No Sparge Brewing and Efficiency

I've heard some people get 75% efficiency with this method. It makes me sad because I push for 80% with double batch sparging.

I'd say the key is a very fine grist and hope your system works out well for this. It's also been reported that some people put a board in their grainbed and press out the last drops without tannins. Sounds like too much work and time if you're going for 1 shot here.

 

My typical efficiency is 75% and I did a no-sparge ESB which got 62%, so I saw a big drop. The beer turned out great though. I enjoyed trying it, and might suggest to plan for 60-65% depending on which direction you would prefer to error towards.

Rectangle cooler with a CVPC manifold, FWIW.

 

I saw about a 8-10 point drop in efficiency...but the beer turned out great! (I've heard some people say -- Braukaiser maybe -- that lower efficiency can sometimes be a (very) good thing...can't recall the exact reasoning behind it though.)

 

There was a write up in Zymurgy (I think) about a year ago that suggested that at some point higher efficiencies may be extracting more unwanted flavors or even tannins. But, it was a opinion piece and did not cite experiments for proof. It was talking about how people wear their efficiencies on their shoulders (as awards), but higher efficiencies might be detrimental to the finished product.

 

More tannins and polyphenols are extracted. Taste the last runnings vs the first.

 

A bit off the topic - but this suggests there's an optimal point for efficiency. Too little, and the beer is too expensive; too much, and the quality suffers. Anyone have any references as to what that number (or range of numbers) is?

 

I have wondered that myself. But, I actually wonder if the percentage is pretty high considering the efficiencies that craft brewers seem to get. Personally I like my 75%, I make great beer and it is always consistent (although I got close to 80% on my last beer...still wondering WTF happened).

 

I've heard Jamil Z. say that if you're getting much higher than about 65% that you should actually work to LOWER your efficiency.

 

I wonder how committed he is to that on a commercial scale. Is Heretic leaving 35% of their potential extract behind in the mash?

 

Yea, that's where I heard the info originally as well.

 

Interesting. Most of us are getting well above that 65% threshold. Could our beers be that much better if we lower our extraction?

 

Don't know that.

Many commercial breweries get >90% efficiency.

 

I think that the difference here is that your making a session beer. Why do people suggest when making a 1.110 BW not to mash high? It's just because with all of the grain needed for the gravity you'll naturally have all of the dextrins/non-fermentables needed for body.

So conversely with a small beer you need the opposite approach. I thinking is that in any mash you get a certain amount of tannins. In a big beer they will naturally be balanced out. With a no-sparge you might be getting a higher sugar ratio. Some say that you get a higher quality sugar - which doesn't make sense to me, but that could be true.

FWIW, in normal beers I like to end my >1.013. Don't know if I'm improving my flavor profile or not.

 

There's a great article on this in the November issue (2011) of byo mag, after reading I decided to give it a go and went out and got a cooler mash tun. My first go I got 63% eff, but I'd added extra grain to begin with so I still ended up hitting the recipe OG. I usually get 70 to 75% eff when I do biab, so with my equip, water, grain crush, and process I lost about 7 to 12 points in eff. Still got the beer in the fermenter so I got awhile before I can taste and see if there's any difference than my biab brews.

 

Post back and let us know. The idea is intreaguing and it would be much eaiser to carry out on a homebrew scale than commercial scale.

 

I was hitting 70% - 85% mash extraction efficiency with no sparge brew in a bag. The keys (in my observation) to hitting the higher numbers seemed to be a finer crush (grain mill set usually between 25-32mm gap spacing) thinner mash (2.5 quarts of water per pound of grain), and performing a mash out to thin things out prior to bag removal. Your mileage may vary of course. Now that I'm single batch sparging with a 3 kettle set up, I'm getting anywhere from 72%-80% thus far.