No Squeeze Sparging

Hey gang. Been mulling an idea in my head. For you folks that sparge, I wanted to know if any of y'all simply sparge to pre boil volume without squeezing. This seems to be a lot less work than pressing on a hot bag of grain.

My thinking is that there will be no detectable difference in the pre boil gravity following a no squeeze method as opposed to the squeeze/sparge/squeeze combo method.

For those of you who don't squeeze but still sparge, can you share some of your thoughts or results? And for those like me who are sparging squeezers, would a few of you mind joining me in attempting a no squeeze brew day?

Really need to run this as a well controlled experiment. Comparing results from a bunch of different brewers, with different processes, and different equipment, will not allow any valid conclusions to be drawn.

Need to have one or more brewers each run two batches:

1. Partial volume mash with sparge but no squeeze
2. Partial volume mash with squeeze, sparge, squeeze

Preboil volume must be the same in both cases (or preboil SG's must be corrected for the volume differences.) Would also be instructive to compare pour over sparge to batch sparge (four cells total.)

Have to use exactly the same recipe, and need to control crush, mash temp & time as consistently as possible between the batches.

I've been a participant in the thread that lead to this experiment, and am very interested in the results. Not sure I have my mashing conditions well enough under control yet to get good data if I attempted at this time.

Modeling no sparge and batch sparge, with or without squeezing, are pretty straight forward. On the other hand, modeling a dynamic (pour thru) sparge is quite complex, and certainly beyond my capabilities.

Brew on

I wore my thumbs out typing up a reply last night. Then the app crashed...... boo. Hopefully I can remember all my various strokes of genius.

My first thought was wow, all really good points you bring up. Thanks for joining the discussion. The second was that I think this can be accomplished pretty easily using..... Mini Mashes!

Here's what I'm thinking.

- Grain = 1 lb of 2 row
- Crush to final gap setting of 0.010 (requires a mill and feeler gauge)
- Mash volume = 2 quarts
- Mash temp = 152F
- Mash time = 20 minutes
- Pre boil volume = 3 quarts
- Measure gravity before and after sparge

Should be a cheap and quick experiment. But the tough part is to convince myself to do this rather than spending time making 5 plus gallons of beer.

I'd also like to hear from anyone that does a no squeeze sparge if they're out there. I know several folks just pull the bag and don't squeeze. What I don't know is do they sparge as well.

Not sure if you can consider my method no squeeze. I pull the bag and let it drain a little bit. I have a spare mini fridge shelf I rest on a fermentor bucket. I spin the bag so it holds itself closed and let that drain while coming to a boil. I don't push on the bag.

A simple experiment like the one above could work. Set grain amount, mash temps and time. I'd just make sure the water volumes used are the same. Use say 1.5 gallons mash and sparge vs 3 gallons no mash. I don't believe that squeezing the bag increases the gravity it just gets more of the (makebelieve gravity) 1.040 pre-boil wort, but I don't know.

DurtyChemist said:

Not sure if you can consider my method no squeeze. I pull the bag and let it drain a little bit. I have a spare mini fridge shelf I rest on a fermentor bucket. I spin the bag so it holds itself closed and let that drain while coming to a boil. I don't push on the bag.

A simple experiment like the one above could work. Set grain amount, mash temps and time. I'd just make sure the water volumes used are the same. Use say 1.5 gallons mash and sparge vs 3 gallons no mash. I don't believe that squeezing the bag increases the gravity it just gets more of the (makebelieve gravity) 1.040 pre-boil wort, but I don't know.

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I definitely consider that a no squeeze approach. Do you also do a sparge while it sits over the bucket?

This is definitely piquing my interest. Every time I brew with my brew buddy, I want to sparge, he doesn't. He a squeeze it like it owes him money kind of guy.
I'm interested to see if there really is a noticeable difference.

I squeeze it like it owes me a lot of money with interest.

