Sparging?? What's this strange bird?

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Padraig OCinnead

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Yes I did a search of this forum to save time but found nada on this. Can someone point me in the right direction or offer some advice? I am wondering if anyone here knows much about sparging. Here's the skinny.

I have just returned to home brewing after a decade or so. I went to my local home brew store in KTown, On, and purchased makings for my first batch. I learned to brew from a buddy at work who was some Newfie Bayman who brewed like one (get the picture ?). This is how I first brewed. Through either luck or good teaching my batches usually turned out quite good, or good enough for a young broke soldier.

So here I am after buying my stuff and I decide to pickup a book with some recipes and a few refresher points. It's from Charlie Papazian "The Home brewers companion". I am brewing an india pale ale using malt extract (and using more malt extract vice dextrose etc...). In his book, and this recipe in particular he calls for sparging the hot wort into the primary fermenter.

I called the shop up to ask about it and the fella says to not worry about it, just pour the hot wort into the pail and proceed as if normal. What gives?

To sparge or not to sparge...

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Slainte...
 
Sparging is an all-grain term for slowly running hot water through mashed grain to get your wort. I've not heard of sparging in extract brewing. Did the recipe call for any grain? I can't think of how it would make any sense...
 
Padraig OCinnead said:
I called the shop up to ask about it and the fella says to not worry about it, just pour the hot wort into the pail and proceed as if normal. What gives?

Ah yes...the old HSA Ale ;)

You'd think more HBS owners would give better advice...
 
RightWingNut, Tophe96 and Janx,

Thanks for clearing it up for me. It seems that the recipe included sparging even though this was a malt extract recipe. As I said earlier I learned how to HB from this ol bayman and after reading through this forum and through the link provided by Tophe96 I can see that I picked up some terrible habits (HSA!! using chore boys to filter out hops!! :confused: ) from Tim (if you're reading this Tim sorry I finked on ya). I'd really like to not only homebrew but to understand why things do what they do, and what I can do affect any of them. I will stick to a few simple recipes for the first few batches but want to start applying some of the advices and tips that are presented here in this forum.

Thanks again all,

Cheers.
 
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