I've been brewing all-grain for a few month now, and I've been reading at biabbrewer.info and wonder if I'm doing it wrong. I am brewing 4 gallon batches (that's what I can do on my kitchen stove) and I have a couple of 22 quart pots (one is a thin stainless steel stockpot and the other is thick aluminum canner), and an electric 5 gallon bucket that I made for a very fast but crude HLT.
I bring 4 gallons of water up to about 165 degrees and pour half of it in the canner which has a bag in it. Let the temperature stabilize, then dough-in the grain. I mash for about an hour, do an iodine check to make sure, then pull the bag out and squeeze the dickens out of it. I transfer the bag to the stockpot, which has the other 2 gallons of 170 degree water, stir it gently for a few minutes, then pull it out and squeeze again. I combine these two squeezings and bring to a boil, etc. I'll add top-up water to the fermenter to get it back to 4 gallons.
Does it really work just as well to mash in the entire 4 gallons of water and skip the sparge? How much sugar do I lose to the spent grain? Or is that negligible, and offset by a more efficient mash?
I need to move outdoors for the summer anyway and will be making changes for that, so it's a good time to review my whole process. Mashing a larger volume would make it a lot easier to maintain a steady temperature... (I'll probably still do the mashing on the kitchen stove, that doesn't heat the house up all that much)
I bring 4 gallons of water up to about 165 degrees and pour half of it in the canner which has a bag in it. Let the temperature stabilize, then dough-in the grain. I mash for about an hour, do an iodine check to make sure, then pull the bag out and squeeze the dickens out of it. I transfer the bag to the stockpot, which has the other 2 gallons of 170 degree water, stir it gently for a few minutes, then pull it out and squeeze again. I combine these two squeezings and bring to a boil, etc. I'll add top-up water to the fermenter to get it back to 4 gallons.
Does it really work just as well to mash in the entire 4 gallons of water and skip the sparge? How much sugar do I lose to the spent grain? Or is that negligible, and offset by a more efficient mash?
I need to move outdoors for the summer anyway and will be making changes for that, so it's a good time to review my whole process. Mashing a larger volume would make it a lot easier to maintain a steady temperature... (I'll probably still do the mashing on the kitchen stove, that doesn't heat the house up all that much)