I have a large mesh colander and a smaller aluminum colander with holes in it. After my mash, I place the bag in the large colander to drain and then I press on it with the smaller colander. In a few minutes I can get a lot of wort out of the grain with less effort (and pain!) than I can squeezing by hand. I do sparge and then squeeze again, but I get a lot less out of the second run. The wort from the first run is fairly syrupy, and I'm sure it's upping my SG. The second run, maybe not so much. I'm interested to hear how the experiment goes, but I will be surprised if you find that squeezing doesn't boost the SG.

I sparge since my kettle isnt quite big enough to do full volume.
When I pull my grain it hangs about the kettle and drains, at which point I have an idea how much water the grain has absorbed and calculate how much to sparge in and heat that water in a second pot.
I then dunk the grain bag and poke it for a bit to get the good stuff out, and then hang it about my boil kettle while it heats to boiling. I add most of the sparged wort to the boil kettle and cool some to use to prevent boil overs. by the time the wort has come to the boil the grain bag has close to fully drained, no squeeze necessary.

The reason I dont squeeze is I think it creates clearer wort. (Disclaimer I have no real evidence to support this theory).

I think my method would be considered a squeeze. I turn a cup or something upside down in a big pot, spin the grain bag up, and gently rest it on the cup. The pressure in the middle pushes out a ton of the wort thats still in the grain bag. I'll do this a couple times and usually try to squeeze the last bit while simultaneously burning myself and never learning a lesson. But the cup thing really gets out most of the wort on its own. From looking at it, it definitely seems more concentrated than whats in the kettle

I pull my grain bag out of my pot and set it into a 5 gallon bucket with a false bottom and spigot. I collect the runoff, and then sparge to make sure I don't miss any sugars.

MindenMan said:

I pull my grain bag out of my pot and set it into a 5 gallon bucket with a false bottom and spigot. I collect the runoff, and then sparge to make sure I don't miss any sugars.

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This ^^ is the kind of stuff I think is in line with what I'm trying to figure out. This is a no squeeze with a sparge.

Have you tried to compare it to using a squeeze? If so, how do the two methods stack up to one another with your set up?

ol-hazza said:

I sparge since my kettle isnt quite big enough to do full volume.
When I pull my grain it hangs about the kettle and drains, at which point I have an idea how much water the grain has absorbed and calculate how much to sparge in and heat that water in a second pot.
I then dunk the grain bag and poke it for a bit to get the good stuff out, and then hang it about my boil kettle while it heats to boiling. I add most of the sparged wort to the boil kettle and cool some to use to prevent boil overs. by the time the wort has come to the boil the grain bag has close to fully drained, no squeeze necessary.

The reason I dont squeeze is I think it creates clearer wort. (Disclaimer I have no real evidence to support this theory).

Click to expand...

Good stuff! This is also what I'm looking for!

Aside from clearer wort, have you noticed a difference in your pre boil gravities when switching to the non squeeze method.

My best efficiency was when I squeezed the bag, by about 5%.

BUT,
This doesn't take into account the extra trub which settled,
Different grain suppliers, crush and malt types,
Different mash temps
Or my laid back approach to brewing and measuring.

Brewed a standard 5 gal batch today, and tried to take all the measurements needed for cell #2 (squeeze, sparge, squeeze) of the experiment I outlined in post #2 of this thread. The following are my notes from the brew session:

Hop Test Ale #2 - Fuggles
11.0 lb grain bill, 15.5 gal Bayou Classic pot with basket

Crush with 0.016" roller gap​

Mash in with 7.5 gal @ 160.3 F, initial mash temp = 151.5 F
Mash for 60 minutes (stir @ 55 & check temp)

BK insulated with 3 towels + winter jacket​

End of mash temp = 150.4 F
6.5 gal of initial wort to BK after 10 minute drain in basket

SG = 12.5 Brix, 1.048​

1.5 qts wort collected by pressing bag (in basket)

