Impact Sparge Water Temperature Has On Beer Quality | exBEERiment
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- čas přidán 27. 03. 2024
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Sparging involves rinsing the grain of residual sugar once the mash is complete, and it's widely accepted that this should be done with water that's around 170°F/77°C, as any hotter can lead to tannin extraction while cooler sparge water can reduce sugar extraction. This week, we go over exBEERiments looking at the impact sparging with both cool and boiling water has on the finished product.
ARTICLE LINKS
Cool Sparge Water xBmt: brulosophy.com/2016/04/11/spa...
Boiling Sparge Water xBmt: brulosophy.com/2024/01/29/exb...
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I wonder if a beer with more roasted malts - which can tend towards harshness and astringency - would suffer more from a boiling sparge. 🤔
+1 on the pH test. Do a 5.3 pH sparge and a 7.5 pH sparge. I use the very high end of what municipal tap water might be at (as opposed to a balanced 7.0), because if the triangle concludes no significant detection, pretty much any sparge water on the planet would suffice.
Gordon Strong was guest on Beersmith video, and he said that Sierra Nevada pre-acidification their sparg water to Ph 5.5. At this PH, you can sparg til cows come home. You should do tests considering ph.
Hi there, I’m a newbee pro brewer
The last head brewer mistakingly set 89C water for sparging in the brewing plant programme and the result is obvious, harsh and tannic beer. From what I have seen so far the sparging process is very long in breweries varying from 1 and a half to 2 hours for big beers and sometimes even more if things get sticky. The combination of time and temperature is definitely a key component in tannin extraction.
I’d say that at a homebrew level where batch sparge is preferred, temp is not vitally important as pH management
Would be interested to see exbeeriments on mash thickness (water to grain ratio) and stir/no-stir effect on mash efficiency. Seeing conflicting information on these.
Thanks so much. I get to focused on sparge temperatures. Adding ice, one cube at a time, or waiting to sparge until sparge temp is exact. Now I can relax and have a homebrew!
I think the pH is the fundamental question.
Yes. Just like squeezing grain :D, not. Just checkout industrial mash filters, they squeeze pretty hard
For a good 18 months after purchasing my all-grain Brewzilla setup I sparged with hot water from the tap or cold water - mainly due to not having funds for a sparge heater. During that time I always noticed the gravity was lower than expected and that the boil took an age to achieve; but that being said the beer always turned out great. Having a sparge heater on reflection though is definitely worth the investment, if just for the satisfaction of achieving your OG numbers or just speeding up the process. That being said, upon viewing this video I might raise the temperature of my sparge water a bit higher since it has negligible impact on taste - thanks for the insight.
I sparge the same as Will. I use the 10.5 Anvil. I bring my Full water Volume to Mash Temp, pull a few gallons out and use that to sparge after mash. What ever temp is has cooled down to, that's what it is..
With my Anvil Foundry I normally do a full volume mash and only sparge when brewing imperial-type beers. Cheers!🍻
Having just gotten an Anvil 10.5, I was going to ask that very question.
Would like to see sparge vs no sparge.
Before Anvil, I just did a full volume water, brought it up to mash temp, peeled off 2-3 gallons into 1 gal bottles, stored in a cooler to not loose as much heat, and splarged with that water
pH is the bigger player in tanin extraction and on the homebrew scale we rarely reach a point in the sparge where the pH of the grain bed hits that critical point.
I haven't watched the video yet, but one interesting thing from the coffee community is that when making pour over, convention says to use boiling water because it will cool down to the optimal temperature when it hits the coffee bed. My instinct is that you might extract more astringency from darkly roasted malts
4:52 There may be no difference in SG, because the Milwaukee MA871 has an accuracy of + or - 0.2% Brix. 12.8 + 0.2 is 13 and 13.2 - 0.2 is 13. Alternatively, the values could be 12.6 and 13.4 brix at the other extreme.
