Hi all, I'm planning on brewing a 10 liter Xmas ale and was wondering is it possible to simply add the total volume of mash & sparge water to my mash tun and collect my pre-boil volume in one run off? My mash tun capacity is not a problem at all, just worried about the possibility of lower efficiency? If anyone has any experience in this it would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks! Graeme
Yes, you can do exactly what you stated. And yes, you'll get lower mash efficiency. FWIW, most of my batches are "no sparge." But I don't mash with the entire volume. I Mash Out with what would otherwise be the sparge volume. If you know your normal mash efficiency for the recipe with a batch sparge, BrewCipher can predict your efficiency if switching to No-Sparge. You can then increase the grain bill automatically to hit your intended OG for the new efficiency. If you don't want to bother with BC, you can figure about 6% reduction in efficiency (based on an "average" homebrew setup and grain bill size), and dial-in from there once you see your actual results.
Yes you can do no sparge. Your efficiency will fall to about 55-65%, so just plan for that and you're good to go.
I don't think that's right, do you have a citation? (I mean the part about increasing the efficiency. It's perfectly true that some people mash that hot.) But in any case, efficiency is honestly not a big deal at the homebrew scale. My advice is to increase the malt bill to account for the lower efficiency and then use whatever mash temperature the recipe calls for, which will be a function of how much body is desired in the final product.
I don't think that's necessarily true. It might help if the crush really sucks or you have a ton of unmalted adjuncts; however, with any standard malt and a good standard quality crush, you can get great efficiency in as little as 15-20 minutes. Fermentability could become problematic mashing at higher temperatures. So I would advise against mashing hot. A longer mash, larger sparge, and longer boil could help with efficiency, if it matters. But it's probably easier just to use extra malt and take the hit on efficiency.
x3 A proper crush and a long enough sparge will help with efficiency. A higher mash temperature, that falls within the normal limits of mash temperatures, won't effect your efficiency.
