Sparge vs no sparge in cooler mashtun

[beauvafr]

What drop in efficiency should I get for no sparging at all in a cooler?

 

[gregkeller]

I have a 10% drop or so. I use this on low gravity beers and love it. I'll play around wit the numbers but what i try and do is use somewhere around 2.0 qts/lb to do the mash, then i've got the remainder of the water in a pot on the stove and boil it. That boiling water gets dumped into the mash after 60 minutes to raise the mash temp up to 165-168 to help dissolve some more sugars and make the run off nice and fluid.

It takes some playing with the numbers to find the sweet spot, but for example i did a session IPA last weekend, and used 7.5 gallons of strike water and had 3.5 gallons of boiling water that raised the grain bed temp from 149 to 165.

 

[beauvafr]

I have a 10% drop or so. I use this on low gravity beers and love it. I'll play around wit the numbers but what i try and do is use somewhere around 2.0 qts/lb to do the mash, then i've got the remainder of the water in a pot on the stove and boil it. That boiling water gets dumped into the mash after 60 minutes to raise the mash temp up to 165-168 to help dissolve some more sugars and make the run off nice and fluid.

It takes some playing with the numbers to find the sweet spot, but for example i did a session IPA last weekend, and used 7.5 gallons of strike water and had 3.5 gallons of boiling water that raised the grain bed temp from 149 to 165.

How do you calculate the boiling water you will add? How much efficiency do yo get?

 

[millerbp]

Maybe I'm wrong but that sounds like a batch sparge with a mash out. No sparge is putting all of the water in at once to hit your mash target, vorlauf, and then go right to boil. I'd estimate 10% less efficiency to start. Mine is usually only 5% less on low gravity beers than if I do a normal batch sparge.

 

[gregkeller]

Maybe mine is a batch sparge with a mash out, but i don't run off before i add the boiling water. Not sure what the correct verbiage is. I've also done it where all the water goes in at the beginning.

So my last batch I used 7.5 gallons of strike water, let it sit for an hour, then added 3.5 gallons of boiling water, then vourlaufed and ran the entire volume into my boil kettle.

To the OP, i used the green bay rackers site http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml they have a rest calculator where you plug in the amount of grain. I set the current temp at my desired mash temp, and the target temp at 165 or 168. Then play around with mash thickness so that the amount i need to add plus what i get from the strike water comes out to my desired pre boil volume. sometimes it's off by a quart or so either direction, but i'm cool with that. I usually shoot to end up with 5.5 or 6 gallons into the fermenter, so if i actually get 5.25 or 6.25 i'm fine with that. Either way i get 5 gallons into the keg.

 

[hannibalmdq]

I've tinkered quite a bit with no-sparge and I found that stirring late in the mash was the key.

I average about 78% efficiency when I use a mash tun and sparge once.

If I just no-sparge, don't stir at all, and drain, I'll drop to about 70% efficiency.

If I no-sparge, then stir like crazy with 5 to 10 minutes left in my mash, I'll normally hit 78%, give or take a point or two.

 

[beauvafr]

If I no-sparge, then stir like crazy with 5 to 10 minutes left in my mash, I'll normally hit 78%, give or take a point or two.

So basically no mashout or sparge for this method? Do you stir all the time for 10 min or do you stir a number of time while closing the lid between?

 

[hannibalmdq]

So basically no mashout or sparge for this method? Do you stir all the time for 10 min or do you stir a number of time while closing the lid between?

Naw, I'm too lazy for all that stirring. Basically, if I'm doing a 60 minute mash I'll just pop the lid at 50 minutes and stir really hard for 2 or 3 minutes. Then I close the lid and let it settle until the hour is over. Then I run off to the kettle and boil.

No mash out, no sparge. Just mash with the full volume of water. I have my system volumes pretty tuned in so I can factor dead space and grain absorption into the equation and my preboil volume target fairly accurately.

 

[JustLooking]

No mash out, no sparge. Just mash with the full volume of water.

Do you check your pH or do water adjustments? I've read that above 2 qts/lb, your pH could be off.

 

[beauvafr]

Naw, I'm too lazy for all that stirring. Basically, if I'm doing a 60 minute mash I'll just pop the lid at 50 minutes and stir really hard for 2 or 3 minutes. Then I close the lid and let it settle until the hour is over. Then I run off to the kettle and boil.

No mash out, no sparge. Just mash with the full volume of water. I have my system volumes pretty tuned in so I can factor dead space and grain absorption into the equation and my preboil volume target fairly accurately.

I may be going for that too.

Can you elaborate on some of your methods to get to this efficience. Are you using ph corrections? Double crush?

 

[rockinmarty]

there was an article in BYO a couple years ago about no sparge brewing that was quite informative. give it a read. Should be in there archives.

 

[hannibalmdq]

I may be going for that too.

Can you elaborate on some of your methods to get to this efficience. Are you using ph corrections? Double crush?

The crush at my LHBS is pretty good. I don't double crush or anything. No pH correction. I read a bunch about full volume mashing and was sorry of scared by all this possible pitfalls. But I thought if just try it once to baseline it before tinkering with anything. Then if I had issues I'd fix them.

I hit 68% without stirring at all during the mash The next time I tried stirring and it jumped 10 points for me. It produced petty consistent results. A month ago I didn't stir just to see if it was a red herring and I dipped back into the upper 60s for that brew.

