Do I have to sparge?

I just received a recipe that will be my first BIAB recipe. The brewer that sent it to me scaled it down to 5gal for me for BIAB. In the recipe, he noted that I would mash in 10lbs of grain with 12.50qt/3.125gal @ 163.4F, step temp at 150F for 75min. Then he calls for a fly sparge with 5.75gal of 168F water.

Now since I'll be mashing in a cooler, can I just start off with 8.875gal of water to mash with? Are there any conversions I have to make?

Recipe is as follows

Malts

• 7lbs Pale Malt
• 1.5lbs Flaked Wheat
• 1.5lbs White Wheat Malt

Hops

• 0.50oz Northern Brewer @ 60 min

Flavorings

• 0.50oz Bitter Orange Peel @ 5min
• 0.50oz Sweet Orange Peel @ 5min
• 0.25lbs Coriander @ 1min

Yeast

• WLP400 Belgian Wit Ale

No sparge necessary just add all the water to the mash & you'll be good to go!

If you don't sparge, you'll lose some efficiency due to the sugars left in the liquid held in the grains. Also, you'll need to recalculate the water temperature to reach the same mash temp.

Short answer - no. No sparge needed with BIAB.

The longer answer is longer. Will your kettle hold the full volume of water and grain?

Not need but there are reasons for one.

I don't sparge and do no-sparge full-volume BIAB all the time. Efficiency and consistency are where I want them.

I would not use that much water but your system may be very different.

rmyurick said:

If you don't sparge, you'll lose some efficiency due to the sugars left in the liquid held in the grains. Also, you'll need to recalculate the water temperature to reach the same mash temp.

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Ahhh Okay. If I do stick with sparging, the brewer said to fly sparge, but since I don't have a fly sparge setup, can I just dunk sparge?

Water requirements for each brew method and individual's system are different. You can use the calculator here: http://pricelessbrewing.github.io/BiabCalc/ to figure out your water and strike temperature requirements.

How long do you plan to boil? You should lose 1 - 1.25 gal/hr in the boil. Then you'll lose 0.75 - 1.0 gal to grain absorption (which is less than with a traditional MLT.) with a good long drain and/or squeeze. If you dump everything from the kettle into the fermenter then you won't have any kettle trub losses. So, to net about 5.5 gal to the fermenter, with a one hour boil, you will need to start with about 7.5 - 7.75 gal of strike water.

You should keep track of your strike volume, pre-boil volume, post-boil volume, volume to your fermenter, and final bottled/kegged volume, so you can fine tune your individual process losses, and better hit your volume targets in the future.

Edit: Also, a full volume mash with BIAB does not necessarily have lower efficiency than brewing with a traditional three vessel system. There are too many variables with different set ups to make such a general statement. I typically overshoot my OG when using full volume BIAB, which means my efficiency is better than the recipe assumes.

Brew on

AQUILAS said:

Ahhh Okay. If I do stick with sparging, the brewer said to fly sparge, but since I don't have a fly sparge setup, can I just dunk sparge?

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Lots of us do, I dunk and even cool water sparge, I cant see any real difference after the steeping is all done.

soccerdad said:

Short answer - no. No sparge needed with BIAB.

The longer answer is longer. Will your kettle hold the full volume of water and grain?

Click to expand...

Well I'll be mashing in a 70qt cooler so it should be big enough to old 10lbs of grain with ~8.8gal of water.

Gavin C said:

Not need but there are reasons for one.

I don't sparge and do no-sparge full-volume BIAB all the time. Efficiency and consistency are where I want them.

I would not use that much water but your system may be very different.

Click to expand...

Ahh okay.

I should just play around with a recipe calculator to figure out the full volume then?

doug293cz said:

Water requirements for each brew method and individual's system are different. You can use the calculator here: http://pricelessbrewing.github.io/BiabCalc/ to figure out your water and strike temperature requirements.

How long do you plan to boil? You should lose 1 - 1.25 gal/hr in the boil. Then you'll lose 0.75 - 1.0 gal to grain absorption (which is less than with a traditional MLT.) with a good long drain and/or squeeze. If you dump everything from the kettle into the fermenter then you won't have any kettle trub losses. So, to net about 5.5 gal to the fermenter, with a one hour boil, you will need to start with about 7.5 - 7.75 gal of strike water.

