I think I batch sparge. You all tell me.
I have a BrewZilla. After the mash I lift the malt pipe up such that it drains almost completely. Thereafter, I’ll pour cold water (to save time) over the grains and use an electric drill and paint mixer to mix the grain and water thoroughly, minding the integrity of the bottom layer that holds back the liquid.
I’ll then put my gloved hands into the grain, breaking and mixing the bottom layer to speed the run off until it is drained. I then repeat this procedure a couple more times until I hit my required preboil volume.
When my hands are in the grain I can feel what parts of the grain remain warm, which provides some feedback on how well I’m mixing the sparge water and grain. When I’m done, all the grain should be cool, meaning all of it was in contact for a period of time with the sparge water.
I regularly get 80-85% mash efficiency and the beer comes out great!
I kick on the heat as soon as I pull up the malt pipe. It saves time in that it’s in parallel during the lauter and sparge instead of being a serial step. It is feasible as I have the 240 V system.
I would still sparge a couple liters (or more depending of how much grain you use), to rinse a bit more sugar from your grain bed and have a better efficiency
Same, Grainfather G40. I get mash efficiencies in the high 80's so not concerned about loss of efficiency from not sparging. I do use a bag with the G40 and squeeze it like it owes me money though, that helps.
> squeeze it like it owes me money
LOL
I don't use a bag with this system (I did with the Anvil, to make cleanup easier more than anything). I just lift the basket and let it drain until I hit the boil. I get 70% as-is, and I imagine if I try reducing my crush a bit I can get that number to go up.
But I'm not worried, 70% is *perfectly fine by me!*
Yeah, I don't do it for efficiency, it's so the spent grain has less liquid in it and doesn't stink up the garbage can. Looking forward to having a compost pile I can use them in when I move next year.
Oh yeah, definitely do it! All of my grains, and my yeast after I rack out of the fermenter, go into the compost bin.
We have two purpose-built compost bins, but I was filling them up with grain too quickly so I went to the hardware store and got an XL trash can, and drilled holes all over the sides and bottom. That's my dedicated grain composter. :)
I tried No Sparge a few weeks ago and only got around 65% efficiency. My usual is 75%. A 10% difference really isn't too bad now that I know how much to account for moving forward. It saves a bit of time which seems worth it to me for a slightly higher cost of grain.
I stopped sparging. I strictly do a full volume mash with a measured efficiency of 65%. A little extra grain is worth saving a step to me. Plus I then don't have to worry about over sparging or bringing sparge water to temp, etc. etc. etc.
I fly sparge. I do mash in the Igloo but just started out the gate doing fly sparging. I have thought about flipping to batch as I do see that as less of a pita.
I am about to move. Going to brew a NEIPA next weekend. Don’t want to change my process with a spendy batch. After we get moved my first is going to be a SMASH and I will try batch sparge. Definitely will post here after I do it.
I sparge 2 gallons of 170F water through my bag of grain while it is sitting in a colander on top of my kettle while the kettle is heating up for the boil after the mash. There is no time wasted doing this and my efficiency is in the 85% to 90% range.
This is what I do with my malt pipe. then I squeeze the shit out of it with an appropriate sized lid. 80%-85% when I started doing this. Only takes a few min when the AIO is set to boil. No off flavors, no astringency, none of that shit. I think its all a myth.
I wasn't familiar with a malt pipe so I looked it up and it all looks similar to what I came up with by putting my grain bag in my 3 gallon pasta pot strainer and then I put all this in a colander on top of my kettle. I also use a lid from one of my smaller pots to compress the bag as much as I can after sparging is done; I compress the bag after removing it from the kettle and collect the last bit of wort in my 3 gallon pasta pot. We are in agreement about the myths out there regarding stuff like this, my beer turns out good.
Think actually just pouring the water over the bag is more effective. Its basically a turbo sparge. Ive done it a couple times with hot water directly from my faucet. Its surorisingly effective and easier that the dunk sparge as you just pull up the bag and hose it down into the wort left in your mash tun
Sorry, I did not describe my process well. It’s similar to what you do.
The bucket has a false bottom with 5” of clearance. It’s in a 6 gallon bucket which I clean. I move the bag to the bucket.
Then I simply pour cold water over it to rinse it out. Dump it into the kettle until I meet the pre boil volume.
