[mabrungard]

Tom,

That is a very good point, mashing out is providing an additional heat input that we'll need eventually to boil.  Mash out just makes sense to me.

[SpanishCastleAle]

Devil's advocate here:  It seems that you're heating either way; whether you heat to mash-out or heat the sparge water you're still heating the entire grain bed which ends up being 'wasted' heat because much of that heat remains in the grain bed.  When just heating the kettle up to the boil you're not devoting all that 'thrown away' heat to the grain bed.

I mash-out and sparge hot, just making the point.

[ccarlson]

Yes, but if you sparge with cooler water, your efficiency will suffer a little. If energy conservation is more important to you. then your point is well made.

[SpanishCastleAle]

The efficiency thing was covered earlier itt.  It seems to make a difference for some and not for others.  I'm not really worried about a slight difference in efficiency (grain is cheap) or a slight difference in propane use (it's a drop in the bucket since I already use a lot).  Like everyone else here, I just want to make the best beer I possibly can.  But old habits die hard (so I still mash-out and sparge hot).

[tschmidlin]

Sure, some heat remains behind in the mash, but more ends up in the mash tun.  This would vary depending on how you mash of course, fly spargers tend to leave more water behind in the mash than batch spargers.

[morticaixavier]

Devil's advocate here:  It seems that you're heating either way; whether you heat to mash-out or heat the sparge water you're still heating the entire grain bed which ends up being 'wasted' heat because much of that heat remains in the grain bed.  When just heating the kettle up to the boil you're not devoting all that 'thrown away' heat to the grain bed.

I mash-out and sparge hot, just making the point.

Not only are you not adding more heat to the mash, you are actually moving heat from the mash to the boil kettle. The 60* water you sparge with comes out the other end at 60* + some, depending on the heat of the mash when you add it. I tried this a couple of weeks ago because I forgot to heat my sparge water before starting my sparge so I just dumped it in at like 90 or so (didn't take it's temp) didn't seem to hurt my eff but I am not that exacting so who can say.