You should keep track of your strike volume, pre-boil volume, post-boil volume, volume to your fermenter, and final bottled/kegged volume, so you can fine tune your individual process losses, and better hit your volume targets in the future.

Brew on

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Thanks for that calculator! I'll play with that on my lunch break.

Boil should be the standard 60 minute boil and yes I just dump everything from the kettle to fermenter (actually before I started brewing, that was one of the articles that gave me one less thing to worry about!).

Will do. I try to take meticulously take notes, so I'll definitely have to add those into my brew notebook.

Firewalker11 said:

Lots of us do, I dunk and even cool water sparge, I cant see any real difference after the steeping is all done.

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Sounds good!

@Aquilas

This is just a copy and paste of a recent post of mine. Just a rough example of a volume calculation on my system. May be of no use to you.

A rough example on my setup. Your numbers will not be the same.

5.5 gallon batch
60 minute boil
9lb grain bill

7.4 gallons of strike water

I lose 0.045 gallons/pound of grain to absorption

-0.4 gallons lost to absorption
7 gallon preboil
-1 gallon boil off

=6 gallons in kettle after boil.

-0.25 lost to trub, hops absorption, and plate chiller

-0.25 gallons of shrinkage (4% is a constant value for shrinkage)

=5.5 gallons into the fermentor

-0.5 gallons after fermentation to trub in the fermentor

=5 gallons into the keg/bottles

I work off
0.96 gallon/hour boil off
0.045 gallons lost to absorption
0.25 gallons trub loss (kettle, chiller hops)

I squeeze the bag to get this low absorption number. Not hard to do.

I don't sparge so all my water goes in at the start of the process

With such a large cooler, and corresponding large headspace, you're probably gonna have a little more difficult time maintaining mash temps. Just keep that in mind and have some hot water on hand should you need it to keep temps up.

Gavin C said:

@Aquilas

This is just a copy and paste of a recent post of mine. Just a rough example of a volume calculation on my system. May be of no use to you.

A rough example on my setup. Your numbers will not be the same.

5.5 gallon batch
60 minute boil
9lb grain bill

7.4 gallons of strike water

I lose 0.045 gallons/pound of grain to absorption

-0.4 gallons lost to absorption
7 gallon preboil
-1 gallon boil off

=6 gallons in kettle after boil.

-0.25 lost to trub, hops absorption, and plate chiller

-0.25 gallons of shrinkage (4% is a constant value for shrinkage)

=5.5 gallons into the fermentor

-0.5 gallons after fermentation to trub in the fermentor

=5 gallons into the keg/bottles

I work off
0.96 gallon/hour boil off
0.045 gallons lost to absorption
0.25 gallons trub loss (kettle, chiller hops)

I squeeze the bag to get this low absorption number. Not hard to do.

I don't sparge so all my water goes in at the start of the process

Click to expand...

Wow! I appreciate that you took the time to do this. Really good insight. I'll probably play with my kettle tonight and see how much boil off I get after 60 minutes. At least I can start with that number.

I'll be squeezing as well. Looking to get some gloves for it.

TexasWine said:

With such a large cooler, and corresponding large headspace, you're probably gonna have a little more difficult time maintaining mash temps. Just keep that in mind and have some hot water on hand should you need it to keep temps up.

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Definitely. That's a concern that I had when I was recommended this cooler by someone. I asked them about headspace vs heat loss and he said that this cooler holds temp well and so far, he said he preheats the tun before mashing and he hasn't had a problem with losing heat throughout the whole mash. I just took him for his word since he highly recommended this particular cooler.

I would have just gone with the 52qt version of this cooler (apparently, the main selling point of using this cooler as a mash tun is because it can keep ice for up to 5 days), but for some odd reason, at my local walmart, this 70qt was the same price as the 52qt. Figured I'd just get the 70qt to future-proof myself in case I may want to brew bigger beers.

AQUILAS said:

Wow! I appreciate that you took the time to do this. Really good insight. I'll probably play with my kettle tonight and see how much boil off I get after 60 minutes. At least I can start with that number.

I'll be squeezing as well. Looking to get some gloves for it.

Click to expand...

No worries. happy to provide any small help I can.

You could do a test boil like this. Again sorry if you've already planned this all.

• Start with 5 gallons and bring to a boil with the lid on.
• Once boiling, take the lid off and boil for 15 minutes.
• Turn off the heat and put the lid back on.
• Allow it to cool to room-temp
• Measure the amount boiled off.
• Multiply x4 to get your hourly boil-off.