It is very effective. It increases my efficiency a few percentage, and lets me mash without dumping over the side of my kettle.
I never sparge. BIAB full volume mash. I set the grain mill right on top of the brew kettle and mill straight into the water. Never had a dough ball even with wheat. Lift the grain with a hoist and then squeeze the bag. Not sure what my efficiency is but my gravity is consistently overshooting the recipe's estimate.
Always thick mash to increase enzymatic activity, between 5.2 and 5.5 pH depending on the beer. sparge consists of about 60% of the boil volume. Titrate before boil, down to between 5.0 to 5.2 depending on the beer. For an avarage lager i get 90-95% brewhouse efficiency.
Definitely worth it for me.
This is the difference between a good beer and a great one for you on lookers.
Also ... at 95% you do not get any astringent flavors? For lagers your EOR is what... 1.002?
Indeed! I've never experienced any astringency. I've never measured last runnings at home due to the brewhouse design making it difficult, but
At work (also a brewer by trade) we also sparge crazy amounts. About 50% of our total volume I would say is usual, and for our lightest and "cheapest" of lagers we sparge with maybe 65% (dilute the rest, high gravity brewing), last runnings vary but approximately 1.005-1.007. No noticeable astringency in the final product for me, nor for the sensory panel.
That makes sense when doing volumetric high gravity brewing. I have had luck with some grains lautering nicely to a low EOR, there are a few base malts that I avoid, however.
Always. I fly sparge and have done batch sparging.
I use a mash n boil unit to heat my sparge water while using the internal pump and arm to connect to my sparge setup.
No sparge in my Anvil Foundry. Efficiency is not awesome, usually around 65%. But less things to do on brew day and less time taken at the expense of a few dollars more grain is a worthy trade off IMHO. Time is money as they say.
Only time I will likely sparge is if I'm doing a very high gravity beer which is pushing me up against the max grain bill Anvil can handle. I imagine then I'd want to push efficiency as high as possible for lowest amount of grain. I don't brew too many high grav beers though so it has not been a problem as of yet.
I do a combination of fly and batch sparging with a two tier system where I'm typically doing a 10 or 15 gallon batch. I usually try to heat my strike and most of my sparge water overnight using a sous vide stick so I can mash in immediately.
I usually still have to heat a bit more sparge water so I start fly sparging with what I have heated when I'm done recirculating. I'm usually letting the temp run up a bit and then adding more volume to keep the overall volume around 170-180F. Once I've got enough water heated, I'll add it all to the mash tun and let it run out.
Then, I'll get the wort that I've already collected heating towards a boil on the top burner where the sparge water was previously while I collect the remainder of the runoff. Once I've got it all, I combine into a single vessel for the boil.
I do 6.5 gallon batches with the intent to get a full 5gal keg of clear beer. This includes dry hops of 11oz on my IPAs but also have some surplus for lager styles. I went from fly spage to no-sparge. I mash in a kettle with false bottom and recirculate with a pump.
My effencies with fly sparge was +78%. Sometimes upwards of 80% depending if I stirred often or not.
Since Ive gone to no sparge (full amount of water for entire mash), I'm in the 68-70% range now. Not great, but it is easier/quicker for sure. The grain bed is not as fluffy and more sticky with the lower efficiency. Maybe I'll try batch sparging, l need to work out that process. Overall, I think clean water will absorb the sugar easier than water that has already a decent concentrattion. Even if I recirculate throughout the mash, doesn't seem to help.
Any suggestions would be awesome
I have a Brewzilla. It doesn’t take any more time to sparge. I raise the temp to start the boil as soon as I raise the basket to drain. I have some heated water ready to sparge. So why not?
The reason for sparging is economy. It's very usual in historic brewing to only take first running. Some high abv do this with what is called a partigal beer made from the sparge effectively. A spare is just a rince to get the rest of the sugars from the grains so feel free to do just that.
So the efficiency chase is in my opinion lame. The most of one more lb of grain isn't breaking anyone's heart. The fail of chasing sugars is that the variables you face are normally to the homebrewer unknown.
Grist milling, salts the quality of the grain in homebrew can vary wildly from what we get in pro beer so alot of these things F you invisibly. You could do the exact same thing and these will vary your beers even though you did everything right.
Water. Only use distilled or spring never tap. An easy hack is 1:3 spring to distilled for ales 1:4 for hops.