Love this channel. Thanks Martin!
Thanks David 👍.
Tannin bomb! Great play on words!
This is awesome stuff right here!
I brew in an apartment so I focus on space. Another kettle for heating sparge water is going to get me in trouble 😉
I sparge with the hottest possible tap water (I am blessed with fairly good tap water)
I sparge with 80°C 176°F 🍻 Cheers
I do full volume for anything under 7%. For bigger beers I usually sparge with hot tap water, mine comes out between 120-140
Lol, I didn't know this was a thing. I've always sparged with room temp. No one ever told me to heat my sparge water. I probably won't change.
Hi Martin, thanks for all your great work on the 99 beers challenge. Loved it all.
Sure I’ve used cold water sparging. Started doing it when Michael Tonsmeire first wrote about it on his blog. Works great.
I do something similar to Will. I fill my initial volume into the kettle, i adjust my ph and add my minerals. Once i reach my strike temp, i draw off sparge volume into a second kettle that i set on the stove.
According to my original "brew beer" book from 30 years ago (Dave Miller), sparge temp should be from 168 F to 165 F. I do full sparge: when mash is finished, I sparge the whole batch with water around 168F +_ 4 to 5 degrees (water in a separate bucket, that has been previously heated). I sparge until the wort reaches the mark on my brewing pot. I have noticed in the past a decrease in efficiency when using sparge water that is not warm enough, but mostly, when sparging too quickly (less than a hour long). Overall, my results have been great for most of those 30 years, for all styles of beer. The temperature that I pay attention to is the mash temperature.
I'm with Will. I heat the full volume to strike temperature and put away a portion as sparge water. For small sparges I also sometimes use room temperature water. To my knowledge very hot water may not only extract tanins, but also new starches which is also not desirable.
That’s right, over 80C there will be new starches extracted which won’t be converted anymore because the enzymes are denatured. That will result in a cloudy beer.
I heat my mash/sparge water in my hlt/bk. When the boil kettle hits strike temp, i pump it to my mash tun and start doughing in. The sparge water is still heating up to about190-200F before shutting that burner off. By the time the temp drops to 170, the mash is done and I'm ready to start sparging the grains.
I found that with my system that the sparge water cannot be too hot. This is because so much heat is lost when sparge water slowly goes through the tube and out the recirc. If fly sparging slow enough then it is very difficult for the mash temp to rise much above mash out temp. I wonder if this is why he decided to do a batch sparge. While you wouldn’t lose as much heat putting all the sparge water in at once, a lot of heat from the mash would have been lost when it first drained again making it hard to raise the thermal mass of the mash above mash out temp (76). I think you would have to push the mash out temp much higher to experience tannins. Sparge water temp is kind of erroneous because everyone will lose different amounts of heat depending on their kit and process. A better variable to measure would be how hot the actual mash temp gets during mash out and what the threshold is for when you start to taste tannins
Tannin extraction is more a function of PH than it is heat so the results are not a surprise.
Exactly, they should try tap water of Ph 8.8 with hot and cold sparge. Also need participants that have a tongue that can taste tannins at enough ppm.
I do cold sparges at the moment because I don’t have a convenient way to heat sparge water in my garage. My Foundry only needs a 1.0-1.5gal mini-sparge so the grain temp doesn’t suffer much. I probably get a small drop in efficiency but you can’t beat the convenience!
The pH value determines whether tannins are extracted. If the pH is below 6, no tannins will be extracted even if the mash is boiled. This is why decoction mashing can be used without tannins ending up in the final product.
If you don't know the pH, it is therefore recommended to either stop lautering when you reach a density of 1.010, as the pH is then probably okay. Alternatively, you can avoid going above 80 degrees Celsius, as this will not extract as many tannins even if the pH is too high. This is perhaps most relevant for professional brewers where yield is important.
For homebrewers, as your excellent experiment shows, it is not as important because you often stop lautering much earlier than the critical density level of around 1.010.
