Who's brewing Sun Mar 29th?

[Jensen]

The ice is melting and the sun is shining! what a great day to brew. The Brown Shirt Brewing co. LLC will be firing up for another session today. Feel free to drop by for a pint and a brewing discussion if you like. Call or PM if you need directions.

[klickcue]

So, what kind of joyful juices did you and Clint create this last weekend?

[Jensen]

Clint's most favorite style of beer! 1.069 sg and 69 ibu wort. Well, I guises in this case an IPA!

Which brings up an interesting situation we have been having lately. Any beer under 1.060-1.065 we seem to hit all Promash targets absolutely right on the money. And 95 percent of the beers we brew are in this range. When we go above this gravity we lose percentage-- seems to be about 10 percent. This has all happened in the last year or so. The one thing that has changed for sure in the last year is we changed over to a batch sparge from a fly sparge... seems that we switched to a batch sparge because we were looking to see if we would get more efficency...

Any comments on the fly vs batch controversy that anyone has experienced?

[Bill]

Any comments on the fly vs batch controversy that anyone has experienced?

Can open, worms everywhere...

Well, I've only batch sparged my first few batches, but from what I've read and heard from others is that for higher gravity beers you should expect a lower efficiency percentage due to the increased amount of grains, but the same amount of water being used to rise the sugars from solution.
Personally, I would think that a good mashout (and a HERMS/RIMS to get the mash bed temp to a good 173°) and a nice slow fly sparge should do a pretty good job pulling the sugars.

There is no pro brewery that I've heard of that does a batch sparge, and there must be a reason. My guess would be efficiency.

p.s. No comment on the joyful juices you and Clint create.... >>shudder<<

[klickcue]

p.s. No comment on the joyful juices you and Clint create.... >>shudder<<

You ain't right!