I do tinker with my water a little now that I know what I'm working with. But I never had any issues with full volume mashing. The mash water isn't saturated with sugar, so my thought was that agitation pre draining might coax some more sugar off the grain as compared to just draining.

 

[hannibalmdq]

Do you check your pH or do water adjustments? I've read that above 2 qts/lb, your pH could be off.

Nope. I have those testing strips, but they are terrible so I gave up on them pretty quick. I've never had a big efficiency problem. Mash pH does play a role in starch conversion, but there are several other factors including temperature and time that also affect it to a large extent.

I started to treat my water with some gypsum or calcium chloride because I am a little calcium deficient. However, before I did the water treatment, my efficiency numbers where in the same ballpark.

While I do it a lot nowadays, I don't full volume mash exclusively. I don't see an extremely large variation in between my methods, normally between 75 and 80. Looking at my brew log the big drops in efficiency seem to be attributable to (a) full volume mash and not stirring at all before runoff or (b) a suspect crush from a brew shop I don't often frequent.

Mind you, I'm not making any claim that my mash pH is in or out of the accepted optimal range. I'm just making the claim that anecdotally, I haven't seen any conversion issues using a high water to grist ratio. Water to grist ratio is thought to play a role in the certain qualities of the produced wort, but I'll leave that for another thread.

 

[gregkeller]

So quick question about the stirring, as that's something I've never thought to do with no sparge but I'll try on my next batch. Are you also stirring before runoff on a normal batch? I guess it wouldn't be needed because you are stirring when you sparge right?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[hannibalmdq]

So quick question about the stirring, as that's something I've never thought to do with no sparge but I'll try on my next batch. Are you also stirring before runoff on a normal batch? I guess it wouldn't be needed because you are stirring when you sparge right?


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I don't normally stir before runoff when I batch sparge. After adding the sparge water I stir.

Your probably going to notice more particulate in your no sparge runnings if you stir it before runoff. There's little relationship between that and clarity of the final product but you may notice you have more trub in the kettle / carboy.

 

[beauvafr]

I did a batch Caribbou slobber yeasterday, no sparge, no mashout. I got 60% efficiency only. I dont know what's wrong in my system.

Temperature was spot on at 154. I only loose a degree over the hour.

 

[hannibalmdq]

I did a batch Caribbou slobber yeasterday, no sparge, no mashout. I got 60% efficiency only. I dont know what's wrong in my system.

Temperature was spot on at 154. I only loose a degree over the hour.

Crush would be the first place if check. What do you normally get when batch sparging?

 

[IslandLizard]

I just wonder why you would not want to sparge, particularly when using a cooler. It's so easy. And efficient.

If you can drain (or squeeze) your mash as dry as technically possible, with 0 dead space, there may be not much difference. Still I think a decent amount of sugar remains in the grist if you don't sparge at least once.

For the record, I sparge 2x with half the sparge volume each. Typically mashing at 1.25-1.50 w/g ratio.

 

[beauvafr]

Crush would be the first place if check. What do you normally get when batch sparging?

I am averaging 55-60% on three batchs so far in my cooler. First 2 with sparge and the last one I just stirred at the end. The best was the last one with 60% (no sparge). Still I consider it very low!

 

[hannibalmdq]

I just wonder why you would not want to sparge, particularly when using a cooler. It's so easy. And efficient.

If you can drain (or squeeze) your mash as dry as technically possible, with 0 dead space, there may be not much difference. Still I think a decent amount of sugar remains in the grist if you don't sparge at least once.

For the record, I sparge 2x with half the sparge volume each. Typically mashing at 1.25-1.50 w/g ratio.

Well, we do have a metric for determining how much sugar you grabbed from the grain. When I batch sparge, I average about 78% efficiency. When I no sparge and stir before I drain I average about... 78 percent efficiency. There's little reason from an efficiency standpoint for me to sparge. I'm pulling the same amount of sugar of the grain and I don't have to bother heating sparge water, adding it, waiting, and running of again.

Sometimes I sparge or even double batch sparge. Mostly it due to limitations when dealing with large grain bills.

 

[beauvafr]

Thanks guys. Still wonder why I get only 60%...

 

[IslandLizard]

Most likely the crush is too coarse. The water simply cannot get to the inside of the grain chunks. That's the #1 cause of low efficiency.

Who milled it, your LHBS? Those tend to be notorious for that. What did it look like?

 

[the_ale_scale]

I am not familiar with the efficiency term you guys keep using. I was planning on doing a no sparge do to containing the grain in musin bag(s). Ideas? Comments?

 

[Brewenstein]

I am not familiar with the efficiency term you guys keep using. I was planning on doing a no sparge do to containing the grain in musin bag(s). Ideas? Comments?

As brewers we strive to extract the maximum amount of sugars from the grain that we can. In theory you could extract 100% of them. In reality, that won't happen for a variety of reasons. When someone says that they are getting 70% efficiency, that just means that they have extracted 70% of the possible sugars. It is not as important what your efficiency is (although most of us want it to at least be 70%), but that it is consistent. Without consistency, it is difficult to formulate your recipes, or to repeat one.

There are many threads on HBT that go into this in greater detail, but this is my brief description to get you started.

 

[the_ale_scale]

Thank you, I did have the main idea down, however how does the sparging time change this? And how do you get these calculations?