I was reading one of my homebrew magazines the other day and came across an article about the "No Sparge" method of homebrewing. Naturally I laughed as soon as I saw it but read the article anyhow thinking sarcastically "this ought to be good". By the time I got done reading the article and thinking about it I thought there might actually be a lot of merit to the idea. I scanned the internet for other articles most of which peaked my interest even more.
The basic idea is this: sacrifice mash efficiency in exchange for saving time and potentially upping the quality.
Okay I understood right away the bit about saving time. After all a good slow sparge adds another hour to an hour and a half not to mention burns up more propone heating up the sparge water. Then there is the process of lifting or pumping the sparge water to an elevated position above the mash tun. So yeah there is no question that not sparging will save time and effort.
I wasn't quite sure about the improvement in quality though but the argument goes that if you are using the no sparge method then your entire batch of wort is "first runnings" and you don't have as much of the rinsing of the grains which does cause more of the off flavor particles to run off into the wort such as tannins. The comments I've read about it are that you get a cleaner and better malt flavor with the no sparge method.
Okay so how does the "No Sparge" method work? Firstly, since mash efficiency will drop you have to add more grain to the mash to make up for it. Most people seem to think around a 1/3rd increase is the magic number. So 12 pounds of malted grain in a batch that would normally use 9. Secondly all the mash water is heated and added to the mash straight away. So instead of the usual 1 - 1.5 quarts of water per pound of malt you infuse with about 2.5 - 3 quarts per pound. The mash time doesn't change. You can still reserve and heat some of the water to do a mash out if you want. You can still do decoction mashing if you prefer. You are just not heating sparge water since it is all ultimately in the mash before running off into the kettle. When you're ready you run the wort out of the mash tun straight into the kettle as fast as you want. Since we're not sparging/rinsing the grain there is no need to go super slow.
So what's the downside? I guess the biggest downside is that you have to use more grain. Thus the batch cost a little bit more. Altough the counter to that is you're not only saving time but you're also reducing the amount of propane used a bit. Also, I would argue that as a homebrewer doing small batches my #1 concern is quality over saving $3-4 a batch. If I can get equal or better quality using a no-sparge method then why wouldn't I do that and make my brew day easier. Hopefully the quality is better and that remains to be seen. Another downside is if you don't have a big enough mash tun then this approach will be limited to smaller batches. You're not going to do 10 gallons with a single mash tun and you're not going to do a Dopplebock that calls for 14 pounds of malt even with a sparge. Although once could always use two mash tuns to get the job done I suppose.
At any rate, being convinced that it was worth trying I made a no sparge batch this last Saturday. I added an additional 1/3 to my grain bill as suggested. I used 2.5 quarts of water per pound. In hindsight I should have used a bit more. I did manage to drain off the mash tun 6 gallons of wort at a good pre-boil gravity. I did add 1 gallon of water to the kettle because my kettle causes a lot of evaporation. I should have added a 2nd gallon because I ended up about a gallon short after the boil and so added more cold water to the carboy. However, I was shooting for a 1.060 OG and wound up with 1.065 so I think the efficiency was a bit higher than I thought and I could have easily added another gallon to the mash tun. It tasted great and is fermenting well in the basement so we'll see in about 1 week how it turns out after primary fermentation.
I plan on using this batch as the first batch to go into my new cask.
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