Beer Forum

Would there be any benefit or detriment to using a mix of Batch Sparging and No Sparging techniques? Where instead of draining off the initial mash first you add enough hot water so you have the total volume you want to transfer to your kettle in the mash tun before you start the runoff. So if you had 4.5 gal of water added to the tun for conversion and 1.5 gal was going to be absorbed by the grains, then before you runoff what's in the mash tun you add another 3 gal of water and stirred to bring the total volume you will collect to 6 gallons. Would that change anything about the resulting wort. It would save a little time, the grain bed would never be dry so you'd only have to recirculate once, and you should get a more uniform sparge since the entire volume would be a the same gravity (after you stir in the second water addition).

I know a lot of you out there fly or batch sparge almost exclusively, which is great, but if anybody has some insight into this I'd really appreciate it. I saw something similar to this mentioned in a recipe, and thought it seemed like an interesting idea. And at the very least worth considering.

I recently started doing something similar. My friend swears by it, and said he had a 10% jump in efficiency. (I guess part of it is the extra heat and liquid to better 'wash' the grains of their sugars)

I just started doing it and I did experience 10% jump in efficiency as well...but I have not done it enough times to be sure that it wasn't some stroke of luck on the last brew or what.

What I did: Added my mash water, did my mash, then added the additional volume (~3-4 gallons? On a 5 gallon batch that is). Stirred it up real well, let it sit a few minutes, then vorlaufed a bit and then once satisfied with the runnings, let it all drain into the pot.

That is no sparge, not a combo of batch and no sparge.

BDogD wrote:That is no sparge, not a combo of batch and no sparge.

As I understand it no sparge would be where you add no additional water, to do that you have to increase your grain amount so the water you add for conversion will yield the amount you want in the kettle.

What I'm suggesting is basically batch sparging, you add the "sparge" water after conversion, but before you do the first runoff.

I have only done that with a Barleywine and it is definitely just a no-sparge. My efficiency in that case was 15% less. This was a planned efficiency though as I did not want to boil forever on the barleywine by doing a sparge. I can't imagine this could increase the efficiency but you never know, mine was a planned decrease and I have not tested it.

Hrmm...I had always had it described to me as "Mash Out" instead of no-sparge. Like Crazymonkey, I thought no sparge was where there was no addition of water at the end of the mash.

On the Barleywine, that'd be a large grain bill right? With those I always assume that I'll have a lack of efficiency. (Did a Yeti Clone with 25# of grain and assumed a 60% efficiency, actually ended up getting it) Usually have something in the 70% range.

I think it is a mash out in a no sparge. I may be thinking I read this somewhere and actually didn't but I think the reason efficiencies suffer with a no sparge is because water can only hold so much sugars in solution and it becomes saturated. Maybe someone can back me or refute me.

I believe in How to brew he defines no sparge and since you are not sparging (rinsing the grains) at all, even with an addition of water, it is still a no sparge, that is how I understand it anyway.

BrewBum wrote:I think the reason efficiencies suffer with a no sparge is because water can only hold so much sugars in solution and it becomes saturated. Maybe someone can back me or refute me.

Well I don’t' know too much about the chemistry of sugar saturation, but I do know how to make sweet tea (I do live in South Carolina after all). And in my uneducated (and possible even asinine) opinion I would think that the same amount of water is going to have the same saturation no matter what (aside from how hot the water is, which is why you sugar the tea when its hot and the chill it or pour ice on it). So if 3 gal from the first runoff holds x-amount of sugar and an additional 3 gal added after the grain has been run dry would pick up y-amount of sugar. Well if you just planned on putting enough in to get 6 gallons from the beginning that 6 gals should hold x+y, right? That seems reasonable to me, but maybe it isn't as simple as that.