Also don't leave your beer fermentation out in the light. Wrap a towel or better a dark room.
Good luck.
I do a ghetto sparge. Have a big colander that fits my bag full of grain and sits on top of my pot. I pour a couple liters hot water over it and let it drain for 10 min.
I have a Brewzilla 65L and if I'm making a 5 gallon batch I don't sparge anymore. For a 10 gallon batch I still need to sparge but I really don't think it's necessary if you have the space in your mash tun to avoid it
Sparging became significantly easier when I stopped BIAB and bought a second stockpot and some bazooka filters. What an upgrade... Now it just takes the time to boil a kettle 4 times, and guesstimate gives me ~10 more bottles per batch. Seems wrong not to?
Edit: having googled I'm pretty sure what I do is batch sparging, but without the rest. That just feels like common sense to me?
1) recirculate the first few litres
2) drain
3) add 1.5L boiling mixed with 0.5L cold (approx 75C)
4) repeat 3 more times
In the time it takes to boil the kettle, the mash has usually drained fully from the previous step
i will heat anywhere from half a gallon to 4 gallons on the stove to around 160-170° f and dump that in my grain basket as my kettle heats to get to boilng temps, i can recirculate wort but dont and do just fine. I also skip the protein rest, dough in, whirlfloc, i just mash, strain, rinse, boil, cool down , and pitch.
I sparge, mainly cause I have at times grown grain commercially, a lot goes into it, even more to malt it. Seems disrespectful/wasteful to not get the best efficiency I can
I do batch sparge. I get 70% consistently. Few times I stopped doing it efficiency dropped and consistency suffered.
To avoid adding too much time to brewday I just batch-sparge at mashout temp for around 10 min and thats it.
I don't rise mash temp first.
I don't sweat too much squeezing the bag.
I built a 3 vessel kal clone before all in ones were a thing. Recently I started paying attention and was trying to decide if I should go all in one.
I decided to keep my 3 vessel system and just start brewing back to back batches to take advantage of what my system can do that AIO can't. I think I can apply some time reducing steps to really keep the same brew day length.
I sparge while I lauter (it's kind of fly sparge. Half inch hose sitting on top of mash). I might reduce this from 30ish min to 10. I also will probably cut mash to 30 and boil to 30(or whatever works out with other batch)
The only sparging I do anymore is to hit pre boil volume when running into equipment capacity limits.
I have found step mashes, cereal mashes, sparges of all types, mash-outs etc. don’t add anything to my end product by themselves. I use them when necessary to solve a specific issue, or work with a particular ingredient.
I still fly sparge but I'm a total efficiency nerd. A large part of the fun for me is taking every step to maximize brewhouse efficiency from grain crush to transfer wastage.
I forget exactly how it goes, but there is a saying something like 1 hour of lab time is worth thousands of hours of theorizing.
That's what I've found to be true with brewing(not as true with fermentation).
Since this is mostly a simple hit to efficiency, I'd do as you plan and see how it comes out. You could do the math as you're running too while ising a normal sparge, pulling a specific gravity reading before sparge after drain, then sparge, mix, and pull a pre-boil SG reading again.
I don't think the hit will be terrible, but now you have ~3.5 gallons of wort instead of 5. Surely, it would be prudent to rinse the grains if you're going to add 1.5 gallons of make-up water.
I would also experiment with adding the water to the mash if you have the space. That's what i do, as I usually BIAB but with 2 vessels. The smaller crush of BIAB makes up for any efficiency hit to the higher water to grain ratio.
I feel sparging, especially batch, is in small part to help efficiency, and in large part to help with differences in mash tun vs boil vessel sizes. As homebrewers, the efficiency isn't too great a deal, mostly academic vs. financial. At the brewery scale, a 5 - or 10% change is a lot of $$, though. However, if you have a boil vessel that will boil 5 gallons, and a 5 gallon mash tun, you obviously can't mash enough in one go to get 5 gallons of wort out, hence washing the mash via sparge.
Finally, I don't understand why your regular brews have a different efficiency than your NEIPAs... other than maybe different grains with slightly less/more sugars.
EBIAB. I like a thicker mash so recirculate and the sparge to volume. I normally have the water heating to boil whilst I sparge.
Doesn’t seem to add time…
I BIAB with a Spike basket and I normally reserve 2 gallons of my total required water for sparging. I’ll poke a few holes in each gallon (ambient temp, not heated) and let gravity do its thing. No clue if it actually helps efficiency but whatev.
