Glossary
Fly sparging
Sparging by adding rinse water at the same rate wort is drawn off, keeping a shallow layer above the grain bed throughout.
Also called continuous sparge, fly sparging.
The full record
Fly sparging has its own catalogue entry with the detail this page summarises — causes, thresholds, related styles and evidence.
Fly sparging — Rinse the grain bed continuously, adding sparge water at the same rate wort is drawn off so a shallow layer is maintained above the grain throughout.
More efficient than batch sparging because the rinse is continuous rather than diluted in one go, at the cost of taking longer and requiring the flow rates to be balanced.
Related
- Batch sparging — The discrete alternative.
More vocabulary
Arrested fermentation · Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Blending · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.