I love no sparge brewing...

[bigjoe]

Sacc must have responded with the pH info while I was typing my response.

There you go probably nothing to worry about.

 

[bigjoe]

Depends on what I'm brewing and if step (ramp really) mashing... The Brutus 20 is a darn flexible rig.

I suppose my multy rest mashes are ramped also.

I really do like the Brutus.

 

[tdogg]

man im glad i found this thread! i have been thinking about trying something like this, and now i can see that it works well before i even try it. all i really need is a pump. i have a 10 gallon kettle and a 10 gallon cooler mash tun. i have another kettle that i currently use as a HLT for batch sparging, but recirc/no sparge makes sense for medium gravity brews.

question: It looks like most of you have been doing 60 minute mashes. have any of you checked to see if your conversion is getting done quicker? i know some brewers are doing shorter mashes, and checking for complete conversion with iodine. this would help shave even more time off of the brew day. have any of you tried this? also, since you are recirculating with all of your brewing liquor and supposedly its all the same gravity, you could check with a refractomer.

 

[chuckjaxfl]

I finally tried this today, with Biermucher's "Nierra Sevada". I guessed, since there's only 10 pounds of grain that I might get 85%. I overshot gravity by four points, ending up at 1.050. Ultimately, I got 90.1% into the fermenter, per Beersmith.

Balancing the liquid flow it not as bad as you would think. Managing the propane was tougher. I recirculated 100% of the time. The best I could manage the temp was between 151-155. I've got a PID. I forsee a 5500w heatstick in my near future.

 

[King112585]

So i plan on brewing my first all grain batch this weekend and would like to try the no sparge method. I will be using a 10g converted cooler for my mash tun and plan on brewing 5g of JANET'S BROWN a 1.065 beer using 16lbs of malt (recipe calculated at 70% eff). I wont be recirculating and I'm just curious if (a) my mash tun will be large enough for the malt and additional water, and (b) what my expected efficiency will look like.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Reelale]

So i plan on brewing my first all grain batch this weekend and would like to try the no sparge method. I will be using a 10g converted cooler for my mash tun and plan on brewing 5g of JANET'S BROWN a 10.065 beer using 16lbs of malt (recipe calculated at 70% eff). I wont be recirculating and I'm just curious if (a) my mash tun will be large enough for the malt and additional water, and (b) what my expected efficiency will look like.

Thanks in advance.

So as I understand it, you are mashing with the entire volume? If so, you're gonna probably need around 6.9 gals. or so pre-boil volume. Your grain will absorb around 2 gals. So 16 lbs of grain and almost 9 gallons of water will be pushing it very close, if not exceeding the capacity.

I don't know what your efficiency will be, it depends on several factors. I recirculate and get around 67-70%. I would expect you could achieve the same with accurate volume measurements and a proper crush.

 

[King112585]

Do you think it would be wise to recirculate once at the end? Or would it be smarter to just sparge for a beer of this size?

 

[Reelale]

Do you think it would be wise to recirculate once at the end? Or would it be smarter to just sparge for a beer of this size?

What I think you are attempting is a Brew in a bag (BIAB) without the bag. There are some threads on it here. I don't think you will gain anything from just recirculating the wort. Nothing more to extract. Check out the BIAB threads. Sparging will definitely help you extract more from the mash, but it requires another vessel. It's a trade-off.

 

[HDIr0n]

For those of y'all that use Beersmith to formulate recipes and whatnot, what do y'all have for mash profiles, and equipment profiles. The road block that I am dealing with is mostly with the mash profile. The process I am leaning towards is mash with half the liquor plus the absorption volume of the grains so that I will do the recirculation with half of the pre-boil volume. I am just not sure how to set this up.

So would this be more of a BIAB profile with half the volume or more of a Batch Sparge with equal batches that you don't drain the MLT.

Thanks,
-G

 

[Brewrifle]

So with this method you are totally throwing out the 1.25qt of water /1 LB of grain? I have a HERMS system, but I still do the 1.25/1LB grain mixture while re-circulating and do a fly sparge after 60 mins.

 

[chuckjaxfl]

So with this method you are totally throwing out the 1.25qt of water /1 LB of grain?

Abandoning it completely, yes.

 

[ReverseMonk]

Getting ready to try my first no sparge batch on my new system. The only bit of info I haven't seen (or managed to miss) is run off rate. How fast is everyone running off into the boil kettle? Slow like a fly sparge, or fast like a batch sparge?

 

[wilserbrewer]

Getting ready to try my first no sparge batch on my new system. The only bit of info I haven't seen (or managed to miss) is run off rate. How fast is everyone running off into the boil kettle? Slow like a fly sparge, or fast like a batch sparge?

Runoff speed should not matter efficiency wise, although a slower rate might make for a clearer runoff.

A few brews ago my spaghetti wheat beer was near stuck...so I just let it run at its own pace of nearly a trickle, resulting in some of the clearest runnings I have ever seen.

Not sure it matters much, as it all seems to settle out regardless.

 

[wilserbrewer]

I believe most just let it rip as fast as it will drain.

 

[ReverseMonk]

Thanks for the info. I like the idea of 5 minute runoff instead 45 minutes.

I plan to continuously circulate during the mash, ramp up to mashout, then let it rip. Hopefully clarity is good from recirc.

 

[hbohnet]

Hope someone can answer a question on water profile additions using this no sparge method. I am brewing a 5.5 gal batch starting with 8.4 gal of water. There is approx 5 gal in the MT and approx 3.4 gal in the kettle with continuous recirc during the mash. Are mineral addition calculations based on the total water volume of 8.4 gal or the finished batch size of 5.5 gal. I tried searching this thread but could not find anything. Thanks!

