No Sparge 2-vessel HERMS, why not?

It's just the easiest thing for me - I've been trying to understand whether or not there are drawbacks - most of the literature seems to assume that while thin mashes are often more efficient they may not be "worth it" - but if your system is oversized and you are running a simple two-vessel heat exchange recirculator, thin mash no-sparge is the simplest - I do the following:

1. Calculate total water for entire brew and add that to my grains

2. Pump/Recirculate mash liquor through copper coils in boiling water (kettle) to raise temp when needed for each rest.

3. To lauter,
a. raise mash temp to 168-170
b. drain kettle of heating water
c. pump wort into kettle

So I default to thin mashes - is this so uncommon? This seems to me like about the simplest temp controlled mash system, two vessels + one pump (and a thermometer or temp controller), no filling extra water, just a few button pushes and hose connections.

I dont think that is very uncommon. Certainly simple enough. I can't comment personally, but I've heard no-sparge will give you a little less efficiency in the kettle, but certainly good conversion. Just some sugars will remain in the grain bed.

I like recirculating the mash through the HLT or heating vessel (not the kettle) and then using that water to sparge with instead of dumping it. To each their own, but your system looks good to me. No fiddling with manifolds (ie channeling), either, which is a plus.

I haven't brewed anything large enough to require extra water - I suspect I could collect up to 3 gallons of the heating water easily (I can lift and pour a 3 gallon pot easily) and add that while pumping into the kettle - if I needed more water for a monster 10 gallon beer I guess I could leave some of the heating water in the kettle

but this would only be required for high-gravity 10+ gallon batches using a 15 gallon mash tun and 20 gallon kettle

After going over BrewKaiser's batch-sparge analysis I've come up with a SUPER SIMPLE rule of thumb for calculating initial mash liquid and batch sparge liquid. This simple rule of thumb keeps you very near 75% brewhouse efficiency (based on his model).

Here's the rule:
Mash with your boil volume, batch sparge with as much water as your grain absorbs. Done

There's a few interesting caveats here:

1. this works to produce worts up to 1.1 OG, after that the mash will get thicker than 1.2 qt./lb.

2. if you're sizing this process to your mash tun you'll find that the amount of sparge water may require more than 1 batch - this is actually very elegant as it will tend close to the lines where you get more return for each batch addition - and keep brewhouse efficiency near 75%

I've used the same method aaronbeach suggests for a couple years and that is right on. the minute you start to recirculate though you pretty easily add 5-10 efficiency pts though.

Interesting - have you been following the rule of thumb I mentioned above? I haven't intentionally followed this yet - I just observed that based on BrewKaisers batch sparge model it would 1) keep brewhouse efficiency pretty consistent, 2) keep total mash size down allowing for big beers and 3) encourage batch sparging when its really matters

oh! and 4) a 7 year old that knows multiplication and division could calculate mash and sparge volumes

It was just what I've done. It wasn't something I specifically set out to do. I played for a while with the amount of water I used in my mash, and had good results for this. So wah la.

aaronbeach said:

After going over BrewKaiser's batch-sparge analysis I've come up with a SUPER SIMPLE rule of thumb for calculating initial mash liquid and batch sparge liquid. This simple rule of thumb keeps you very near 75% brewhouse efficiency (based on his model).

Here's the rule:
Mash with your boil volume, batch sparge with as much water as your grain absorbs. Done

There's a few interesting caveats here:

1. this works to produce worts up to 1.1 OG, after that the mash will get thicker than 1.2 qt./lb.

2. if you're sizing this process to your mash tun you'll find that the amount of sparge water may require more than 1 batch - this is actually very elegant as it will tend close to the lines where you get more return for each batch addition - and keep brewhouse efficiency near 75%

Click to expand...

Wow, this rule of thumb is very appealing, but flies in the face of what I've been doing. I'm brewing a cream ale tomorrow that has 9 lbs of grain/corn (I'm adding some sugar in the boil). I plan on a 90 minute boil, so beer smith estimates a 7.22 gallon pre-boil volume. So given this scenario, you'd really mash 9 lbs of grain with 7.22 gallons and just sparge with the 1-2 gallons that were absorbed?

I guess my question is: You mentioned caveats on the high OG side of things - are there any on the low side?

If you're batch sparging, it's really not a 2 vessel system. I understand what you mean, but collecting the sparge water in a 3rd vessel temporarily doesn't make it a 2 vessel system.

It works for small beers - the mash is just thinner - and braukeisers model covers this (maybe really small batches could be hurt, but that would depend on how you heated it, etc...)