no sparge barley wine?

hey everyone,

i've been asking quite a bit of questions lately, but i'm new at this and hope you guys can get me pointed in the right direction. i want to make a barley wine, but don't have a boil pot large enough to hold the volume of mash water and sparge water required. is it normal practice to do a barley wine using a no sparge technique and then sparging to produce a seperate lighter brew? is there anything that i'm going to lose in the barley wine by not sparging, thus shortening the boil time (i'm assuming, because i won't have the volume to allow for evaporation)? i really like the style but don't want to buy a huge boil pot because they aren't cheap (and my wife doesn't see the importance of beer as much as i do and won't give me the cash!). what kind of beer could i get from the second runnings? any help for a newbie would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Check out the wiki - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Parti-gyle

thanks for pointing me in the right direction. exactly what i was looking for.

has anyone ever tried this before? i'd really like to hear how this went for someone. i'm not really going to worry about calculating gravities for the "small beer". just going to brew it and hope it turns out good.

Sure. It's been done many times. However, you may find that it requires a larger mash tun to hold all the grain required. By sparging, you actually can use a smaller mash tun and get more out of the grain. Try batch sparging without a mashout step.


TL

It's the only way I make barley wine and other beers over 1.100. I mash thin enough to get all the volume I need from first runnings, then sparge for the smaller beer. Sometimes the small beer is great, other times it's just eh...

Thinkin of doin a parti-gyle Barleywine too. Did you have any trouble gettin a 1.100 w/ a thin mash, let alone, no sparge? Also, I heard the second brew is typically, half the gravity. Was this true for you BobbyM?

Honestly, they are not all that thin. 28lbs of malt absorbs 14 quarts of water so if you want to run off 8 gallons preboil, you strike with 42 quarts. That's 1.5qts/lb.

The sparge runoff is just about half the gravity, maybe more like 40%.