SG = 12.7 Brix, 1.049
Wort added to BK​

Bag sparged with 2.0 qts water (pour over) + 10 minute drain

Sparge temp ~ 150 F​

1.0 qts wort collected by pressing in bag after sparge

SG = 10.2 Brix, 1.039
Wort added to BK
1.0 qts of sparge drained thru to BK (by subtraction)​

SG after 10 min boil = 12.8 Brix, 1.050
5 oz Fuggles leaf hops (in bags) added FWH, 20, 10, 5 mins, Flame out + 10 min steep

Temp after steep ~ 190-195 F​

Hop bags pressed (silicone gloves) and wort returned to BK
Net wort to fermenter = 5.7 gal

OG = 14.8 Brix, 1.058​

Preboil volume = 6.5*4 + 1.5 + 1.0 + 1.0 = 29.5 qts = 7.35 gal

Matches well with dip stick​

Boil off rate ~ 1.25-1.27 gal/hr
Hops/trub loss ~ 0.4 gal (seems high)

Need better measurement of fermenter volume
​

Measured mash efficiency = 89.4%
​

So I started with 7.5 + 0.5 = 8.0 gals and ended up with 7.35 gals at 1.048 preboil. Grain absorption is then 8.0 - 7.35 = 0.65 gals, or 0.65/11 = 0.06 gal/lb with squeeze. Grain absorption without squeeze = 7.5 - 6.5 = 1.0 gals, or 1.0/11 = 0.09 gal/lb.

To run cell #1 (sparge only) I'll need 7.35 - 6.5 = .85 gals or 3.4 qts of sparge water.

Current plan is to run cell #1 on Sat, Nov 1. We can then compare preboil SG's and see if there is a significant difference.
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This first image shows draining the bag while in the strainer basket above the BK



I don't normally squeeze aggressively, so I had to cobble something together. First I placed a large pot upside down in a large bucket as shown below.



Then I placed the strainer with bag on top of the upside down pan, and placed a 5 gal bucket on top of the bag in the strainer.



Then to squeeze (like it owed me money) I sat on top of the orange bucket with most of my weight. I could hear the wort running out of the strainer. Not sure I want to adopt this method as my routine, unless it shows up with much better efficiency than no squeeze.

Brew on

First data point! And good work on documenting your process.

So it sounds like your sparge volume will go up just a smidgen, 2 quarts to 3.4 quarts, with the no sparge route. I wonder what that will look like on my system as I usually sparge with ~2 gallons when I squeeze. ~3.4 gallons?

Unfortunately I won't be able to contribute any data points for a while. Life is pretty hectic right now and just having a relaxed few minutes with my wife is a treat.

Keep us posted on the non squeeze brew!

Thats an awesome process, I think im going to adopt the bucket sit as a part of my brew day.

T-Wayne said:

Thats an awesome process, I think im going to adopt the bucket sit as a part of my brew day.

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Thanks. A little rocking while sitting on the bucket helps the squeezing process. I don't plan to adopt this as a regular process unless it comes out significantly more efficient than a simple no squeeze sparge, or full volume mash (no sparge).

Brew on

Alright y'all.

I've tested most all of this. I've squeezed while the bag hangs, squeezed into a bucket and poured it in to the kettle periodically, and just dumped wet "unsqueezed" grain after a single and a double sparge.

Best overall efficiency?

Let it hang and nosparge.

All the squeezing didn't add up to the universal constant of gravity.

To be clear, i still have to sparge to get ebough in my 15.5 gal kettle (NOT Keggle)... but even still my best results are just from "let it hang" whenever I can.

I am testing "pour water over bag to get to boil volume" in the next couple of batches and I will report back.

Good stuff @Magnus314. It sounds like sometimes you sparge, other times you don't. Is this dependent on the amount of grain you're mashing (large grain bill) or just whatever tickles your fancy that day?

