[tomsawyer]

Nice to see that all the AG methods showed success.  I'm particularly glad to see that fly sparging isn't head and shoulders better than other methods, since I am set up to batch sparge or no sparge.

I suppose one would need to see percentages of peoples' methods who entered, to compare to success rates in order to determine if a particular method is superior.  And you'd need enough data points for each method to make it statistically significant.

As for extracts, companies are making some really nice products these days (rye, Munich,wheat, even the conventional malt ones have more sophisticated recipes including crystal and dextrin) and I tell new brewers that they can make really good beer with these.

[denny]

The fallacy in all of this is that sparging is the factor that made a difference.  There is a lot more to the brewing process than sparging, and saying that because a batch that was sparged one way or another achieved success because of the sparge method overlooks all the other variables involved.  Pretty much all you can conclude is that the sparge method wasn't detrimental to the beer.