Not going to be as accurate as a full hour test boil but would be a decent starting point. Measurement error are always present. Minimize these as much as you can for better control of volumes.

Etched Volume markings make volume measures very simple


On the squeezing. I raise the bag letting most of the wort drain in that first 20 seconds or so. Place it in a collander over the pot. Tighten up on the bag by spinning it around. It cinches ever tghter and the wort comes flowing out. I keep squeezing till I hit my desired preboil volume.

Collander (disregard seive don't use it anymore)


Gravity works great too but I don't have the facility for a hoist. Collander is a good middle ground. Latex gloves keep my hands and brew gear mess free.

Squeezed Bag


You might find some ideas in my thread/article below that might be of use.

A fairly easy solution would be to batch-sparge: mash with 3.75 g.water, drain, then infuse another 3.75 g.& drain that.

Gavin C said:

No worries. happy to provide any small help I can.

You could do a test boil like this. Again sorry if you've already planned this all.

• Start with 5 gallons and bring to a boil with the lid on.
• Once boiling, take the lid off and boil for 15 minutes.
• Turn off the heat and put the lid back on.
• Allow it to cool to room-temp
• Measure the amount boiled off.
• Multiply x4 to get your hourly boil-off.

Not going to be as accurate as a full hour test boil but would be a decent starting point. Measurement error are always present. Minimize these as much as you can for better control of volumes.

Etched Volume markings make volume measures very simple
View attachment 294309

On the squeezing. I raise the bag letting most of the wort drain in that first 20 seconds or so. Place it in a collander over the pot. Tighten up on the bag by spinning it around. It cinches ever tghter and the wort comes flowing out. I keep squeezing till I hit my desired preboil volume.

Collander (disregard seive don't use it anymore)
View attachment 294307

Gravity works great too but I don't have the facility for a hoist. Collander is a good middle ground. Latex gloves keep my hands and brew gear mess free.

Squeezed Bag
View attachment 294308

My might find some ideas in my thread/article below that might be of use.

Click to expand...

Not a small help at all! BIG help!

Good point about doing a 15minute boil. Depending on how tonight goes, I may just end up doing 15 minutes. I don't have any etching on my kettle, so I just filled up my 5gallon jug and after pouring in each gallon, I marked where it was on my stir spoon and etched it with a dremel. My boil off calculation may not end up as an exact number.

Since I have you on the line, outside of a gravity reading after the boil, do I assume I take a preboil gravity reading as well?

AQUILAS said:

Not a small help at all! BIG help!

Good point about doing a 15minute boil. Depending on how tonight goes, I may just end up doing 15 minutes.

Since I have you on the line, outside of a gravity reading after the boil, do I assume I take a preboil gravity reading as well?

Click to expand...

I always take a preboil gravity and volume reading. I cool the sample and the hydrometer to 60F in the fridge prior to taking a reading.

I measure volume from the kettle markings.

I feed this info to Beersmith and it calculates the mash efficiency.

This is a very useful thing to know as it tells you good a job you are doing at

• extracting the starches from the grains and
• converting them to sugars and
• getting them into you kettle.

Mash efficiency
Knowing it can help point to areas where improvements are needed. Gradually as the process is refined from brew to brew you will get very consistent mash efficiencies. 80+% is routine and 90+% is achievable with BIAB.

I don't mention the numbers to puff out my chest but to merely to illustrate how effective and consistent BIAB can be if you are precise in your methods.

AQUILAS said:

Not a small help at all! BIG help!

Good point about doing a 15minute boil. Depending on how tonight goes, I may just end up doing 15 minutes. I don't have any etching on my kettle, so I just filled up my 5gallon jug and after pouring in each gallon, I marked where it was on my stir spoon and etched it with a dremel. My boil off calculation may not end up as an exact number.

Since I have you on the line, outside of a gravity reading after the boil, do I assume I take a preboil gravity reading as well?

Click to expand...

