For those of you who do no-sparge lautering, what kind of efficiency are you getting? A recent BYO article, “No Sparge Brewing,” states that efficiency will be in the 68-72% range (Brew Your Own, November 2011, pp. 60 -64). Is that what you’re seeing?
I do it on my BW. Being a big beer, the efficiency is gonna be down a bit anyway. I get around 55-60%.
Denny, yes, I should have added that the author stated that 68-72% efficiency was possible in the “1.032 to 1.050 SG range.”
I want to try a no sparge BW. Could you post your current recipe?
I assume you start at about 75-80 GU’s and add sugar to get the gravity up or…
It’s all grain, no sugar. We use the “mash coffin” and around 70 lb. of grain for a 10 gal. batch. I’ll try to get the recipe up on the wiki in the next couple days and let ya know.
OK. I think I remember you posting about it before. What water to grain ratio do you use?
It’s 1.43 qt./lb. I think the only reason for that number is that it made it come out to an even 22 gal.
Not exactly a no sparge but of late my MO has been to partigyle.
for 5 gallons of 1.110 BW you build a recipe for 10 gallons of 1.079 or so. Run off first runnings (about 1.5 qt/lb as denny says) into kettle and start boiling, add 6 more gallons of water and stir,let sit another 10-20 minutes and run that off into another kettle for 5 gallons of 1.050 ish wort. effiencies for me are comprable, about 73%
32# base malt is all I use for the BW and maybe another .5-1 lb of crystal to give the small beer a little more body (added to the mash after first runoff)
I read that same article in the BYO b/c I couldn’t understand why you’d want to not take just one hour to fly sparge and get 75, 80, 85% efficiency out of your grain. What got me was his point about low alcohol or session beers. He claims that the batch sparge gives you a lott of the malt flavor while leaving a lot of tannins and some protein/lipid compounds that can cause off flavors thus you can make a big tasting beer with low alcohol. I also felt, heck if I’m going to make a 3.8% beer, in this case, why spend that extra hour fly sparging!? So I tried it. In fact I added ALL of my water about 8 gallons to my mash (about 3.5 qt/lb.!), mashed for an hour, let it drain as quickly as possible, boiled for 90 minutes and got 70% efficiency. The best bitter is fermenting away in my “fermentation room” (small guest bedroom with a plug in heater). I plan to sample this “big” beer tomorrow. I guess the point of my rambling is that I did manage to get 70% efficiency and I took an hour off my brew time for a 3.8% beer. We’ll see how it tastes…
Even if it only tastes as good, it would be hard to argue against no-sparge–an hour is an hour, and sparging is part of the brew day that requires a lot of hands-on attention. Keep us posted!
I entered a no-sparge mild a long time ago and one judge questioned whether it was too big for style (although the gravity was right on) so maybe you do get more flavor
I didn’t sparge my RIS or Barleywine last year. In both cases I was able to use the full volume of water in the mash b/c the grain bill was around 25 lbs. I got 65% and 62% respectively where I normally get 75-80% on a 6 gallon batch. Never done it with a smaller beer but it makes a lot of sense. The sparge runnings of a small beer do taste pretty iffy.
I got 64% on an 11 gallon finished batch size no sparge ESB which started life at 1.044. The tun wouldn’t hold everything so I mixed half in the cooler and half back in the HLT and then “sparged” the grain with more mash as the tun started to empty. We drained it very quickly and were shocked at our ultimate efficiency.
I do it for my Oktoberfest, as I think it accentuates the malt almost as well as decocting. I get about 62% for a 1.052 beer. I might be able to get it higher with practice, but this is the only recipe I make this way.
I’d say 70% is a little high for planning purposes. I’d plan on 60% and if you get more you can always boil less 
As long as your conversion efficiency is 100%, it’s really easy to calculate what the efficiency will be for a no-sparge. It’s just the ratio of the mash runoff to the total strike volume.
For example, if the grist weight is 12.5 lb (1.5 gal absorption) and the pre-boil volume is 6.5 gal, the efficiency will be 6.5/8.0 = 81%.
Doesn’t this ignore the volume contribution from dissolved sugars?
When I’ve done these calculations using Kai’s mash calculator, it predicts around 75% efficiency (maybe just slightly higher, I doubt I’ve ever specifically tested 12.5 # and 8 gallons, but I can’t run the spreadsheet at the moment). In practice, I see 70-75% efficiency when I do no sparge on ~10-12 plato beers, usually very close to 75%.
You do realize you are only calculating a volumetric efficiency of the water utilized, correct?
With a 12.5 lb grist your theoretical gravity points would be ~450. With 100% efficiency that 6.5 gallon batch would have a gravity of 1.069, 80%=1.055, 70%=1.048, etc…with a no-sparge I believe most people with an adequate crush should see their efficiency in the 60-70% range…YMMV
Good point. Kai’s spreadsheet assumes a solute volume of 0.63 L/kg, but of course that wouldn’t be constant for all concentrations. Working with that assumption, though, the total volume ends up being ~8.8 gal, so the efficiency would be ~74%. You could probably just knock 10% off the un-corrected volumes and get a conservative estimate.
Exactly. If you’re making the assumption that all the available sugars are uniformly dissolved in the water (100% conversion efficiency), then there are no other variables. If you measure the actual mash volume (which as malzig pointed out, isn’t constant) and the actual runoff volume, the ratio between the two is the lauter efficiency. If you’re getting an overall mash efficiency that’s less than that, it’s because conversion efficiency was <100%.
One I never would have been aware of if Kai didn’t catch me making the same mistake, once.
Otherwise, yes, it is a simple volumetric dilution. I do quite a few no-sparge beers, and 75% is a very predictive number on my system. But I never make Barleywines and I make sure I get over 90% conversion.