Why is sparge water temperature always 168 degrees?

[climateboy]

Hey, BeerSmith. Great program, but I have found one annoying bug so far. On a single infusion, batch sparge, no matter what the profile of the rest of my recipe, the sparge water temperature is always 168 degrees. Why is this? I've been advised, and used to good effect, the technique of setting the mash profile instead to mash in/mash out, and using the mash out temperature for my sparge water. But that seems unnecessarily complicated when I'm not actually mashing out. Can you please enlighten me?


Thanks,

CB

[MaltLicker]

no matter what the profile of the rest of my recipe, the sparge water temperature is always 168 degrees. Why is this? I've been advised, and used to good effect, the technique of setting the mash profile instead to mash in/mash out, and using the mash out temperature for my sparge water. But that seems unnecessarily complicated when I'm not actually mashing out.

For everyone's sake, let's define both parts to the lautering/sparging process. 

The hotter the sparge water the better it will rinse the sugars from the grains, however, sparge water is usually always cited at 168F to 170F because at 170F the tannins and other nasties in the grain husks become soluble enough to be rinsed into the wort.  Apparently this is more likely with sparge water pH above 6.0.  And for continuous sparging, most texts recommend stopping when the runnings measure 1.010 or maybe 1.008.  After that point, risk of tannins increases again. 

Separately, to make lautering more efficient, the "mash-out" step follows the mash, and means the brewer takes the mash temp from whatever (i.e., 152F) up to 168F, either with hot water or direct heat.  The benefits of a mash-out include efficiency, b/c now the entire grain bed is 168F, as well as the sparge water, so sugars rinse more easily. 

If I understood your question, you're asking how/why to set the sparge water temp to whatever you mashed at? 

[climateboy]

Thanks for writing back. Your answer makes total sense if you're assuming a mashout, then a sparge. In that case you'd use whatever mashout temperature BeerSmith calculates, followed by a sparge with 168 degree water.

But if I'm not mashing out, I need the "single infusion, batch sparge, no mash out" mash profile to give me the temperature of the water that I'll need to bring the grain bed temperature to 168. That can't be 168 degrees, but that's what I get.  Does that make sense?

[BeerSmith]

Hi,
  If you click on the "Details" for your mash profile (from the open recipe) you can adjust the sparge water temperature from that dialog.

Cheers,
Brad

[MaltLicker]

I need the "single infusion, batch sparge, no mash out" mash profile to give me the temperature of the water that I'll need to bring the grain bed temperature to 168. That can't be 168 degrees, but that's what I get.

There is a Strike/Infusion tool in BeerSmith that may help with the calculation.  (That field is a user-input field for records-keeping.)

But you would then face that trade-off between efficiency (do a mash-out and sparge at 168F) versus the risk of astringency from too-hot batch/sparge infusions.  I have often wondered myself if the 170F limit meant "contact" with water that hot or is it safe to infuse with hotter water if the final result is a stablized grain bed at 169F.  I know brewers that don't sweat it if their water is 175 to 180F and their beer is great.  If you infuse to reach 168F before draining, is that essentially a batch-sparge type of "mash-out"?

[climateboy]

I need the "single infusion, batch sparge, no mash out" mash profile to give me the temperature of the water that I'll need to bring the grain bed temperature to 168. That can't be 168 degrees, but that's what I get.

There is a Strike/Infusion tool in BeerSmith that may help with the calculation.  (That field is a user-input field for records-keeping.)

But you would then face that trade-off between efficiency (do a mash-out and sparge at 168F) versus the risk of astringency from too-hot batch/sparge infusions.  I have often wondered myself if the 170F limit meant "contact" with water that hot or is it safe to infuse with hotter water if the final result is a stablized grain bed at 169F.  I know brewers that don't sweat it if their water is 175 to 180F and their beer is great.  If you infuse to reach 168F before draining, is that essentially a batch-sparge type of "mash-out"?

I think that's right. It's a batch-sparge type of "mash-out", and I know people who rinse the grains twice this way with great results. It's gotten great results for me so far. And it would be great to have it built into a mash profile. Any chance of that?

[BeerSmith]

Hi,
  You can easily create a copy of your mash profiles and modify them - just go to the Mash Profile database under View and copy/paste or modify whatever you like. 

Cheers,
Brad

[UselessBrewing]

But if I'm not mashing out, I need the "single infusion, batch sparge, no mash out" mash profile to give me the temperature of the water that I'll need to bring the grain bed temperature to 168. That can't be 168 degrees, but that's what I get.  Does that make sense?

The temp of the sparge water is not meant to raise the grain-bed temps to 168 if you are not using a Mash Out step. All you are doing is rinsing the grains with hot water. The temp being set to 168 ensures that you will not be raising the grist above 170 deg F.

If you were to set the temp of your sparge water to bring up the grist temps to 168 for the first round of sparging and you used the same water for the second sparge round. The end result would be a grist temp higher than 168. This would be different if you use a second sparge of water at 168, which essentially is a mash out with a single sparge round.

If you infuse to reach 168F before draining, is that essentially a batch-sparge type of "mash-out"?

Sounds like a Mash-out and not a batch sparge, because your intent is to raise the grist temp to 168.

Hope this helps

Cheers
Preston