I do thick mashes with 1.0 to 1.2 qts/lb, and I batch sparge. I use an additional 2.0 to 2.2 qts/lb after the mash. Some of this post-mash water is in the form of a mash out (a small hot infusion at the end of the mash, before I run anything off). The rest of this post-mash water is used after the first runnings are in the kettle, and I do one dump of water into the tun, stir, and drain again.
The amount of mashout water is determined by the goal of wanting 50% of my total wort come from the first runnings and the other 50% from the second runnings.
There have been a couple of times where I felt I was over-sparging this way.
Now... I've been reading a lot on HBT lately about people doing thin mashes to keep proper pH and doing only a little sparging, and I've been thinking about making adjustments to my own process to follow along these lines.
What I was wondering was... has anyone ever done their mash and then, before draining ANYTHING to the kettle, just dumped all of their sparge water into the tun and just done a single large runoff to the kettle?
I'm pretty sure I can get all of my water into my 10gal cooler at one time, so I was thinking about trying this on a batch.
The amount of mashout water is determined by the goal of wanting 50% of my total wort come from the first runnings and the other 50% from the second runnings.
There have been a couple of times where I felt I was over-sparging this way.
Now... I've been reading a lot on HBT lately about people doing thin mashes to keep proper pH and doing only a little sparging, and I've been thinking about making adjustments to my own process to follow along these lines.
What I was wondering was... has anyone ever done their mash and then, before draining ANYTHING to the kettle, just dumped all of their sparge water into the tun and just done a single large runoff to the kettle?
I'm pretty sure I can get all of my water into my 10gal cooler at one time, so I was thinking about trying this on a batch.