Quick question on the conclusion of the sparge.

Edit

Thanks so much, everyone! I didn't really know what else to say other than thanks for the information. I've read through all the links and am about to start my second brew.

The brew I made right before writing this is turning out ok--I just bottled it and it tastes like what I was expecting. I'm not very good at researching in advance and getting everything right at the get go, I'm better at kaizen--so All Grain 1 was adequate, All Grain 2 might be pretty good!

Thanks again:)

I finally put together some equipment for all-grain brewing and did my first batch. It seems to have gone ok. I guess there are a ton of different ways to do this but what I did was rapidly get the mash (about 10 pounds of grain) to around 150F, let it sit for 90 minutes, and then drain the sweet wort out the bottom--then I added additional hot water to the top and slowly drained it until I had about 6 gallons of wort.

There's several things that went wrong and about a million variations I want to try, but that was the gist of it. I am fairly confident that the process was sanitary and that the wort is fermenting into a sort of beer.

I was wondering when it's a good time to stop leeching sugars out of the grain. My first runnings were very sweet of course, but I stopped more because I was running out of space than because of the taste. I don't have my notes in front of me, but I was satisfied with the S.G. on the 6 gallons I claimed.

Why not run 8 gallons through and either boil it down to 5, or just do a few extra gallons on the lower gravity? Or collect 5 gallons of higher-gravity, then a gallon or two of low gravity and make small beer, or just condense those final gallons down to syrup for later use on the back burner?

Why not run 10 gallons? Is it an issue of running out of sugar, or is it an issue of low gravity runnings having bad stuff in them? When do I stop?

In any case, I think I stopped too soon because the mash still tastes really sweet. I froze all of it and have been slowly thawing and grinding portions in a cuisinart for bread dough and the bread is coming out kind of sugary.