Do I need to sparge if I recirculation with pump?

[DreBourbon]

I just bought a brew pump and my question is after I soak my grains with my initial 3 gallons or whatever, can I just add the remainder of my 5gal sparge to my mash tun and just recirculate with my pump and not sparge?

 

[NervousDad]

I just bought a brew pump and my question is after I soak my grains with my initial 3 gallons or whatever, can I just add the remainder of my 5gal sparge to my mash tun and just recirculate with my pump and not sparge?

If you want to go no sparge, add your entire volume to the mash. If you have a way to control temp raise the temp when you're ready to run off. I get 70+% efficiency with no sparge, which is fine for me.

 

[DreBourbon]

So raise the temp and recirculate with pump and then mash out?

 

[DreBourbon]

Then do the iodine test. Did this with a sparge out today but found the sparge was a waste of time.

 

[DreBourbon]

Guess everyone is watching the Super Bowl ? Lol

 

[JustLooking]

Then do the iodine test. Did this with a sparge out today but found the sparge was a waste of time.

Iodine test will tell you if you have starches that need converting, not if you need to sparge to get enough of the sugars from your mash.

 

[DreBourbon]

What's the difference ?

 

[DreBourbon]

Also I brewed a Stout so it was hard to tell.

 

[JustLooking]

What's the difference ?

Conversion efficiency vs Lauter efficiency.

 

[doug293cz]

Think of sparging as rinsing and diluting. You sparge to dilute the concentration of sugar in the wort that remains absorbed by the grain. The higher the sugar concentration in the retained wort, the less sugar gets into your BK, so leads to lower lauter efficiency. Mash efficiency equals conversion efficiency times lauter efficiency.

If you just add the "sparge" water to the mash before running off any wort, then the retained wort has the same sugar concentration as the collected wort. If you drain all the wort from the MLT, and then add the sparge water, stir (or recirc) and run off again, then the retained wort has a much lower sugar concentration.

Let's do a numerical example: We'll use 8 lbs of grain, 8 gal of total brewing water, assume 0.125 gal/lb grain absorption, assume 100% conversion efficiency, and collect 7 gal of pre-boil wort. For the full volume mash (no sparge) we have the following:

Wort absorbed by grain = 8 lb * 0.125 gal/lb = 1.0 gal
Wort collected = 8 gal - 1 gal = 7 gal
Pre-boil & retained wort SG = 1.0335
Lauter efficiency = 82.4%​

Now if we strike with 4.5 gal and sparge with 3.5 gal we have:

Wort absorbed by grain = 8 lb * 0.125 gal/lb = 1.0 gal
First runnings collected = 4.5 gal - 1 gal = 3.5 gal
First runnings SG = 1.0568
Second runnings collected = 3.5 gal (grain already saturated, no additional absorption)
Second runnings & retained wort SG = 1.0171
Pre-boil SG (combined runnings) = 1.0370
Lauter efficiency = 91.1%​

Both no-sparge and sparge will make beer, there is no "correct" way to brew. What's more important than your actual efficiency is the consistency of your efficiency. You need to be able to predict your efficiency in order to predict the OG from your recipe. How you want to proceed is up to you.

Brew on

 

[DreBourbon]

Great info. Thanks