I’m getting tempted by these AIO systems, especially with the Black Friday deals dropping. For those of you with an AIO brewer, what are you doing to heat sparge water? I’m trying to get out of brewing in the recently renovated kitchen but I don’t have a good heating option elsewhere. I don’t have an outdoor burner and heating sparge water for a 1-3 gallon batch on a gas burner seems like overkill.
I heat the total water volume up using an overnight timer function on the Anvil Foundry, then draw off just under about half into a cooler to keep warm for sparging. For 5 gallon batches, I use a bag for mashing (no dead space).
+1. When I sparged, I used to heat all my brewing liquor and drain off my sparge water into a cooler to keep it warm. It worked great.
However, these days, I no longer sparge. I just add a cpl bucks worth of grain to make up the loss in extract. I brew 5 gal batches and plan ~60% BH efficiency (I have a lot of dead space loss). Saves time, too.
I occasionally will do a no sparge, recirculation mash, too, and plan to add additional grain as you do to account for the lower efficiency of full volume mashing. It works perfectly fine.
I stopped sparging a while ago. I still get 70% efficiency on the G40 (down from 80% with a batch sparge).
Otherwise, they do make small electric sparge water heaters, which are basically just coffee urns.
Interestingly enough, the instructions that came with the Anvil Foundry called for a one gallon sparge, which I did for many batches. Pulling off a gallon into a small one gallon insulated water jug was easy peasy and gave pretty good mid 70’s efficiency.
Many ways to go about the process, for sure. That G40 is one nice rig. Cheers.
One of our club members brews with an Anvil and sparges with an electric tea kettle.
You can spare with room temperature water. It will take longer to reach your boil temperature but won’t have a noticeable effect efficiency.
I heat sparge water in a 5 gal pot on an induction burner. If I need more than that, I add in tap water
I do not heat my sparge water at all. I have a Grainfather G30
Cheers!
AIO systems are at their core, BIAB systems. BIAB was originally designed as a full volume, no sparge method. I’ve used both my Anvil Foundry and now my SS Brewtech SVBS the same. That does not mean you cannot sparge but note also that you do not need to heat your sparge water. You can use room temp or even tap water.
Agreed on any temperature for sparge water working out fine. but I note that with my system, I get to a boil quicker sparging with hot water.
Yep, pretty much universally true for “cold” sparge