To calculate all of your efficiency numbers:

• Mash efficiency (= Conversion_efficiency * Lauter_efficiency)
• Conversion efficiency
• Lauter efficiency
• Brewhouse efficiency
• As packaged efficiency

You need to make the following measurements:

• Mash strike water volume
• SG of wort in mash. Can also use first runnings SG if sparging, or BK pre-boil SG if no sparge
• Pre-boil volume
• Pre-boil SG
• Post-boil volume
• Post-boil SG
• Volume into fermenter
• Volume into bottles/kegs

All volumes need to be corrected to 68˚F (or 60˚F, if that's the calibration temp of your hydrometer), so if measuring at another temperature, make note of the temp so you can do the correction.

If you want to learn about efficiency calculations you can look at my posts here, here, and here.

Brew on

rmyurick said:

If you don't sparge, you'll lose some efficiency due to the sugars left in the liquid held in the grains. Also, you'll need to recalculate the water temperature to reach the same mash temp.

Click to expand...

Not true. I press the dickins out of my grain bag and once tried to sparge to see what was left .... nuttin'

Perhaps if you have a really large grain amt you cant press/squeeze all the liquid out a sparge would work.

This thread has some outstanding information! Great job guys!

Some other points to consider on a homebrew level is does your increase in efficiency outweigh any other costs such as energy requirements or your time.
I would imagine that sparging is a carry-over from the industrial process that was introduced to cut costs/increase profits and not to increase quality.

I BIAB and would only sparge if I needed to compensate for any loss of volume when mashing.

I'd encourage you to have your grains crushed finely - it will help your efficiency. IN fact, last time I went to a homebrew store to pick up some all-grain kits, I told him I'd be doing BIAB and without even being prompted, he just said, "Hold on - let me run these grains through again for you."

I would think you'd get some astringency from the smaller crush. Maybe it's time for a Brulosophy exbeeriment. Coors pulverizes everything into flour and uses filter presses to extract the wort. To me, that's a more industrial process. Sparging is a more traditional process.

There are those (see biabrewing) who would say that full volume BIAB includes the sparge step (rinsing of grains) because of the volume of water that the grains are in for the length of the mash. The term used is 'passive sparge' versus the 'active sparge' that you get in a 3 vessel system where you add new hot liquor to rinse and bring you up to full volume, so to rmyurick's point above .. Active Sparge is indeed more traditional, whereas Passive Sparge is a newer variant. Not that any of this is important, but those terms did help me to understand the process better.

rmyurick said:

I would think you'd get some astringency from the smaller crush. Maybe it's time for a Brulosophy exbeeriment. Coors pulverizes everything into flour and uses filter presses to extract the wort. To me, that's a more industrial process. Sparging is a more traditional process.

Click to expand...

To my knowledge there is no correlation between crush and astrigency. It's more an issue with temp and pH. I've gone down to 0.010 with no issues. Others on here use a blender and essentially turn everything into flour.

soccerdad said:

There are those (see biabrewing) who would say that full volume BIAB includes the sparge step (rinsing of grains) because of the volume of water that the grains are in for the length of the mash. The term used is 'passive sparge' versus the 'active sparge' that you get in a 3 vessel system where you add new hot liquor to rinse and bring you up to full volume, so to rmyurick's point above .. Active Sparge is indeed more traditional, whereas Passive Sparge is a newer variant. Not that any of this is important, but those terms did help me to understand the process better.

Click to expand...

That's a load of hooey. They're just make'n $h!t up. A thin, uniform concentration mash is not a "passive" or any other kind of sparge. Sparging is adding fresh water to rinse more sugar out of the grain after some (in many cases most) of the original wort has been drained. Sparging rinses some of the residual sugar that was left in the grain bed after previous draining. We should all be opposed to arbitrarily redefining words that have well established meanings. If words don't mean the same thing to everyone, then communication becomes extremely difficult.

Any wort absorbed in the grain bed will contain some of the available sugar, so sparging will aways increase extraction efficiency (extracted sugar/available sugar), unless you can remove 100% of the wort from the grain bed without sparging (pretty much a physical impossibility). And, the more sugar you have extracted from the grain bed, the less efficiency improvement you will get from additional sparging. Since sparging extracts more sugar from the grain bed, additional sparging will always suffer from diminishing returns.

A no sparge process that leaves less residual wort in the grain bed or MLT can have a higher efficiency than a batch sparged process that leaves more residual wort in the grain bed or MLT. But in cases of equal amount of residual wort, the batch sparge process will always have higher efficiency. Things are more complicated for continuous (fly) sparging.

Brew on

Like I said, it helped me to understand the "no sparge", full volume mash process, but YMMV .. if it doesn't help, don't use it.

