I am doing a short boil Berliner Weisse… I want to no sparge. So I just want to be sure I understand the method. Is my strike water the “Total Pre-Boil” volume? I took my original grist and added 20%… Please pass along any info!!! Thanks!
You can mash with all the water up front or add some portion, boiling, at the end of the mash to boost the temp into the 160s for a little more enzyme activity and a thinning of the wort. I typically use 2/3 total volume for the mash and 1/3 for the temp boost.
As usual Shadetree you got the info… Ive seen people mention stirring the mash half way through to make sure enzymes are distributed evenly?
If you’re using all the water, I would stir once or twice, but otherwise just leave it alone (adding the boiling water requires a stir, then I let it sit another 10 minutes, so the enzymes are well mixed).
Ill try that! Thanks again!
Don’t forget water lost to absorbtion in the grain. I just did a 19 pound mash at 1.5 quarts per gallon which was about 7 gallons of strike water. I batch sparge and my first runoff was about 5 gallons. So, that’s 2 gallons lost to the grist, almost 30%! …
The beauty of no-sparge is you wind up with 3.5qt/lb or so for an average OG brew, and with 0.5qt/lb lost to grain you still get a decent efficiency. I’ve been doing quite a few no-sparge batches and I did find it was better to let it mash for 90min or so.
So how much of a drop in efficiency do you guys usually see doing a no sparge? I’ve been wanting to try this, I usually get ~ 80%, I was thinking about scaling the recipe to 70%.
I dont see a drop in efficiency in no sparge, I also only no sparge for beers under 1.050 or so
One nice thing about no-sparge is that it makes it really trivial to estimate efficiency. It’s just the ratio of the wort run off to the total wort, including what’s held back by the grist.
For example, if you have a 15 lb grist and 7 gal pre-boil volume: 0.927/(7 + 0.1215) = 73%.
FWIW, the same grist with a single batch sparge would yield: 0.92*((3.5/(3.5 + 0.1215)) + (3.5/(3.5 + 0.1215))(0.1215/(3.5 + 0.12*15))) = 81%.
The 0.92 is a “fudge factor” to account for the expansion of the wort due to dissolved sugars. It’ll be off by a couple percent at low and high gravities.
One nice thing about no-sparge is that it makes it really trivial to estimate efficiency. It’s just the ratio of the wort run off to the total wort, including what’s held back by the grist.
For example, if you have a 15 lb grist and 7 gal pre-boil volume: 0.927/(7 + 0.1215) = 73%.
FWIW, the same grist with a single batch sparge would yield: 0.92*((3.5/(3.5 + 0.1215)) + (3.5/(3.5 + 0.1215))(0.1215/(3.5 + 0.12*15))) = 81%.
The 0.92 is a “fudge factor” to account for the expansion of the wort due to dissolved sugars. It’ll be off by a couple percent at low and high gravities.[/quote]
I found a spreadsheet that helped me scale. Entered standard batch sparge recipe… bam.