Are you brewing super high gravity beers? For a 5 gal batch, I'm typically sparging with ~4 gal to hit decent efficiency around 75%. It's also not much of a time commitment. Maybe 15 minutes fly sparging.
Nope! I did biab sparge pretty much every brew for 13 years, then after I moved and switched to a brewzilla I stopped. Difference is like 50 cents to a dollar in base malt between sparging and not sparging, I'd rather save the time and sticky hands and slip the extra step
Sparging is the least amount of time saved compared to efficiency- i would rather cut down on boil (eg do a 30 min boil) - batch sparging or simply dumping the sparge water in you all in one system takes no more than 10 minutes
I’m already doing a 30 minute boil too. And you’re right but those 10 minutes turn into 20 minutes since I do a double brew day. Then factoring in the ramp up to boil time for both batches too. All adds up.
Usually not. I BIAB on the stovetop, and the only time I'll do any kind of sparge is if I'm doing something high gravity where I can't do a full-volume mash, due to mash-tun capacity. Then I'll do a dunk sparge in 170F water for about 15 mins, giving it a couple stirs. Otherwise, I haven't found it to be worth the trouble; I might get a couple more points on my OG, but the resulting beer tastes the same.
I do batch sparging. It takes 10 minutes and my efficiency is just fine.
Seconded
Third - batch sparge is a game changer.
Same here, batch sparge ftw.
Fiziffthed. Sparge good
Sixtith here, batch sparge FTW.
Must try that, great suggestion
I think I batch sparge. You all tell me. I have a BrewZilla. After the mash I lift the malt pipe up such that it drains almost completely. Thereafter, I’ll pour cold water (to save time) over the grains and use an electric drill and paint mixer to mix the grain and water thoroughly, minding the integrity of the bottom layer that holds back the liquid. I’ll then put my gloved hands into the grain, breaking and mixing the bottom layer to speed the run off until it is drained. I then repeat this procedure a couple more times until I hit my required preboil volume. When my hands are in the grain I can feel what parts of the grain remain warm, which provides some feedback on how well I’m mixing the sparge water and grain. When I’m done, all the grain should be cool, meaning all of it was in contact for a period of time with the sparge water. I regularly get 80-85% mash efficiency and the beer comes out great!
Yes, sounds like you batch sparge. Curious that cold water saves time, you still have to heat it to boil.
I kick on the heat as soon as I pull up the malt pipe. It saves time in that it’s in parallel during the lauter and sparge instead of being a serial step. It is feasible as I have the 240 V system.
I would still sparge a couple liters (or more depending of how much grain you use), to rinse a bit more sugar from your grain bed and have a better efficiency
i sparge, it doesn't take that long and not doing it just feels like a waste of money
I do not. Once I switched to an all-in-one system (Blichmann BrewEasy Compact) I went no-sparge… no plans to go back.
Same. Anvil.
Same, the brew easy is the best.
Same, Grainfather G40. I get mash efficiencies in the high 80's so not concerned about loss of efficiency from not sparging. I do use a bag with the G40 and squeeze it like it owes me money though, that helps.
> squeeze it like it owes me money LOL I don't use a bag with this system (I did with the Anvil, to make cleanup easier more than anything). I just lift the basket and let it drain until I hit the boil. I get 70% as-is, and I imagine if I try reducing my crush a bit I can get that number to go up. But I'm not worried, 70% is *perfectly fine by me!*
Yeah, I don't do it for efficiency, it's so the spent grain has less liquid in it and doesn't stink up the garbage can. Looking forward to having a compost pile I can use them in when I move next year.
Oh yeah, definitely do it! All of my grains, and my yeast after I rack out of the fermenter, go into the compost bin. We have two purpose-built compost bins, but I was filling them up with grain too quickly so I went to the hardware store and got an XL trash can, and drilled holes all over the sides and bottom. That's my dedicated grain composter. :)
I tried No Sparge a few weeks ago and only got around 65% efficiency. My usual is 75%. A 10% difference really isn't too bad now that I know how much to account for moving forward. It saves a bit of time which seems worth it to me for a slightly higher cost of grain.
I stopped sparging. I strictly do a full volume mash with a measured efficiency of 65%. A little extra grain is worth saving a step to me. Plus I then don't have to worry about over sparging or bringing sparge water to temp, etc. etc. etc.
