So I know that if you mash too thin you lower the efficency of the enzymes (or something along those lines) and mess with the conversion of starches to fermentable sugars. So I get why you wouldn’t mash 9 pounds of grain with, say, 10 gallons of water.
However, yesterday I was making a mild with under 9 pounds of grain and I mashed with 3.5 gallons of water. When I went to collect my first runnings it was stuck, and I thought the small amount of water in my 70 qt cooler might have something to do with it (first time I’ve ever had it stuck). So, I added the water I had intended to sparge with, stirred and waited 10 minutes and collected my 6.5 gallons to boil with no problem. I took a ph reading at room temp from a little bit of the runnings collected at the beginning and a little collected at the end and according to my strip they both tested between 5.0 and 5.4.
Will this cause any issues? And if not, what is reason behind collecting your first runnings, adding the sparge water and then waiting before collecting the rest of your wort?
You basically did a no-sparge. It won’t cause any issues other than the efficiency might have been a little lower than if you’d batch sparged. Either way works fine but your efficiency will be somewhat higher with batch sparging than no sparging. With batch sparging (or fly sparging) you’re rinsing more sugars out of the grains.
Especially for Session ales, I have found that no-sparging gives a better malt flavor than sparging. I think Gordon Strong makes this point in brewing better beer as well. When I make my next Mild (for NHC) I intend on doing a no sparge in order to give the beer as much body as possible.
Frankly, I don’t notice any flavor, body or aroma differences between batch and fly sparging and frankly I highly doubt I would with a no-sparge either.
Veldy
P.S. I used a fly sparge for about fifteen years and only switched to batch sparge full time last fall.
When you do this what kind of water to grist ratio are you using? I guess what I’m really asking is are you getting your full boil volume out of the mash tun or do you have to top off with water after the runoff?
I’ll mash about 2qt/lb and the mashout has the remainder that accounts for absorption/loss etc and the boil volume. It’s a no-sparge approach and is ok to top up the kettle if I missed.
My intent is to save a bit of time and effort plus the quality of the wort is better in my opinion. Also it is hard to over-sparge (over rinse) the grain this way.
Nope. It (the mashout water) isn’t equal to the amount mashed because the grain bill is larger than a batch-sparge normally would be. I have to compensate because I get around 70% eff. I see what you are saying about my large mashout but it isn;t batch-sparging which requires the tun to be drained and refilled and drained again.
I guess I misunderstood when you said you used it to compensate for losses. I assumed that you let it completely drain completely, so you’d know how much was missing. Your mashout must be a calculated amount. My bad.
I start with a standard fixed amount of water in the HLT every time and use it all. Based on my grain bill the mashout is variable- it may be smaller or larger depending on how much hot water was used to dough in and maintain the desired mash ratio.
i do something similar. i mash at about 1.5 qt per pound, then typically will add the amount of water that i think i will need pre boil, then drain the cooler. if i need any more water i will add this and let it drain out as well. the last few brews have been a mash in a bag inside my 5g water cooler. i then just pull the grain out, sometimes let it drain. my efficiency is only around 60 percent but i like what i get.
I do have a 2 gallon mashtun for small/experimental batches. However my workhorse is a 70qt Coleman extreme. It is very easy to do a no sparge for a typical 6 gallon batch. If I batch-sparge it’ll do 12+ easily.
The little 2 gallon is more tricky to handle and I’ve done some thick 1qt/# ratios and didn’t get good conversion or efficiency. If I can get 3 gallons preboil out of it with a batch sparge I feel lucky.
I start with a standard fixed amount of water in the HLT every time and use it all. Based on my grain bill the mashout is variable- it may be smaller or larger depending on how much hot water was used to dough in and maintain the desired mash ratio.