Sparge - No sparge?

[ChandlerBang]

I have a 15.5 gallon extreme cooler that I am going to decommission because it is just too darn big for the bed of my truck and the hinges broke last fall making the lid prone to coming off going down the road. I also have some copper scrap laying around from a recent bathroom remodel.
I know this is a huge mash tun but humor me anyway.
With 5 and 10 gallon batches, 1.060+ SG for most of my brews in mind,

1. Thoughts on no sparge? I have read up on it a little, but it seems like everybody sparges. Would a longer mash and no sparge kill my efficiency?

2. Does grain bed thickness matter with a batch sparge? If I only had 10# of grain in this big of a cooler would that matter?


I'm probably going to go ahead and try it even only for experimentation and a monster BW later on. Especially since it won't cost me much. I am just curious about any else's experiences.

 

[GuldTuborg]

No sparge will lower your efficiency. Lengthening the mash after full conversion won't do much good, but I don't think it does harm either, within reason.

Grain bed thickness does not matter with batch sparging, unless it's stupid thin, like an inch or two of grain. For the kinds of brews you're considering, you'll have no problems.

 

[ChandlerBang]

I've also been reading about possible heat loss because the cooler isn't full or nearly full. Any experience with this? Someone said to cut a piece of styrofoam to fill the void. I don't know, but I have a hard time believing that once you get the cooler to equilibrium extra head space will act as a heat suck.

 

[BSD_Glass]

I mash in a 12.5 gallon cooler with a bazooka tube. I make 5-8 gallon batches and don't think the head space in the cooler is an issue. Lately, for the last three brews, I've been doing it all no sparge to save time. My numbers have been exactly on. I'd say go for it.

When I take my runnings, I've noticed they slow WAY down after about half of the volume is drawn off. This last time, I closed the valve, restirred the remaining mash and wort, re vorlauffed and Bob was my uncle. On the two previous "stuck" sparges, I just emptied the tun into a brew bucket lined with a paint strainer bag and collected the rest of the runnings that way. It also worked fine, but I have less to clean with the restir/revorlauff method.

I think the runoff is getting stuck because of grain bed compaction which for some reason is more intense when running all the wort through the system at once. When I batch sparge, I never get a stuck run, but it does slow down at the end of each pass.

Good luck.

BSD