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Sparge Time on Gallon Batches...

T

therobot

So I'm trying to perfect a recipe, and I've got five slightly different takes on the hop profile that I'm working on.  (Some involve FWH, others don't, different IBU ratings, etc.)  Since I want to have them side by side to blind compare I have to do them at the same time, but I've no need for 25 gallons of essentially the same beer all at once.  ;)

I came up with the idea of doing small growler batches (approximately one gallon each) and used BeerSmith to come up with the recipes.

Now to the question.  BeerSmith doesn't really say anything about how long to sparge for, just the volume to sparge with.  I've sparged for up to an hour on bigger batches, but it seems like I'd be running water after that long (with a trickle of a flow.)  Should I just keep track of the OG coming out of my lauter tun and stop sparging like Palmer recommends, at about 1.008 or whenever I run out of sparge water (according to the volumes set up by BeerSmith?)

Anyways, first time poster on the forums.  Been reading a lot, figured it was time to join the community.

Here's to a good quaff.
Kyle
 
To specify further, the reason that I actually want to continuous sparge instead of batch sparging is that I want to FWH, and have never really heard of FWH with batch sparging, and I assume that's cause the hops don't spend enough time in the mash.
 
therobot said:
To specify further, the reason that I actually want to continuous sparge instead of batch sparging is that I want to FWH, and have never really heard of FWH with batch sparging, and I assume that's cause the hops don't spend enough time in the mash.

To clarify, First Wort Hopping (FWH) is merely putting some hops in the boil kettle as the first clear wort is entering from the mash tun runoff.  Batch or continuous will work fine with FWH.  The FWHs soak up ~150F wort while the sparge continues and while the boil starts, and supposedly good things come from that. 

Mash hops is putting hops in the actual mash.  I believe mash hops create mostly aroma, zero bittering, and I'm not sure about flavor.  Again, you could do mash hopping with either batch or continuous, but fewer people seem to promote mash hopping.

A friend is a very experienced batch sparger and he's done some FWH'ing recently with good results. 
 
Thanks.  Did a little bit more reading and wonder how I missed the fact that you add it to the boiler on like, /every/ article.  Thanks!  I'm gonna try this with batch sparging then, make my life a little easier at first.

Kyle
 
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