I'm with you....

IMO, do what you wanted in the former description of a typical sparge:

-Mash-in
-voflauf
-begin to lauter until the grain bed is exposed
-maintain 2" of water on grain bed with the rakes slowly moving
-stop once P or volume has been reached in the BK

One thing I do differently is that I know how much sparge water to use. I don't keep adding past the point that would eventually overfill my kettle. When I reach my desired sparge volume, I turn off the sparge and continue to run off. Just a bit slower to keep grain dust settled in the lauter tun and not rushing out with the last runnings. By the time that dust starts to creep into my runoff, I stop. That's almost exactly at the same time as kettle full. And same time as my post runoff gets to 2-3 degrees P and less than pH 5.8 and a reasonably small amount of post runoff. And kettle just at boil. It's a bit tricky, but after a few attempts on a new brewhouse, can make it work perfectly.

Don't know why you would 'batch sparge'. Seems like a homebrewing holdover.

I should have mentioned that I do calculate my mash in, and sparge water levels. But the sparge water level fluctuates a little bit depending on brewhouse efficiency.

I'm not personally batch sparging, it's the Indian (not native American) installers that are insisting we batch sparge. They are used to making Kingfisher, and don't really understand "craft beer". The filter from my BK to my HeatEX is 6" and 3/4" piping....Doing an IPA was "fun".

Do your own thing....

I've worked in India for many years. In my personal opinion, most Indians have a lot to learn about craft beer. Not all, granted. There are many new brewpubs that make a nice pint. Calculate how much water you need to fill kettle, then sparge appropriately. Don't use their method. Kingfisher is an awful beer--butter bomb from 6-day old "beer" in their flagship Bangalore plant, so please don't take their advice. You have the right idea. Do your own thing and advance confidently....

Ya they do have a lot to learn about craft beer, and I gave up trying to get them out of a batch sparge, and lautering for 6hours. Once the installers leave I"ll implement my own brewing techniques.

Thanks for the replies.

you can get the best of both worlds by doing a modified program:

Run off the first worts a bit below the grain bed
stop runoff and refloat the bed
fly sparge the remainder.

the first worts are going to be the strongest and most viscous. If you can run as much of them as possible off, it avoids diluting them with sparge water.

I'm surprised they batch sparged. I worked in a few Indian breweries producing Kingfisher, looking at their BH efficiencies, and none of them batch sparged - but since they have at least one brewery in most wet states they probably have over 30 breweries producing KF - so mine is only a small sample.

I agree with Phillip, batch sparging is time inefficient and probably extract inefficient as well - stick to continuous sparging once you are about to uncover the bed, possibly with continuous slow raking. A manometer system is of huge help to monitor bed compaction and unless you have transferred from a mash mixer system, you probably don't need to rake continuously. Depending on your bed loading, you should easily be able to run off in 4 hours or less - probably closer to 2.

What's a manometer system?

There are 2 sight glasses one for the bed, and one for the water to see the differential between the two, if that's what you mean.

We are transferring from a mash mixer into the lauter tun, we then vorlauf for about 7-8mins, then begin to sparge.

Manometer system - what you appear to have to help you determine when the bed is blinding.

Do as Phillip says, though I would vorlauf for far less time, only enough to transfer the very weak wort from below the plates on top of the mash bed so you don't waste the washing out effect of very weak wort.

Many if not most microbrewery lauter tuns I have seen have far too few rakes and rotate far too fast, and often destroy the bed layering rather than gently increase the porosity of the bed without mixing layers excessively, and they therefore worsen the runoff gravity profile, extending the runoffs if you want to extract everything sensible.

Phillip - I worked at the Bangalore brewery about 10 years ago, and following my visit, I recommended so many changes, they were going to replace the brewhouse with a mash filter set up, but when that actually took place I don't know as my UK colleague finished in India about 6 months later as well. Not sure what happened about the rest of the plant, as the brewhouse was my main remit - though I did give a lot of feedback, most of it unfortunately not in glowing terms on much of the rest of their process. A major problem was, and probably still is, is the use of white and green glass for beer instead of brown.

Great fun though, even if it was over 45 C in the brewhouse.

The Indians are convinced, and trying to convince me that the reason it is stalled is "complex sugars" and because we didn't do a step mash of 45C (113F), 64C (147F), 72C (161F)..... We mashed in at 66.7C (152F).

It's like beating my fucken head off a wall, only way less fun. They are convinced batch sparging is the way to go as well, even though I tried to explain sugars in suspension and keep a clean hot layer of water on top will get more of the sugars out. I might as well stick my head in a fucken tandoori oven.

That's because the malt quality out there is so variable, for a number of reasons, including lack of water and malting capacity to allow proper malting, the tiny fields of varying breeds / quality of barely, and the use in the larger breweries at least of large amounts of rice or maize adjuncts, which require step mashing for best results in their case. They are not used to decent quality malt with good quantities of enzymes that only require isothermal mashes.

You might have a fairly high FG at that temperature, depending on mash thickness, but it should have converted the starch to sugars OK.

Bit slow off the mark here. Are you actually in India now? If so, you will need to do a stepped mash if you are using India sourced malt.

If you are using imported malt from say Europe or Aus, then unless it is very poorly modified lager malt with low modification, primarily for lager production, then you should almost certainly be OK with a single temperature infusion mash, though if you have heating and stirring in a separate mash mixer, then raising to 77 C before transfer will be worth doing.

Quick response: I'm using Weyermann's! They keep saying "but my friend in Calcutta uses step mash, and no fermantation problems". I'm trying to explain the low quality malt and the reason to step. Then they call Fermentis, and they asked them if I was doing a step mash, which reinforced them thinking they were right. Fermentis, I would imagine, figured they were using under modified indian malt and need to step. So infuriating. Yes, I'm in India right now.

My final should be 4.5P, and right now it's stuck at 7.5P.

Which is the main malt you are using? Liquor to grist ratio?

I wouldn't expect the mash to have caused the yeast to stall that high, which leaves oxygen, but you shouldn't need to oxygenate if using fresh dried yeast (lots of discussions about that on this site), or lack of nutrients such as copper of zinc, or underpitching for the temperature. A couple of days ago, I checked for a lager brew and was advised to use about 80 g / hl for a lager yeast fermenting at 14 C, the bottom end of Fermentis recommendations (for saflager 23) - unlike the ale yeasts which I have used successfully at about half that rate.

If you are in India...

Then you might be using RO for water (otherwise known as the salt-the-earth option). If that's the case, it could possibly be that you need more minerals for effective fermentation. Zinc and calcium come to mind. But this sparge technique they're advocating is bunk. No way that "batch" sparging could come close to a proper traditional sparge in terms to time or brewhouse efficiency. If it were, then the megabrewer community would have adopted it. Tell them to go sell their idea to AB-Inbev! I also used to employ Weyermann malt in India (Bangalore) with great results. Then we were forced to buy from local Indian reseller of Weyermann. That killed our use of that brand! He might force you to go elsewhere for malt after you've dealt with them a while.