Help w no sparge

[ehk089]

I use a wilser bag for my mash tun on my 3 keggle eherms system, and wanted to try a quick 5 gal no sparge before the regularly scheduled 10 gal batch this week. I ended up with 1.042 og instead of 1.053... I crush to medium gap (.50 I think). Does anyone have tips for increasing efficiency for a quick easy brew like this, or should I just not be lazy and batch sparge after regular volume mash?

 

[Smellyglove]

I use a wilser bag for my mash tun on my 3 keggle eherms system, and wanted to try a quick 5 gal no sparge before the regularly scheduled 10 gal batch this week. I ended up with 1.042 og instead of 1.053... I crush to medium gap (.50 I think). Does anyone have tips for increasing efficiency for a quick easy brew like this, or should I just not be lazy and batch sparge after regular volume mash?

You need to use more malt for a no sparge.

 

[North_of_60]

Set your gap to .025. I get 84% mash efficiency with NO sparge. Your Wilser bag is plenty fine mesh and you will have no problem with that fine a setting. Some brewers on this site go even finer.

 

[cubalz]

For no sparge, you need to increase your malt bill by 20% to account for the loss in efficiency.

 

[North_of_60]

I don’t increase my grain bill for BIAB, just use a finer crush.

Maybe I’m mistaken but the OP said he used a Wilser Bag so I’m assuming BIAB. BIAB using a .050 crush will result in very low efficiency.

 

[cubalz]

Just to clarify: What I am saying is that if the OP wants to continue to use a .050 gap, he can make up the efficiency loss with increasing the grain bill by 20%

 

[North_of_60]

Just to clarify: What I am saying is that if the OP wants to continue to use a .050 gap, he can make up the efficiency loss with increasing the grain bill by 20%

Agreed

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Mathematically, you'll lose about 1/5 of your wort to the mash with no sparge if you don't squeeze the bag. That means 80% mash efficiency before accounting for trub loss etc, regardless of crush. I used to consistently get 65% overall efficiency when I used this method (I hate squeezing because I don't like seeing all that muck go into the wort.....I'm sure it doesn't affect the final beer, but I still don't like it, and it's messy). Like others have said, it just means using a bit more grain (which probably costs something like $2). A quick dunk sparge for me would quickly boost overall efficiency to 75%.

 

[North_of_60]

I should have mentioned that I do squeeze the bag to get most of the liquid out of it.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

I'd call 0.050" gap 'coarse'. I don't know what others think, but I've always thought of 0.025" as fine, 0.0375" as medium, anything bigger as coarse. Anything finer would be flour and only work with BIAB. A coarse crush (as long as there aren't any unbroken grains) can, in theory, give the same efficiency as a fine crush, but it takes an exponentially longer mash to get all of the starch out. You can comfortably crush at 0.0375 for recirculating. I go halfway between 0.025 and 0.0375 as long as there isn't any wheat, corn or rye and don't get stuck. But when you do a BIAB, why not crush finer? It's quick and easy to change the setting on grain mills.

 

[LittleRiver]

Mathematically, you'll lose about 1/5 of your wort to the mash with no sparge if you don't squeeze the bag....

You must be assuming a non-drained bag, otherwise that math is not even close.

What I do is hoist the bag and let gravity fully drain it into the kettle. That takes a while, but no time is lost because as soon as the bag is hoisted the burner can be fired for the boil.

A bag that has been fully drained by gravity will contain only about 200-300ml of liquid. To me that small volume is not worth the hassle of squeezing.

 

[doug293cz]

I did some quick calculations, and for a grain absorption rate of 0.10 gal/lb (typical for an unsqueezed, but suspended bag BIAB), and the wort lost to grain absorption ranged from 12% for a 10 lb grain bill to 17% for a 15 lb grain bill (both for a 7.4 gal pre-boil volume.) Lower pre-boil volumes for the same grain weights would lose a higher percentage of the wort.

The chart below shows lauter efficiency for different numbers of batch sparges, for both a typical MLT (0.12 gal/lb) and aggressively squeezed BIAB (0.06 gal/lb.) The difference between no-sparge and single batch sparge is about 8 - 9%, so that's how much extra grain you need for no-sparge, all else being equal. BTW, the percentage of wort lost to grain absorption in no-sparge is just 1 - lauter efficiency.

Brew on

 

[ehk089]

Yeah typically I batch sparge, but I was for some reason surprised to see the efficiency of the no sparge that much lower...anyway, thanks for the responses guys!

 

[Gnomebrewer]

You must be assuming a non-drained bag, otherwise that math is not even close.

I am assuming a non-drained bag. When I BIAB (a couple of years ago) I was dunk sparging. My experience with no sparge is on a HERM system, so no squeezing or dripping (but it was with full drainage). That's what my numbers are based on. Grain absorption for me was more like 0.12gal/lb, combined with a smaller pre-boil volume (I use a gentle boil), put absorption close to 20%. All of my beers on that system were in the 1.048 to 1.060 range from memory (I recently lost all of my records though), which is probably why efficiency was fairly consistent. Doug's chart above looks pretty close to what I've observed. I'd bet that if he plotted a well setup fly sparge that it would sit close to the broken orange line.

 

[doug293cz]

I am assuming a non-drained bag. When I BIAB (a couple of years ago) I was dunk sparging. My experience with no sparge is on a HERM system, so no squeezing or dripping (but it was with full drainage). That's what my numbers are based on. Grain absorption for me was more like 0.12gal/lb, combined with a smaller pre-boil volume (I use a gentle boil), put absorption close to 20%. All of my beers on that system were in the 1.048 to 1.060 range from memory (I recently lost all of my records though), which is probably why efficiency was fairly consistent. Doug's chart above looks pretty close to what I've observed. I'd bet that if he plotted a well setup fly sparge that it would sit close to the broken orange line.

Ok, that makes sense.

The best data I have seen is that it roughly parallels the green line, about the same distance above the green line as the green line is above the 2X batch sparge line, or maybe a little less.

Brew on

 

[wilserbrewer]

I did some quick calculations, and for a grain absorption rate of 0.10 gal/lb (typical for an unsqueezed, but suspended bag BIAB)

Brew on

I’m curious where you get 0.10 gal/ lb for an unsqueezed and suspended bag, vs 0.06 for an aggressively squeezed bag?

That would be a 1/2 gallon difference on a 12 lb grain bill?

While I don’t have #’s to back my claim, I find this very far from my actual experience which indicates squeeze vs well drained by gravity yield about the same?

 

[OG-wan Kenobi]

Cut that crush to .025 your efficiency will go up your bag is made for it, I never sparge I just drain my bag into the kettle for 10 minutes and all is good

 

[doug293cz]

I’m curious where you get 0.10 gal/ lb for an unsqueezed and suspended bag, vs 0.06 for an aggressively squeezed bag?

That would be a 1/2 gallon difference on a 12 lb grain bill?

While I don’t have #’s to back my claim, I find this very far from my actual experience which indicates squeeze vs well drained by gravity yield about the same?

I did some measurements a couple years back. I'll have to see if I can find the write up. Of course results will vary somewhat based on length of hang time, and probably some other variables as well. My results this weekend were 0.072 gal/lb for squeeze using bag in colander with a 5 gal pale of water on top of the bunched up bag. If I get really aggressive, put on the silicone gloves, and give myself a work out, I've gotten ~ 0.05 gal/lb. So, any specific number has a range around it. Most important thing is for a brewer to measure what their process gives, so they can do water volume predictions.

Brew on