[tumarkin]

One big advantage that I see is that you only need one kettle.

?? you need one less kettle... but you have to have two of them if I'm reading correctly, a mash tun & a boil kettle.

[Mikey]

What I meant was that you don't need an HLT. Just a boil kettle and mash tun.

[MDixon]

I might be missing something, but it sounds like a no-sparge with the exception of being more complicated. 

I've worked for years with nothing more than a boil kettle and a mash tun AND something to collect the wort until the boil kettle is no longer functioning as a HLT. A bucket, a smaller kettle, a pot, whatever... It's how I pulled off four brews in a 12 hour timeframe with one mash tun, two kettles and two burners.

[denny]

I might be missing something, but it sounds like a no-sparge with the exception of being more complicated. 

That's sure how it seemed to me.

[Mikey]

He's definitely sparging, because he pumps the wort back into the kettle with the remaining water and then rinses the grain with the "diluted" wort, by recirculating. Unless I'm misunderstanding what's he's doing. I've used buckets to collect wort and that works as well. This could be a nice twist on the procedure, assuming you have a pump.

[narvin]

He's definitely sparging, because he pumps the wort back into the kettle with the remaining water and then rinses the grain with the "diluted" wort, by recirculating. Unless I'm misunderstanding what's he's doing. I've used buckets to collect wort and that works as well. This could be a nice twist on the procedure, assuming you have a pump.

It is no sparge, in essence... all the water is used in the mash runoff, and there is no separate sparge.  It is no different than dumping all of your remaining water into the mash tun before vorlauf.  It requires a pump, though, but the tradeoff is that you can use a smaller mash tun.  And it is also susceptible to channeling issues like fly sparking.

[Mikey]

His numbers sure seem to be better than any no sparge I've ever done.

[MDixon]

He "may" be getting a higher efficiency by the use of a "sparge" as opposed to simply draining the tun, but my no-sparge yielded a 64% efficiency. Now it may depend upon how his pump is setup. If the wort stratifies (and we all know it will), and if we suppose he is pulling from the area with the lowest sugars, he is in essence sparging and collecting in the same vessel and may be maximizing his efficiency by inadvertently taking advantage of the natural stratification.

[Mikey]

Based on these statements:

"5) Pump the now liquor/diluted wort from the kettle back into the tun in a continuous recirculating loop
6) Take a refractometer reading every 5 mins until the gravity stabilizes and then let the wort in the tun run off. This usually takes about 20 minutes with a 10 gallon batch."


I find it hard to believe that he's getting stratification since he's recirculating the wort and he's checking for gravity stabilization.

[bluesman]

I think one thing to consider is the residual sugar remaining in the liqour in and around the grain bed
once the bed has been drained.
Washing the sugar from the grain bed is key to good efficiency.
This entails incorporating a thourough rinsing of the grains.
If there is significant liqour remaining in the grain bed, this may negatively impact the mash efficiency.

But data is needed to verify.