Thanks for contributing to the thread!

Gravity is better than butts.

Good to know.

T-Wayne said:

Gravity is better than butts.

Good to know.

Click to expand...

Hey! My butt involves a lot of gravity.

Brew on

Magnus314 said:

Alright y'all.


Best overall efficiency?

Let it hang and nosparge.

All the squeezing didn't add up to the universal constant of gravity.

To be clear, i still have to sparge to get ebough in my 15.5 gal kettle (NOT Keggle)... but even still my best results are just from "let it hang" whenever I can.

I am testing "pour water over bag to get to boil volume" in the next couple of batches and I will report back.

Click to expand...

I greatly prefer the pour over to reach pre boil volume, both for easier sparging vs a dunk sparge, and it also eliminates calculating volumes. Just strike a little short, and sparge to make volume in the kettle, easy peasy!

T-Wayne said:

Gravity is better than butts.

Click to expand...

I have felt this way for a while, and always guessed that squeezing just gets the wort out sooner in a similar quantity.

Take the easy route....gravity works for free

TexasWine said:

Good stuff @Magnus314. It sounds like sometimes you sparge, other times you don't. Is this dependent on the amount of grain you're mashing (large grain bill) or just whatever tickles your fancy that day?

Thanks for contributing to the thread!

Click to expand...

That's exactly right. For 11 gallon batches in my 62 qt kettle I need to have around 13 gal or so before the boil.

On a really light grain bill I can get pretty close, but if it's above about 1.050 or so I sparge, and after a minute or two to drain I dump it in the kettle, then leave the bag hang over the sparge vessel to drain.

It's not hard, but I'm going to try "pour over" sparging and if that works it will be even easier!

Up to this point I have been a squeezer. I just bought a ratcheting pulley system (much lie the one you get with the wilserbrewer kit) to use with my wilserbrewer bag. Looking forward to using it next brew day and let gravity do the work, no sparge either.

Whatever efficiency/grain absorption/pre boil volume changes that creates I will adjust in Beersmith and let it compensate for future brews.

Hoping my squeezing days are behind me.

geoffm33 said:

Up to this point I have been a squeezer. I just bought a ratcheting pulley system (much lie the one you get with the wilserbrewer kit) to use with my wilserbrewer bag. Looking forward to using it next brew day and let gravity do the work, no sparge either.

Whatever efficiency/grain absorption/pre boil volume changes that creates I will adjust in Beersmith and let it compensate for future brews.

Hoping my squeezing days are behind me.

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It should just increase your grain absorption rate, maybe 2-3% lower efficiency would be my guess.

I've done a grand total of six BIAB batches now, and squeezed every one, but based on this thread I'm thinking I'll skip it on my next brew and see how it turns out. I'd much rather sit and chat about/drink beer than throttle my bag.

hehehehe

"... throttle my bag..."

pricelessbrewing said:

It should just increase your grain absorption rate, maybe 2-3% lower efficiency would be my guess.

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Now I'm confused? With above posters stating the volume of wort collected is near identical for squeezing vs. letting the bag hang and drain, what's the difference efficiency wise if near identical volumes of runnings are collected?

Why is everybody so fussy about squeezing the bag? It just isn't that hard to do. I don't understand the problem. Y'all can't blame it on being "lazy".....you brew your own beer. If you were truly lazy, then you would just go buy it.

I guess that I can possibly see why someone might think that their beer would be clearer without a squeeze. But, I have had some very clear beers after squeezing the bag.

I don't buy that gravity can pull out the same volume of runnings that squeezing can. Unless you are letting the bag hang for a ridiculous amount of time.

wilserbrewer said:

I greatly prefer the pour over to reach pre boil volume, both for easier sparging vs a dunk sparge, and it also eliminates calculating volumes. Just strike a little short, and sparge to make volume in the kettle, easy peasy!

Click to expand...

This makes a lot of sense! If you know your boil off rate then you're good to go.

