How To Do Sparging With My Brewery Equipment？


A correctly wort sparging operation is one of the basic skill for the craft beer breweries. With same raw materials, same beer brewery equipment etc for different brewers, there may be different result. Someone may get wort in high concentration, but someone may would get less wort with high concentration and high residual sugar. Today, we will help to do some clarifications on how to do sparging with your brewery equipment, hope it could help for the fresh brewers.



In order to get an ideal sparging result, the sparging operator should pay attention to several points as below:
1. The sparging water temperature
The good sparging water temperature should be controlled between 75-78℃, not lower than 70℃ and not higher than 80℃. A mass of emplastic will be washed out with too higher temperature, then the αenzyme activity will be destroyed and the work loose its light. If with too lower temperature, the residual sugar cannot be all removed, and the wort lautering speed would be slow.
 
2. Hold on tight to the sparging time
When the first wort is nearly ending, means the sparging should be started when the grain just show out to air. If too early, the content of the extractum in spent grain will be higher; If too later, the total spent time of lautering will be longer and wort will be oxidized more easily as well.
 
3. The total sparging devided into two or three times
The first-time sparging with less water, nearly 25% of the total sparging water. The main role of it is help to discharge the first wort in spent grain; The second-time sparging with more water, about 45%. It will wash out the extractum residues in spent grain; The thirt sparging will use about 30% water, it makes the content of the extractum in grain much lower.
 
4. The PH of the sparging water
The ph of the sparging water should under 6.0, it is better to adjust the acidity with Phosphoric acid or lactic acid. With PH 5.8-6.0,not only can reduce the dissolution of the polyphenols in grain husk; but also help to coagulating protein during boiling and reduce the wort chromaticity.
 
5. Mastery of the sparging strength and well control the concentration of raffinate.
Under excessively sparging, the polyphenol, pigment, silicate etc will be more wash out from the wheat husk, which will effect the beer quality. Besides, the concentration of the blending wort will be lower, it will spent more energy during boiling. So the concentrasion of the blending wort should be lower than the final wort 1.0-1.5 °P( For example for the 11°P beer, we can make the blending wort at 9.5-9.8), the raffinate concentration should control during 1.0-1.5°P.
 
If you have further questions on how to do sparging with your beer brewery equipment, please feel free to contact with Tiantai Beer Equipment.
 

Abby Wong
Project manager
Tiantai Beer Equipment
[email protected]