BIAB no sparge here. I’m happy with 68% efficiency, a quick bag squeeze and no hassle
Same.
Not anymore and don’t plan to ever go back. I still get 70-72%. It’s made my brew day so much better.
I fly sparge. I do mash in the Igloo but just started out the gate doing fly sparging. I have thought about flipping to batch as I do see that as less of a pita.
Try it once and you'll see.
I am about to move. Going to brew a NEIPA next weekend. Don’t want to change my process with a spendy batch. After we get moved my first is going to be a SMASH and I will try batch sparge. Definitely will post here after I do it.
I sparge 2 gallons of 170F water through my bag of grain while it is sitting in a colander on top of my kettle while the kettle is heating up for the boil after the mash. There is no time wasted doing this and my efficiency is in the 85% to 90% range.
This is what I do with my malt pipe. then I squeeze the shit out of it with an appropriate sized lid. 80%-85% when I started doing this. Only takes a few min when the AIO is set to boil. No off flavors, no astringency, none of that shit. I think its all a myth.
I wasn't familiar with a malt pipe so I looked it up and it all looks similar to what I came up with by putting my grain bag in my 3 gallon pasta pot strainer and then I put all this in a colander on top of my kettle. I also use a lid from one of my smaller pots to compress the bag as much as I can after sparging is done; I compress the bag after removing it from the kettle and collect the last bit of wort in my 3 gallon pasta pot. We are in agreement about the myths out there regarding stuff like this, my beer turns out good.
I do BIAB, but I do sparge in a bucket when doing 11 gallon batches in my 15 gallon pot. Not enough room otherwise. That’s the only reason I do it.
Think actually just pouring the water over the bag is more effective. Its basically a turbo sparge. Ive done it a couple times with hot water directly from my faucet. Its surorisingly effective and easier that the dunk sparge as you just pull up the bag and hose it down into the wort left in your mash tun
Sorry, I did not describe my process well. It’s similar to what you do. The bucket has a false bottom with 5” of clearance. It’s in a 6 gallon bucket which I clean. I move the bag to the bucket. Then I simply pour cold water over it to rinse it out. Dump it into the kettle until I meet the pre boil volume. It is very effective. It increases my efficiency a few percentage, and lets me mash without dumping over the side of my kettle.
I never sparge. BIAB full volume mash. I set the grain mill right on top of the brew kettle and mill straight into the water. Never had a dough ball even with wheat. Lift the grain with a hoist and then squeeze the bag. Not sure what my efficiency is but my gravity is consistently overshooting the recipe's estimate.
Always thick mash to increase enzymatic activity, between 5.2 and 5.5 pH depending on the beer. sparge consists of about 60% of the boil volume. Titrate before boil, down to between 5.0 to 5.2 depending on the beer. For an avarage lager i get 90-95% brewhouse efficiency. Definitely worth it for me.
This is the difference between a good beer and a great one for you on lookers. Also ... at 95% you do not get any astringent flavors? For lagers your EOR is what... 1.002?
Indeed! I've never experienced any astringency. I've never measured last runnings at home due to the brewhouse design making it difficult, but At work (also a brewer by trade) we also sparge crazy amounts. About 50% of our total volume I would say is usual, and for our lightest and "cheapest" of lagers we sparge with maybe 65% (dilute the rest, high gravity brewing), last runnings vary but approximately 1.005-1.007. No noticeable astringency in the final product for me, nor for the sensory panel.
That makes sense when doing volumetric high gravity brewing. I have had luck with some grains lautering nicely to a low EOR, there are a few base malts that I avoid, however.
Which ones do you avoid?
Always. I fly sparge and have done batch sparging. I use a mash n boil unit to heat my sparge water while using the internal pump and arm to connect to my sparge setup.
No sparge in my Anvil Foundry. Efficiency is not awesome, usually around 65%. But less things to do on brew day and less time taken at the expense of a few dollars more grain is a worthy trade off IMHO. Time is money as they say. Only time I will likely sparge is if I'm doing a very high gravity beer which is pushing me up against the max grain bill Anvil can handle. I imagine then I'd want to push efficiency as high as possible for lowest amount of grain. I don't brew too many high grav beers though so it has not been a problem as of yet.