Have you ever been a squeezer?

wilserbrewer said:

Now I'm confused? With above posters stating the volume of wort collected is near identical for squeezing vs. letting the bag hang and drain, what's the difference efficiency wise if near identical volumes of runnings are collected?

Click to expand...

As I reported here I got an additional 1.5 qts of 1.049 wort by squeezing after draining my bag for 10 minutes. Wort in pot prior to squeeze was 6.5 gal of 1.048. So under some circumstances, squeezing can recover additional "full strength" wort over just draining. However, my drain was done in a basket strainer as opposed to suspending the bag directly. Suspending the bag would probably create some squeezing force due to elongation of the bag. Also, 10 minutes may not have been long enough to reach the point of diminishing returns for the drain. Looks like I will need to add some additional cells to my experiment.

Brew on

Devin said:

Why is everybody so fussy about squeezing the bag? It just isn't that hard to do. I don't understand the problem. Y'all can't blame it on being "lazy".....you brew your own beer. If you were truly lazy, then you would just go buy it.

I guess that I can possibly see why someone might think that their beer would be clearer without a squeeze. But, I have had some very clear beers after squeezing the bag.

I don't buy that gravity can pull out the same volume of runnings that squeezing can. Unless you are letting the bag hang for a ridiculous amount of time.

Click to expand...

For me it's not that it's hard to do, it's that I'm choosing not to. Just lift the bag out with pulley, turn on the burner and let it drip while I get to a boil.

And I'll compensate for any efficiency losses with $1 in extra grain.

wilserbrewer said:

Now I'm confused? With above posters stating the volume of wort collected is near identical for squeezing vs. letting the bag hang and drain, what's the difference efficiency wise if near identical volumes of runnings are collected?

Click to expand...

Part of the reason I decided to hoist and let it drip, was that I measured my squeeze volume gravity over the last few beers and it was the same as the boil kettle gravity.

I suppose if you had to top up to account for volume loss to get to pre-boil volume, you would dilute your wort. It's a stretch though.

Devin said:

Why is everybody so fussy about squeezing the bag? It just isn't that hard to do. I don't understand the problem. Y'all can't blame it on being "lazy".....you brew your own beer. If you were truly lazy, then you would just go buy it.

I guess that I can possibly see why someone might think that their beer would be clearer without a squeeze. But, I have had some very clear beers after squeezing the bag.

I don't buy that gravity can pull out the same volume of runnings that squeezing can. Unless you are letting the bag hang for a ridiculous amount of time.

Click to expand...

It's not really a problem. For me, I'm chasing minutes. I would like to avoid the squeeze/sparge/squeeze step and instead just sparge and let it drip unattended while I take care of other things, like putting together a batch of wine

Also, I have this insurmountable urge to question things. I'm a pretty skeptical fellow, and this is a fun academic exercise. It's always more fun to know why you're doing something rather than doing it just because (insert reason here).

This is part of the reason I recently started doing 30 minutes mashes and shortened boils too! All a part of the fun, and saving time doing it.

As promised here, I will be conducting the sparge but no squeeze cell of the experiment I outlined here on Saturday, 11/1.

In the first part of the experiment, I mashed with 7.5 gal of water, and only sparged with 0.5 gal. My question to the folks following this thread:

For the no squeeze + sparge, should I use the same mash and sparge volumes, or would it be better to decrease the mash volume and increase the sparge volume? Due to dead space under the stainer basket, I can only drop my strike volume to about 6 gal. That would leave 2.35 gal for pour over sparging.

What is the best way to conduct this experiment, and why?

Brew on

When I do a pour over sparge with hot tap water I usually get about 5 more efficiency points than a squeeze no sparge. Lately I've stuck with the squeeze method because its more consistent and easy to do with my system.

