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Adjusting Sparge Water with Spike 20 Gallon System

rmerideth

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I've been brewing for a while with a Spike 20-gallon system, and trying to dial in water adjustments. Adjusting mash water is a simple process - just make my additions to the known quantity of water I bring into my mash tun before mashing in. I'm struggling with how to use BeerSmith to make adjustments to my sparge water, which I fly sparge directly from the HLT. I've searched the forums but haven't found a discussion that addresses this. I'm presuming that I need to make my additions directly to the water in the HLT, but the BeerSmith calculations are based on the quantity of water to be sparged (vs the greater quantity that needs to be in the HLT for the system to work). Is there a straightforward way in BeerSmith to calculate sparge additions for a quantity of water greater than what I intend to sparge so that the water I do sparge has the correct concentrations? Alternatively, is it correct to presume that I can simply double the amount needed water (in the HLT) and double the amount of additions calculated in the software to get the right concentrations - then draw off only the quantity of water I need for the sparge? Anyone come up with a different solution? Thanks!
 
If you are talking about using more water in the HLT than needed, yes you can always prepare more water and then just measure the water that actually goes into the mash tun at sparge.
 
Another recommendation I got for this very problem is to add the sparge ingredients to your boil.
 
If you are talking about using more water in the HLT than needed, yes you can always prepare more water and then just measure the water that actually goes into the mash tun at sparge.
I have the same problem. I have a Spike 30 gal system. I assumed that the software uses a linear formula when calculating PPM. But when I double the gallons of water and double the grams of an additive in the Recommended Amount window the PPM is doubled. Which leads me to believe that changing the water volume has no bearing on the PPM calculation. Is there a particular reason to why the updated volume of water is not taken into consideration when calculating PPM?
 
You would need to readjust (match button) your water after changing volumes as there is no automatic adjustment of the salts when you change a water ingredient.

What I generally do is finish tweaking a recipe completely, then do the final water profile and then the mash pH calculations as the very last step before brewing.
 
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