind your grain finer.

 

Adding salts and minerals to the mash will up you eff.

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Bevis: huh-huh...he said 'up you eff'...huh-huh!

 

That's pretty vague, what "salts and minerals" and in what quantities?

 

• for batch sparging...are you doing two run-offs or three? If you don't already, you'll find if you split your sparge water into two separate run-offs you'll find a modest bump.
• are you confident that there are no dough balls in the mash?
• crushing finer as hb42 said will bump numbers as well, but can also lead to some headaches if you overcrush. You need to find a balance that works best for your system.

 

how so?

 

Just brewed an APA ( same recipe ) for the second time. I can tell you I use 1.5L per pound of grain and batch sparge at 165. I get 75% everytime. Using a simple false bottom in an igloo drink cooler.

 

On some systems crushing very fine can slow down or even stop your run off. I use a braided hose in my tun and crush very fine, with most beers my run off is fine, occasionally it can slow down a little but I simply tolerate it.

My efficiency went from 65 to 80 simply by changing my crush. Of course every system is different and there are a lot of variables so YMMV.

 

FYI. 2.5 L/kg = 1.2 qts/lb.

These results were for no-sparge yield. The results are the same for all thicknesses until a temperature of over 151 deg F. From 151 to 158 the thinner mash was better (again, no-sparge). I slightly question the benefit of this study since no-sparge was performed. The thinner mash would require less sparge volume than the thicker for the same final batch volume. Do we think a 2x sparge volume would yield another 6 to 8 pts in efficiency? Hmmm. Need. More. Data.

 

Better conversion efficiency does not necessarily lead to better extraction efficiency. As others of pointed out, doing a thinner mash means you now have less room to sparge, so you may convert more starch to sugar in the tun, but that means little if you can't get those sugars into the kettle.

 

If conversion is your problem, and you can isolate that if you test your mash before mashout/sparging, then mash longer in lieu of thinnner. From your description, it doesn't sound like this is a problem, though.

If getting the sugar in the kettle is the problem (the only one you have left if you converted well per above), take more time with your sparge. Let it soak longer if you batch sparge and slow down the drain from the mash tun if you fly sparge.

Per the OP's original question, yes, likely sparging more will help, as long as conversion is good. Maybe if you go to a double batch sparge or try your hand at fly sparging you will get additional gains over just soaking longer on a single batch sparge, too.