If I have a big enough mash tun to handle my grain bill + my full pre-boil volume of water, is there a truly a reason I need to sparge? Is this not essentially the same as doing a BIAB?
It’s just like BIAB. Your efficiency will probably be lower than a sparge brew, but no lower than BIAB. There’s been talk about squeezing the grains to get more sugars out, and you could sort of press them in the mash tun.
On the nitpicky side, you may want to adjust pH to account for this mash thickness, but it’s not necessary.
I’ve done it and made great beer.
I did a barleywine around Christmas this way. I figured my grain bill with 60% efficiency and ended up at 57%. That was with 28# of grain, I think your efficiency would get better with an average beer.
[quote=“abrown001”]It’s just like BIAB. Your efficiency will probably be lower than a sparge brew, but no lower than BIAB. There’s been talk about squeezing the grains to get more sugars out, and you could sort of press them in the mash tun.
On the nitpicky side, you may want to adjust pH to account for this mash thickness, but it’s not necessary.
I’ve done it and made great beer.[/quote]
Are you thinking that the lower water /grist ratio will create a more acidic mash?
[quote=“Chris-P”][quote=“abrown001”]It’s just like BIAB. Your efficiency will probably be lower than a sparge brew, but no lower than BIAB. There’s been talk about squeezing the grains to get more sugars out, and you could sort of press them in the mash tun.
On the nitpicky side, you may want to adjust pH to account for this mash thickness, but it’s not necessary.
I’ve done it and made great beer.[/quote]
Are you thinking that the lower water /grist ratio will create a more acidic mash?[/quote]
You would generally expect it to be more alkaline, since grain lowers pH of the mash, and your grain to water ratio will be a lot lower. Depending on your mash thickness it may or may not be enough to be of concern. If you use a water calculator like Brunwater or Kai’s new calculator at Brewer’s Friend, you would simply adjust your volumes accordingly.
And you will still see a significant decrease in efficiency versus BIAB. In BIAB there is no dead space, and squeezing your bag will net you a lot more gain than simply pressing the grains in your tun. My kettle efficiency with BIAB is in the 84-88% range. I think no sparge efficiency will be somewhat lower than typical batch sparge efficiencies, with the exact amount based on the grain bill.
You could msh with a normal ratio and then add the rest of the water before you runoff. That should take care of pH issues.
