Hot Water Pressurized Sparge and Other Newbie Questions

[sasteffl]

I'm just getting back into brewing after a 2 year hiatus and want to get more serious again. Today I started my first 5 gal batch of my Speckled Cow Recipe (a spotted cow knockoff). The original recipe I copied from another brewer called for a 10 min sparge.

I am a BIAB brewer and from what I understand, sparging is intended to help rinse the additional sugars off the grain and keep it in the mash (correct me if I'm wrong here).

In my garage, I'm fortunate to have a constant pressure pumping system at 70PSI coming out of a hot water faucet that gets to 120F and I have a small hose attachment with a pressure nozzle. I timed the pressure nozzle and figured out how long it took to get 3.3 gallons of water (what I needed for sparge).

Question 1) Is it OK if I have my wife spray the hot high pressure water over the grains bag while I hold it to act as the 'sparge'?

Question 2) I have millled grains that are about 2 years old but have been stored in ziploc bags, are they still good to use? I'm not a real picky beer drinker, just want a flavor close to my original recipe.

Question 3) I have an 80 qt kettle that I want to start using to make 10 gal batches of this stuff once I get the recipe down. It has a bottom tap to drain, but I've never used the thing before. The problem I have is A) That kettle is heavy as hell when it's full of water/mash, what type of setup have you seen that can lift this high enough to be able to use the tap and gravity to get the wort out?

I'm sure I'll think of more questions as you guys help me out, thanks in advance!

 

[J A]

1) You should clear it with your wife first. But seriously... if you're doing BIAB a dunk sparge will do you more good, I think.
2) No...you'll get terrible conversion efficiency and stale bread flavor.
3) You need a river system of some sort or a pump to work with a vessel that big.

 

[sasteffl]

1) You should clear it with your wife first. But seriously... if you're doing BIAB a dunk sparge will do you more good, I think.
2) No...you'll get terrible conversion efficiency and stale bread flavor.
3) You need a river system of some sort or a pump to work with a vessel that big.

Do you recommend a mash temp sparge or cold sparge?

Also, do you have a link to any pump/river systems that would work for this setup?

 

[J A]

Personally, I do a slow fly sparge with a false-bottom mash tun so I do a mash-out temperature rest and then sparge with 168 degree water.
Just do an image search for homebrew setup or something like that and you'll see hundreds of variations.

 

[Bubba Wade]

I brew BIAB technique, only a bit modified. After mashing at about 1.5 quarts per pound, I put the grain bag in a bucket of 135 degree water for a batch sparge. I stir it well and the grain gets rinsed pretty well. I usually hit a 73-78% efficiency, higher for low gravity beer, lower for high gravity beer.

In short, there are several effective approaches you can take and combine BIAB with sparging.