I missed my OG yesterday. 1.050 by design but it came in at 1.044 Same recipe/ same ingredients/same batch of grain/same boil time/same everything except I took my eye off of the sparging routine for a few minutes near the end and I ended up adding more sparge water than normal. I believe this diluted the mash and it is why my OG was off after the boil.
With that said, it got me to thinking about no sparge mashing. It also had me wondering about methodology of it.
How much additional water do I need? Common sense tells me it would be the amount needed for the BK plus grain absorption. Am I correct?
How much more grain will I need to reach the expected gravity? 10-20%?
Salt addition requirements should be larger also. Splitting between the mash and the boil.
This shows how important volume measurements are - you can alwYs boil longer to bring the OG up into range, but IBU’s need to be watched and hop additions delayed as necessary.
Sorry I can’t help with the calculus on that… cheers!
I don’t think you’d need any extra water. Your volume should just be the mash + the sparge. That is, your target pre-boil volume minus grain absorption.
Impossible to say until you run a batch or two through your set-up. For a moderate gravity recipe, I can count on ~85% mash efficiency; for higher gravity, I figure on about 75%. So you may not need any extra grain.
I’ve never added salts to the boil. I calculate minerals based on the full volume of the mash because that’s the only water I’m adding.
1. You are correct.
2. My efficiency dropped from 80% (batch sparge) to 70% (no sparge).
3. I add all my salts to the mash, but you can split them if there’s a reason to.
I stopped sparging a while ago also. I made a lot of adjustments at the same time so can’t really pinpoint the effect of what only the ‘no sparge’ change caused. Probably 1-2 bucks worth of grain.
As far as salts go I only use two. I add ~75 ppm Calcium in the form of CaCl to the mash but I add gypsum to the kettle. Strong says not all the Calcium makes it to the kettle. Talley says only ~40% of the Calcium but all the Chloride makes it to the kettle. I want more than that ~30 ppm Calcium in the fermenter to prevent beer stone issues and I use the Sulfite/Chloride Ratio so I add gypsum to the kettle. Two birds with one stone.
So, for a really soft beer I may add less CaCl to the mash and not add any gypsum to the kettle (and plan for beer stone buildup in the fermenter), for a malty beer I’ll add ~80 ppm sulfate in the form of gypsum to the kettle, for a balanced beer I’ll add ~130 ppm, for a slightly bitter beer I’ll add ~170 ppm, and for a bitter beer I’ll add 225 ppm or so. …and I get the Calcium that comes with the Sulfate.
That gives me an approximate Sulfite/Chloride Ratio of ~.7 or .8 for malty, in the 1.1-1.2 range for balanced, 1.4 or so for slightly bitter, and 1.7-ish for bitter beers. Brits add a lot more gypsum but I haven’t yet.
However, I don’t weigh CaCl or gypsum. I use teaspoons. It’s faster and, of course, these are all approximations that I worked out on a bar napkin anyway. (Actually, I used BeerSmith Water module, my typical mash, pre-, and post-boil water volumes and 1, 1.5, 2, and 2.5 tsp to get the estimated concentrations) …but it works for me.
Water absorption doesn’t change. The grain absorbed water before, and it will absorb about the same amount with no-sparge as well. No adjustment needed.
I would plan on using an extra 15-20% grain to account for the loss in efficiency around 10-15%.
No additional salts required. You’re basically moving the sparge water from one place to another. But the total amount of water and thus the salts are the same.
Don’t overthink it. Use an extra 1-1.5 lb base malt per 5 gallon batch, and you’ll be fine.