Direct Fired Mash / Sparge?

I think I have decided to move to a direct fired recirculating mash this summer, but I have a question? If I have the capacity in my mash tun, since I am recirculating, can I just put my full water requirement in and essentially eliminate the sparging step? Will this have a detrimental impact to my final result?

What I am thinking, I can put the full amount of water into the mash tun, heat as appropriate, mash and transfer to boil. If I can do this, I can eliminate the need of the HLT right?

 

Yes you can do this, it's called no sparge brewing. Your efficiency will suffer quite a bit, from what I've heard it'll be 50%-60%. If this isn't a issue for you, simply buy more grain.

A sparge is a rinsing of the grains - if you don't sparge, as you drain the grains you'll leave sugar residue on the hulls.

Also just some speculation - you might not get the pH required in your mash if you're making a low gravity beer.

 

You could, but mashing and sparging are two separate things. Mashing converts the starch, and sparging stops the conversion and rinses the sugars.

 

Thanks guys, great point about the efficiency. Think I am going to try it and be prepared to add the sparge afterward. I recently changed the way I batch sparged to something a little unorthodox that I thought would have ruined my efficiency, but actually saw an increase.

 

Using the full volume of water will affect your grain:water ratio. If memory serves, mashing thin will produce a higher attenuating wort

 

We have this same setup and have done two no sparges so far. We only lost 10% efficiency on the first and 7% in the second. So that is not a consideration in my opinion. If anything the going opinion on the subject is that the extra grain you need to add to the recipe to make up for this loss of efficiency only adds to the flavor of the beer. Neither of our two are ready yet so I have no empirical evidence myself yet. But if higher attenuation is a concern I would simply mash a few degrees warmer.

 

Yes you're correct, according to Palmer:

So if you do want to try no sparge, make sure you rest long enough. Perhaps test to make sure conversion is complete.