Well, I haven't started one in a while so I think I'm long over due.
Through my efficiency odyssey I have started taking measures to be sure my ph is good, tweaked my sparging techniques seven ways to Sunday, learned about the value of mashing out and mash temp and its relationship to sugar solvency. I learned that stirring the mash both when you first put in a volume of water (mash out or sparge water) as well as right before you re-circulate can help. I learned about different rests and how an acid rest is better than a protein rest because although a protein rest might yield a few extra points it can damage the final product if you use well modified grains like 95% of us do. I also learned that the size of your grain bill will have an impact as the bigger the grain bill the less efficient you are when staying with the same volumes of water as it takes more water to more fully rinse the grain. I even found a site that scientifically explains (sort of) why rinsing the grains with two rounds of sparge water (3 runnings) is better and should be more efficient than only using two runnings. Of course having said all that, I bought the barely crusher and have made two beers with it and my efficiency has been 84 and 88% respectively.
So, now my question is this. As someone who batch sparges, can I be getting too much of a good thing? I've read that people who batch sparge very rarely, if ever, need to worry about the drop in ph and the accompanying astringency issues that often accompany a brew that has been sparged past the point of 1.010. But I tasted some of the final runnings and there was almost no sweetness at all, same thing with the grains after I tasted them. Could I be rinsing too much?
Through my efficiency odyssey I have started taking measures to be sure my ph is good, tweaked my sparging techniques seven ways to Sunday, learned about the value of mashing out and mash temp and its relationship to sugar solvency. I learned that stirring the mash both when you first put in a volume of water (mash out or sparge water) as well as right before you re-circulate can help. I learned about different rests and how an acid rest is better than a protein rest because although a protein rest might yield a few extra points it can damage the final product if you use well modified grains like 95% of us do. I also learned that the size of your grain bill will have an impact as the bigger the grain bill the less efficient you are when staying with the same volumes of water as it takes more water to more fully rinse the grain. I even found a site that scientifically explains (sort of) why rinsing the grains with two rounds of sparge water (3 runnings) is better and should be more efficient than only using two runnings. Of course having said all that, I bought the barely crusher and have made two beers with it and my efficiency has been 84 and 88% respectively.
So, now my question is this. As someone who batch sparges, can I be getting too much of a good thing? I've read that people who batch sparge very rarely, if ever, need to worry about the drop in ph and the accompanying astringency issues that often accompany a brew that has been sparged past the point of 1.010. But I tasted some of the final runnings and there was almost no sweetness at all, same thing with the grains after I tasted them. Could I be rinsing too much?