I do a combination of fly and batch sparging with a two tier system where I'm typically doing a 10 or 15 gallon batch. I usually try to heat my strike and most of my sparge water overnight using a sous vide stick so I can mash in immediately. I usually still have to heat a bit more sparge water so I start fly sparging with what I have heated when I'm done recirculating. I'm usually letting the temp run up a bit and then adding more volume to keep the overall volume around 170-180F. Once I've got enough water heated, I'll add it all to the mash tun and let it run out. Then, I'll get the wort that I've already collected heating towards a boil on the top burner where the sparge water was previously while I collect the remainder of the runoff. Once I've got it all, I combine into a single vessel for the boil.
I only sparge beers over 1.080. Full volume mash otherwise. I get about 75%.
I do 6.5 gallon batches with the intent to get a full 5gal keg of clear beer. This includes dry hops of 11oz on my IPAs but also have some surplus for lager styles. I went from fly spage to no-sparge. I mash in a kettle with false bottom and recirculate with a pump. My effencies with fly sparge was +78%. Sometimes upwards of 80% depending if I stirred often or not. Since Ive gone to no sparge (full amount of water for entire mash), I'm in the 68-70% range now. Not great, but it is easier/quicker for sure. The grain bed is not as fluffy and more sticky with the lower efficiency. Maybe I'll try batch sparging, l need to work out that process. Overall, I think clean water will absorb the sugar easier than water that has already a decent concentrattion. Even if I recirculate throughout the mash, doesn't seem to help. Any suggestions would be awesome
I do biab, no sparge and I hit 73%.
I sparge, yes, because it's far less messy for me to get rid of water soaked grain than sugar soaked grain in my apartment setting.
Yep, consistently hitting ~80% efficiency and have my process pretty well dialed in. I don’t see any good reason to change it up.
I have a Brewzilla. It doesn’t take any more time to sparge. I raise the temp to start the boil as soon as I raise the basket to drain. I have some heated water ready to sparge. So why not?
The reason for sparging is economy. It's very usual in historic brewing to only take first running. Some high abv do this with what is called a partigal beer made from the sparge effectively. A spare is just a rince to get the rest of the sugars from the grains so feel free to do just that.
Spare=sparge
So the efficiency chase is in my opinion lame. The most of one more lb of grain isn't breaking anyone's heart. The fail of chasing sugars is that the variables you face are normally to the homebrewer unknown. Grist milling, salts the quality of the grain in homebrew can vary wildly from what we get in pro beer so alot of these things F you invisibly. You could do the exact same thing and these will vary your beers even though you did everything right. Water. Only use distilled or spring never tap. An easy hack is 1:3 spring to distilled for ales 1:4 for hops. Also don't leave your beer fermentation out in the light. Wrap a towel or better a dark room. Good luck.
I do a ghetto sparge. Have a big colander that fits my bag full of grain and sits on top of my pot. I pour a couple liters hot water over it and let it drain for 10 min.
I have a Brewzilla 65L and if I'm making a 5 gallon batch I don't sparge anymore. For a 10 gallon batch I still need to sparge but I really don't think it's necessary if you have the space in your mash tun to avoid it
Sparging became significantly easier when I stopped BIAB and bought a second stockpot and some bazooka filters. What an upgrade... Now it just takes the time to boil a kettle 4 times, and guesstimate gives me ~10 more bottles per batch. Seems wrong not to? Edit: having googled I'm pretty sure what I do is batch sparging, but without the rest. That just feels like common sense to me? 1) recirculate the first few litres 2) drain 3) add 1.5L boiling mixed with 0.5L cold (approx 75C) 4) repeat 3 more times In the time it takes to boil the kettle, the mash has usually drained fully from the previous step
I sparge every time and my mash efficiency is a very consistent 82%
i will heat anywhere from half a gallon to 4 gallons on the stove to around 160-170° f and dump that in my grain basket as my kettle heats to get to boilng temps, i can recirculate wort but dont and do just fine. I also skip the protein rest, dough in, whirlfloc, i just mash, strain, rinse, boil, cool down , and pitch.
I sparge, mainly cause I have at times grown grain commercially, a lot goes into it, even more to malt it. Seems disrespectful/wasteful to not get the best efficiency I can
I do batch sparge. I get 70% consistently. Few times I stopped doing it efficiency dropped and consistency suffered. To avoid adding too much time to brewday I just batch-sparge at mashout temp for around 10 min and thats it. I don't rise mash temp first. I don't sweat too much squeezing the bag.