 

[The_Bishop]

Total volume.

 

[nutty_gnome]

Hope someone can answer a question on water profile additions using this no sparge method. I am brewing a 5.5 gal batch starting with 8.4 gal of water. There is approx 5 gal in the MT and approx 3.4 gal in the kettle with continuous recirc during the mash. Are mineral addition calculations based on the total water volume of 8.4 gal or the finished batch size of 5.5 gal. I tried searching this thread but could not find anything. Thanks!

What sort of efficiency can Hbohnet expect assuming things go well? I'm curious about what percent to look for. My 5.5 batch size biab with 12 to 13 lbs of grain and 8 gallons of water with no dunk and just a drip dry method was about 71%. I wonder what % you would get with the recirc. Thanks, N_G.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[hbohnet]

N_G, I'm just about ready to brew my second batch using this method. My first was an ESB using 11.5 lbs of grain and according to beersmith got a measured efficiency of 69%. I have previously done 5 BIAB brews and efficiencies varied from 67% to 73% so am Ok with 69%.
After one batch, I am hooked on this no sparge continuous recirc method. Mash temp stayed within 1 deg F using an e-keggle and PID controller. Also don't need to mess with bag, pulley system, etc. Thanks to Saccharomyces for starting this thread.

 

[The_Bishop]

Question for the no-sparge crowd, which I have recently joined.

How are you guys setting up Beersmith 2? Similar to BIAB?

 

[Hello]

I just tried this yesterday and through my research, there were two schools of thought about adding extra grain to compensate for the technique used. It seemed most did indeed favor adding extra grain because the efficiency is reduced. Threads here will back up the fact that you can get 70-80% efficiency using this technique but that it begins to drop as you get into higher gravity beers. That said, I did not plan for no sparge until brew day and went with what I had adding DME at the end to get to my near-target OG. I am already planning a second batch of my 1.080 beer and to compensate for the low OG, I added more grain and to compensate for the lack of MLT space (10 gallons max) I removed 1.5 lbs of base grain and opted to include DME it's place.

Question for the no-sparge crowd, which I have recently joined.

How are you guys setting up Beersmith 2? Similar to BIAB?

Basically what I did, and I believe this is a pretty solid idea, is I first went to the mash profiles and copied medium body (what I needed) BIAB. If you are a BIAB brewer then the next step is something you have to remember you did because it will change things for all BIAB profiles.

I changed the name of the profile to No-Sparge Medium body. I went to Options>Advanced and changed the grain absorption for BIAB to .96, which is what I have for traditional batch/fly sparging method. This is the option that changes all BIAB grain absorption so you have to remember that you did it if you're finding your volumes are higher than expected. BIAB method will result in the grain absorbing less water I believe, so just keep that in mind.

Going back to my mash profile on the recipe, I removed "mash out" and I reduced the step time to 60. I read that people who use no-sparge method will maybe step for 75-90 minutes. I have not done that myself. Much of the conversion happens in the beginning so I was unsure if the additional time was worth my while. Someone can weigh in on that.

I did check off "adjust mash vol for deadspace" and input my MLT deadspace, which I had already measured. I also ensured my MLT temp was the average temp that I usually use it at. Adjustment for deadspace is unchecked in the BIAB method for obvious reasons.

Basically, these are the few adjustments I made and found BIAB profiles to be the closest to no-sparge method.

 

[The_Bishop]

Thanks for the tips!

 

[jeremy0209]

Just did my first no sparge batch about a week ago. I crushed fine, mashed for 90 minutes, and I also reserved 12 quarts for a mashout. According to Beersmith, my mash efficiency was 80.6%. That's what it is when I batch sparge. Now, the beer in question is a 1.044 English Bitter and, with my 10 gallon tun, I couldn't go much higher than 1.044 without adding DME, but I love session beers and brew a lot of them. I took a gravity reading and sample of the beer last night and it was absolutely fantastic. I think this is going to be my 'go to' method for low gravity session ales. For me, it makes water adjustments a lot simpler, too.

 

[monkeybox]

Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[dtwhite]

Tried this for the first time with a Kolsch yesterday. Normally with my batch sparge technique I get 70% efficiency (like, oddly exactly that number every time). I ended up doing a nearly no sparge, as my mash tun is 10 gallons and I wanted to have 8 gallons pre-boil, ending up needing to sparge ~1 gallon after the initial infusion.

Anyway, broke 70% for the first time and got 78% efficiency. I'll be doing this again in the future!

 

[helibrewer]

Blichmann caught on and built a system to do this very thing:
BrewEasy

 

[skw]

One of my recent brews was a no sparge brew. Also used FWH only, the laziest brew I've done so far. Next time I'll mash overnight, that should give me about the shortest brew day possible.

 

[Saccharomyces]

For those of you who are using this method, I'd like to have your feedback --

How are you using my method -- e.g. BIAB, like my setup, single big mash tun with 100% mash volume, etc.

Are your efficiencies matching up with the spreadsheet I posted? How is your grain absorption volume holding up to my .12 gal per pound assumption?

I'm putting together a presentation on this method (and some other neat stuff) for NHC 2015, and your feedback would be very useful to me.

 

[dtwhite]

I haven't used your spreadsheet, but I will say that I use a grain absorption assumption of 0.13 gal / lb and it seems to be very accurate. A slightly different crush could affect it a little, too, but what I get from my LHBS is consistent. I use a 10 gal round cooler.