Would be interesting to see an experiment with different ph sparge water
That's not 100% correct. The tannins get reduced through oxidation as well as during the complex formation while proteins coagulate during the decoction.
Beer is full of tannins and polyphenols. That's why beer that is not stabilized with pvpp gets cloudy after a couple of months
@@Mikkogram Great! Where can I find this information? Is there any articles you can recommend?
I used my hot tap water that is around 60 degrees Celsius.
It works great.
Thank God I live in easter Finland so we have perfect tap water for pilsner all year long.
I do fly sparge without draining off the first running leaving it about an inch above the grain bed and let it drain completely when the sparge water is gone. The temperature probe on my mash tun never gets above 165F. So far its all good !
I heat my full amount of water (mash plus sparge) all together in my brewzilla and then just draw off the sparge amount and set aside and whatever temp it cools down to by it's time to sparge is what it is, I don't even take the temp of it. I used to be obsessed with it but like so many things in home brewing it just didn't seem to make any difference.
Great experiment. Thanks for sharing! I wanted to offer a handy idea on the sparging method Will spoke of towards the end of the video. I do the same in that I treat the full volume of water and then draw off the water I reserve for my sparge. But, a few minutes before it is time to sparge, I reheat and hold the water at 170 using a sous vide stick. Works great to keep the mash temp up! Another great use for an immersion circulator.
Would have liked to see a third comparison of a full volume no sparge compared to a traditional sparge. My assumption is a little less sugar extraction but no taste difference.
I use a Brewzilla, I bring my volume (usually 7.5gal) up to strike temp and pull off about a gallon of hot water for the sparge, filling two double insulated growlers. They hold temp well and with doing a full volume mash I routinely get 80%+ efficiency which is good enough for me, always hitting my targets.
BZ65 with a digiboil35 sparge water heater. Usually I do 78c, but there are times when the water have not been all the way up there, but still, 60c and 5c sparge water, ALOT of difference in boil-time (getting to saied boil).
I use an all in one system, and generally have been heating my full volume water to strike temp with my water additions, pulling off my sparge amount in a pot to heat to 170 on the stove while I mash. Seems to work good and isn’t much of a hassle to do.
I always sparge cold, no difference in utilization for 20 liter batches. The only difference is that sparging hot (i.e 77 C) accelerate reaching the boil temperature
I have a 220volt system that I have to disconnect the stove, so I heat sparge water on the stove in a 5.5 gallon kettle and jacket it, by the time I'm ready for sparge it's still around the correct temp😅
I’ve always sparged at 90c when batch or fly sparging. With my all in one, I bring it up to 90c for mash out. I have always wondered though if I was taking a risk. Clearly not. Thanks for testing!
I do full volume BIAB no sparge. I see no benefit for the hassle of sparging on a homebrew scale if your kettle can hold the full volume of your batch.
Was there any noticeable difference in body? I have been told that the warmer sparge water denatures the enzymes so sparging cold takes longer to denature and therefore leads to less body in the beer?
Put the sparge water on a burner 30mins before I need it and what ever temperature it is, is what I sparge with.
i dont heat up my sparge water, i got super lazy, i cut so many corners while brewing I’m surprise it still tastes good.
We know that some off flavours can occur with wrong sparge ph. Do you think that the problems people are experiencing could be both temp and ph toguether that do an astringent beer at the end ?
Leo
Maybe silly, but what about the impact of gravity (and so forth ABV) on the final taste ? Targeting a specific style and profile overall efficiency is hard to control in home brewing. Can a taster distinguish a beer that is on target and an batch not really ? Can we perceptually detect an ABV delta in 0.5 or 1 even 1.5 point in each batch ? Is there any detectable tasting difference between a recipe and a slighter session version one ? When I'm not on target my beers finished very mostly fine by being less flexible will it make my beer significantly more pleasant ?