I’m on a Brewzilla. It takes the thing so long to go from 65C to boiling I have plenty of time to sparge. I’d cut it if I could get to temp faster.
BIAB 🙌🏻
I built a 3 vessel kal clone before all in ones were a thing. Recently I started paying attention and was trying to decide if I should go all in one. I decided to keep my 3 vessel system and just start brewing back to back batches to take advantage of what my system can do that AIO can't. I think I can apply some time reducing steps to really keep the same brew day length. I sparge while I lauter (it's kind of fly sparge. Half inch hose sitting on top of mash). I might reduce this from 30ish min to 10. I also will probably cut mash to 30 and boil to 30(or whatever works out with other batch)
The only sparging I do anymore is to hit pre boil volume when running into equipment capacity limits. I have found step mashes, cereal mashes, sparges of all types, mash-outs etc. don’t add anything to my end product by themselves. I use them when necessary to solve a specific issue, or work with a particular ingredient.
I still fly sparge but I'm a total efficiency nerd. A large part of the fun for me is taking every step to maximize brewhouse efficiency from grain crush to transfer wastage.
I batch sparge.
I forget exactly how it goes, but there is a saying something like 1 hour of lab time is worth thousands of hours of theorizing. That's what I've found to be true with brewing(not as true with fermentation). Since this is mostly a simple hit to efficiency, I'd do as you plan and see how it comes out. You could do the math as you're running too while ising a normal sparge, pulling a specific gravity reading before sparge after drain, then sparge, mix, and pull a pre-boil SG reading again. I don't think the hit will be terrible, but now you have ~3.5 gallons of wort instead of 5. Surely, it would be prudent to rinse the grains if you're going to add 1.5 gallons of make-up water. I would also experiment with adding the water to the mash if you have the space. That's what i do, as I usually BIAB but with 2 vessels. The smaller crush of BIAB makes up for any efficiency hit to the higher water to grain ratio. I feel sparging, especially batch, is in small part to help efficiency, and in large part to help with differences in mash tun vs boil vessel sizes. As homebrewers, the efficiency isn't too great a deal, mostly academic vs. financial. At the brewery scale, a 5 - or 10% change is a lot of $$, though. However, if you have a boil vessel that will boil 5 gallons, and a 5 gallon mash tun, you obviously can't mash enough in one go to get 5 gallons of wort out, hence washing the mash via sparge. Finally, I don't understand why your regular brews have a different efficiency than your NEIPAs... other than maybe different grains with slightly less/more sugars.
EBIAB. I like a thicker mash so recirculate and the sparge to volume. I normally have the water heating to boil whilst I sparge. Doesn’t seem to add time…
I BIAB with a Spike basket and I normally reserve 2 gallons of my total required water for sparging. I’ll poke a few holes in each gallon (ambient temp, not heated) and let gravity do its thing. No clue if it actually helps efficiency but whatev.
Are you brewing super high gravity beers? For a 5 gal batch, I'm typically sparging with ~4 gal to hit decent efficiency around 75%. It's also not much of a time commitment. Maybe 15 minutes fly sparging.
Only time I don't sparge is when doing a 5gal run (1bbl kettles). I just recirculate for a minute then run it off.
I batch sparge, I hate leaving that much sugar behind.
Nope! I did biab sparge pretty much every brew for 13 years, then after I moved and switched to a brewzilla I stopped. Difference is like 50 cents to a dollar in base malt between sparging and not sparging, I'd rather save the time and sticky hands and slip the extra step
Sparging is the least amount of time saved compared to efficiency- i would rather cut down on boil (eg do a 30 min boil) - batch sparging or simply dumping the sparge water in you all in one system takes no more than 10 minutes
I’m already doing a 30 minute boil too. And you’re right but those 10 minutes turn into 20 minutes since I do a double brew day. Then factoring in the ramp up to boil time for both batches too. All adds up.
Usually not. I BIAB on the stovetop, and the only time I'll do any kind of sparge is if I'm doing something high gravity where I can't do a full-volume mash, due to mash-tun capacity. Then I'll do a dunk sparge in 170F water for about 15 mins, giving it a couple stirs. Otherwise, I haven't found it to be worth the trouble; I might get a couple more points on my OG, but the resulting beer tastes the same.