There appear to be some posts on this thread that are leaning towards debate on the "best" way to conduct BIAB. I don't think this thread was intended for debate. Can we just agree that people will have different ideas about what is "best" based on their preferences, level of importance of cost vs. efficiency, convenience, and equipment constraints? Then we can keep the thread focused on empirical data from measured results for different options. Good data will help each person decide for themselves what is best for their situation.

Let's avoid trying to convince others that ours is the "best" way, but rather collect/report data, and let people decide for themselves. There is no right or wrong answer here.

Brew on

doug293cz said:

As I reported here I got an additional 1.5 qts of 1.049 wort by squeezing after draining my bag for 10 minutes. Wort in pot prior to squeeze was 6.5 gal of 1.048. So under some circumstances, squeezing can recover additional "full strength" wort over just draining. However, my drain was done in a basket strainer as opposed to suspending the bag directly. Suspending the bag would probably create some squeezing force due to elongation of the bag. Also, 10 minutes may not have been long enough to reach the point of diminishing returns for the drain. Looks like I will need to add some additional cells to my experiment.

Brew on

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Basically this. I have no doubt that given sufficient time you'll get a grain absorption close to that of a hard squeeze but I'm just not sure how close that would be. I've allowed a bag to drain in a bucket for 40 minutes then pressed down and still got wort out, maybe an extra 10% which would change grain absorption rate from .08 to .088 ish.

Is 10% more grain absorption small enough to be acceptable for most people? Probably. Would simplify your brew day a bit at the cost of a small Amount more grain.

For me I just find a quick press with a lid to be more consistent, although I haven't paid attention to how much time is required until the naturally draining can be assumed to have stopped.

My 2 cents/easy sparge method: I throw my bag into an old bottling bucket that has a 90 degree elbow as a diptube and leave it on a table. I stir in 2 - 4 quarts of cold tap water, stir, let sit for a few minutes, vorlauf a bit to mix it up a little more uniformly so all the heavy stuff isn't on the bottom, and then let it drain out of the spigot into another bucket while my boil is ramping up. Anecdotally I have not noticed a difference if I heat the water to sparge temps or use it cold, I used to heat it but stopped bothering when I forgot to do it once and used it cold, and didn't notice a difference.

Usually when I check the gravity, it's 50-65% of the stuff in the pot, e.g. if it's 15 brix in the pot, it will be 7-10 in the bucket. While the wort is getting up to temp, the bottling bucket usually drains all the way out in the 10 minutes or so to get it to boiling and I can top off the pot as needed or decide not to use any more of the run off if I have the volume and PB gravity I need. I usually hit 85-90% efficiency, I used to taste the wort and it's not any different (not husky, full of tannins, etc.). Added bonus is the grain isn't melting my garbage bag when I throw it out. This can really help out a high gravity beer as well, I might do a few gallon batch sparges for high gravity.

pricelessbrewing said:

Basically this. I have no doubt that given sufficient time you'll get a grain absorption close to that of a hard squeeze but I'm just not sure how close that would be. I've allowed a bag to drain in a bucket for 40 minutes then pressed down and still got wort out, maybe an extra 10% which would change grain absorption rate from .08 to .088 ish.

Is 10% more grain absorption small enough to be acceptable for most people? Probably. Would simplify your brew day a bit at the cost of a small Amount more grain.

For me I just find a quick press with a lid to be more consistent, although I haven't paid attention to how much time is required until the naturally draining can be assumed to have stopped.

Click to expand...

To be honest, I'll probably wind up giving it a squeeze while it's hanging over the kettle with a couple of pot lids. I won't be able to resist the temptation.

I definitely do not enjoy pulling the bag by hand, letting it drain enough to not make a mess to get it into my spare kettle where I set it in a colander and press from there.

I'm not a squeezer or a sparger...most of the time. I would if I found myself high on pre-boil gravity and low on pre-boil volume. Otherwise I just let it drain in a colander. If efficiency was a concern I suppose I would be looking to move away from BIAB.