No sparge....am i going nuts

Ok so I brewed my first real no sparge batch this weekend...and I want to see if anyone else experienced what I did...I brewed a Belgian white with some grains I has sitting around....6.5ld Belgian pils and 4.5wheat....I was concerned doing no sparge that I would loose some efficiency so I tossed in 2lb of 2-row...thinking ok...maybe I'll hit my og with a 60 or 65 percent efficiency with that...but get this...when I took my preboil I was already at what I was hoping for my og....so I ended with nearly a 78% efficiency on my mash...I triple checked my readying and even checked my OG with my hydrometer and refractometer and got the same (within a point) readying...

Are other no spargers getting the same thing??

Will this effect my beer in any adverse way....not doing a sparge???


Notes:
My no sparge is a bit different then what you might read about...I put my false bottom and a large mesh bag in my 10 gal HD cooler...dough in at about 1.75/lb...and then I Mash out with whatever I need to get my boil volume of about 6.5 gals or so...I mash out at 168. Then I run it off to my kettle and boil...it worked awesome!!!

Sounds great. I would like to try that.

I do no sparge BIAB, I double crush my grains and consistently get 78-80% efficiencies.

I've been routinely hitting 75ish on sub 1.050 beers doing a no sparge on my batch sparge hose braid setup. Surprised the hell out of me, considering I kept the crush the same and grain weight the same.

I do a modified no sparge- I leave out 2 gallons of the mash water so that I can add it as a boiling infusion just after the mash rest, and just prior to vorlauf. So, it's not a sparge, just an infusion. I've hit 75-78ish on just about every batch south of 1.050, which is what I mainly brew lately.

I ain't ever batch sparging anything under 1.050.

Well I am going to try and brew a IPA in a week that I am shooting or 1.065 on....and over labor day I am going to shoot for an old ale that I wanna hit 1.070+


It is good to hear I am not nuts!!!

GweedoeBrew said:

Well I am going to try and brew a IPA in a week that I am shooting or 1.065 on....and over labor day I am going to shoot for an old ale that I wanna hit 1.070+


It is good to hear I am not nuts!!!

Click to expand...

See that's where I'm betting things change. I imagine lower gravity beers do fine with no sparge, but wonder about larger gravity beers. I remember a byo article pretty recently stating that no sparging on beers with an OG over 1.050 "drops in a predictable way". I have zero experience trying it, as I don't know what my 52qt. tun will hold volume wise, but I'm sure someone here who isn't me with 3 Homebrews in will be able to explain it.

My 1.070 Scottish Ale hit 79% eff.
I recently did a 1.062 IPA that got 76% eff.
Most of my recipes are in the 1.050 range, and their effs are pretty consistent with these results. I haven't brewed anything above 1.070 yet.

I haven't noticed a significant drop in eff with higher gravs. But like I posted earlier, I do a double crush on my grains, so that probably helps a lot.