I tried adding 2 gal of room temp water for my last sparge and ended up with almost a full % less in final abv
What about hot tap water from the shower for fly sparge ? :O
Ph is much more significant. So the test would be. Sparge with above ph 6 sparge water vs ph 5.2 sparge water.
That said on larger 250/500L plus systems using at least 100kg or more malt then things will change in relation to sparge water temp I suspect.
Ive figured out that for me 180 degree sparge water extracts the most in my setup.
One point that needs to be made for the premise to this experiment, is that sparge temperature is a FACTOR for tannin extraction, not a sole cause. Same goes for pH. Therefore, I don't think the non-significant difference result of this experiment proves that sparge temperature is an old wives tale, but shows that it is not a primary factor. Which is good. It is nice that sparging temperature astringency is less of a problem than we feared it was, but it doesn't negate the fact that astringency occurs. Temperature is a factor, and this experiment suggests it is a secondary one. or tertiary.
All due respect, but this is a meaningless conclusion/comment (for many reasons). You are correct in that this experiment "proves" nothing. (Side note: we scientists shy away from the word "prove".) What "proves" that sparge-water temp has NOTHING to do with tannin extraction is hundreds of years of brewing experience and data that show conclusively that temp is NOT a factor. Not a primary factor, not a secondary factor, not a tertiary factor. You appear to have strongly held beliefs about this that you do not want to be proven wrong. If you know something that refutes 500 years of brewing experience, please share. It needs to be based not on opinion or belief, but on objective, peer-reviewed science/data.
"Temperature is a factor, and this experiment suggests it is a secondary one. or tertiary." Data please. Not your opinions or beliefs, but data. I'll wait. Cheers.
Experiment idea (based on advertiser): can triangle tests prove that the hops are noticably better.
I do room temp sparge.
Allways sparge with 75 - 80 degrees C in order to not prolong the time up to boil temperaturen, and after this video I don´t see any reason to change it.
maybe need to only have participants that can actually taste tannins
But no sparge in all-in-one system, wouldn't mash be much too thin? To little enzymes? That's easily mite than 4l/kg grain.
yeh thought that was odd too
No, i do it. Its figured into the water loss during boil.
@MrConnormb It's not about abundant water it's about the thickness of the mash. More water to begin with means less enzymes per liter. Could cause a worse conversion and efficiency. New Brulosphy test??
Anywhere between 160 and 180F is good for me. Tanins are very insoluble molecules so I never cared much about it.
on a commercial level......sparging temp higher than 77c will definitely extract tannins.......however tannin extraction also depends on the Ph of the runoff, a higher ph will risk tannin extraction.......even when brewers do decoction, the ph of the mash is 5.2......any higher and theres a risk......really like these vids........cheers
dont use that many dots.
I think your audience is on to something. I've been batch sparging with boiling water for awhile, and only experienced astringency once in a blue moon. pH is a plausible connection....
You guys have too much time on your hands. How can you afford not to heat the exact amount of strike water, then heat sparge during the mash. Starting sparge at 30min into mash.
There is no room for wheat in a Kölsch recipe. Sorry. Kölsch should be crystal clear and even 2% of wheat will detract from the brightness.
Why must it be crystal clear? Just asking
That's pure bullshit. Germans use wheat in Kölsch. You know what's the secret. Filtration, that's why Kölsch is clear. OG Kölsch from Köln has to be filtered
2% wheat shouldn't prevent a beer from being clear.
I get crystal clear beer with 25% wheat. Maybe you should adapt Our process
I fully support the pursuit of crystal clear beer. Beers with considerable amounts of wheat can become crystal clear with proper handling and treatment, however. The Mean Brews recipe, which aggregates award-winning recipes, has nearly 5% wheat malt, and that’s just one example. I have done saisons with as high as 30% wheat that got totally clear.
I do basically the same thing as Will but I drain mine into a cooler which holds my temperature a little bit better than just a bucket.