Charlie Papazian recipes

Was read Charlie's book and the intermediate brewing recipes.
All the recipes Strain sparge and transfer.Now this confuses me since i thought sparging is done to a grain bed and there is no grains in these recipes.
Anyone know what he is talking about?

Some intermediate recipes call for the use of steeping grains and/or mini mashing. I'll have to read up on that chaster again to know for sure what he is talking about, but probably means to strain grain.

All the recipes call for steeping the malts at the beginning for 30 minutes then removing, but i thought that was it so do you save them then run the wort thru them again?

If they're just steeping grains (already converted to sugars; no conversion from starch to sugar), you just remove the grains (in a bag), let them drain and toss 'em. If you're doing a partial mash instead of just steeping, you need to rinse the grains somehow, but for steeping just take them out and let them drain once.

the_bird said:

If they're just steeping grains (already converted to sugars; no conversion from starch to sugar), you just remove the grains (in a bag), let them drain and toss 'em. If you're doing a partial mash instead of just steeping, you need to rinse the grains somehow, but for steeping just take them out and let them drain once.

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I know all this thats why im confused by his recipes.
Some only have canned malt and dme but say Strain,sparge and add directly to cold water in fermenter.So what is he meaning by sparge it cant be what im thinking of since there are no grains.

CATFISHER74 said:

All the recipes call for steeping the malts at the beginning for 30 minutes then removing, but i thought that was it so do you save them then run the wort thru them again?

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You don't run wort through them again. You run clean, fresh 170 degree water through them, to "rinse" the grains. The lower gravity water helps to "pull" the sugars out.

IIRC, Charlie says to strain your wort when transferring into primary and then sparge, even if you're just sparging the spent hops.

JuanKenobi said:

IIRC, Charlie says to strain your wort when transferring into primary and then sparge, even if you're just sparging the spent hops.

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What does that mean put them in a strainer then pour the water thru them into your fermenter.

Yeah. It means that you pour your wort through a strainer or funnel w/ strainer into your primary fermenter and then sparge whatever is in the strainer w/ 170*F water. It's bad advice. There's no reason to sparge anything unless you are mashing grains. From your other posts you have a handle on the process. If you're following one of Charlie's intermediate recipes just ignore the 'sparge' step and you're good to go.

I dunno! I am noob at this but I brewed the No Sham Shamrock Ale from Charlie's book around St. Pats. It called for a steep of specialty grains plus the stuff that I roasted my self. After steeping in 3 Gals. I rinsed/sparged the grains with 2 more gallons and then went on to a full boil, Is it Sparging? Beats the crap outta me? I hope it tastes good. I'm planning on bottling this week end so I'll be drinking it soon

well post the results here when its ready.

The way i understood that is that he wasn't using a hop bag in the boil so he used the word "sparge" as filtering out the hops/grains as you pour into the fermenter, then he rinses them again to get all the goodness out. If you use a hop bag there's no need to "sparge" as he calls it... also like you, i thought of batch/fly sparging with AG. This is not what he meant, that was updated in 2003, 6 years later were using paint strainers lol. Go HBT.