IMO a better phrase might be that it uses the "sparge water" and adds it to the strike volume, but is not actually sparging with it. A passive sparge is a misnomer as the definition of sparging implies an active process.

If you want a better understanding of why a batch sparge provides better efficiency than the same volume of water in a full volume mash (assuming the same grain absorption/MLT losses), check out my post here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=7029026&postcount=13. I go thru some simplified math that shows how you get more sugar in the BK with a sparge.

Of course if the full volume mash has lower grain absorption/MLT losses, then the full volume mash can have better efficiency. This can be the case with BIAB vs. a conventional MLT, if the BIAB grain absorption is 0.05 - 0.06 gal/lb vs. 0.11 - 0.13 gal/lb for the MLT.

Brew on

doug293cz said:

That's a load of hooey. They're just make'n $h!t up. :

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Well thanks for standing up on this one Doug. I recall reading this a while back and raising an eyebrow. The author insisted full volume BIAB was sparging...that's most creative at best.

That ain't sparging where I come from....not even close.

I think they were trying to separate BIAB from the inherent drawbacks of no sparge brewing, but sorry, there is no "passive sparge."

I hate to bump my own thread, but this brew day is nigh! Actually, my brew ingredients should be sent soon, but my brew bag has decided to take a detour and go sight-seeing in San Diego instead of heading straight to my mash tun.

I'm still planning on going with a full volume mash. I just want to confirm that the only thing that I will have to change is the volume of water and the grain bill stays the same. I will play around with beersmith later on today to figure out how much water I should start with.

AQUILAS said:

I hate to bump my own thread, but this brew day is nigh! Actually, my brew ingredients should be sent soon, but my brew bag has decided to take a detour and go sight-seeing in San Diego instead of heading straight to my mash tun.

I'm still planning on going with a full volume mash. I just want to confirm that the only thing that I will have to change is the volume of water and the grain bill stays the same. I will play around with beersmith later on today to figure out how much water I should start with.

Click to expand...

Correct. Leave the grain-bill unchanged.

The temperature! If you start out with more water, it won't need to be as hot.

rmyurick said:

The temperature! If you start out with more water, it won't need to be as hot.

Click to expand...

When you say water, do you mean the strike water temp or the mash water temp?

AQUILAS said:

When you say water, do you mean the strike water temp or the mash water temp?

Click to expand...

Strike temp water.

Check out my calculator, it will do the math a lot quicker then setting up beersmith. Then if you really want to, you can use it as a "target" to give you insurance for a reference to let you know when you have beersmith set up correctly.

pricelessbrewing said:

Strike temp water.

Check out my calculator, it will do the math a lot quicker then setting up beersmith. Then if you really want to, you can use it as a "target" to give you insurance for a reference to let you know when you have beersmith set up correctly.

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Sorry for the late reply @pricelessbrewing, but I'll definitely check your calculator!

I haven't had a chance to set up beersmith on my computer yet as I'm planning on getting a new laptop and I don't want to waste a key on my old laptop. So this'll definitely help. Thanks!

pricelessbrewing said:

Strike temp water.

Check out my calculator, it will do the math a lot quicker then setting up beersmith. Then if you really want to, you can use it as a "target" to give you insurance for a reference to let you know when you have beersmith set up correctly.

Click to expand...

Sorry to quote you again (for some reason, my work computer is bugging out when I hit that edit button).

But since this will be my first BIAB, is it safe to use the default figures for the trub from fermenter, grain absorption, hop absorption? I'll be playing with my kettle today after work to see if i can figure out what my boil off rate will be.

AQUILAS said:

Sorry to quote you again (for some reason, my work computer is bugging out when I hit that edit button).

But since this will be my first BIAB, is it safe to use the default figures for the trub from fermenter, grain absorption, hop absorption? I'll be playing with my kettle today after work to see if i can figure out what my boil off rate will be.

Click to expand...

Sticking with the defaults is about all you can do, if you don't have actual data that tells you to do something different. Then on your first batch measure the losses from strike volume to pre-boil volume (use these to figure out actual grain absorption), pre-boil volume to post-boil volume losses (use these to figure out your actual boil off rate), and post-boil to fermenter volume losses (use these to figure out your actual trub losses and hop absorption.) If you come up short on pre-boil volume, just pour enough water over the grain bag to make up the shortage.

Brew on