For many brewers the steps together from grain to glass are a no brained – mash in, conversion rest, mash out, lauter, and sparge. For those who seek to get the highest efficiency possible and ring every last bit of sugar out of the grain, the sparge is pretty important.

But what about those who just want to make good beer and don’t really concern themselves with high efficiency, but rather consistent results (yours truly included)? Do we need the sparge?

There was a very inspiring article in the November 2011 edition of Brew Your Own about no-sparge brewing. My own personal experiences have fallen pretty much inline with what the article said, and it make sense; the efficiency falls off pretty quick the higher the gravity (above 1.045-1.050), but the beer has a nice round maltiness. Theres seems to be little or no difference on low gravity beers as far as efficiency goes, but it rounds out the flavour and keeps it from seeming too thin.

The technique is petty simple – add all the water you will use for brewing (mash and sparge) to the grains and when it’s converted, run it out into the kettle and boil. Couldn’t be easier. This is a pretty thin mash, but it’s forgiving. The one thing to keep in mind is that the mash tun needs to be able to handle the whole volume – this isn’t too much of a problem for low strength brews. You might need a bit more grain to make up for the loss on efficiency, but its a minimal cost.

For some comparison, in the days of ol’, most brewers were pretty much doing this already, they’d run out the first lot of wort and make a strong beer, the difference is they’d add more water and do a second (or third) running to make progressively weaker beers. This is known as parti-gyle, with the first gyle resembling a no-sparge type batch. Also, there is a rise in “Brew-in-a-bag” style brewing, where the brew kettle acts as the mash tun and a large mesh bag contains the grains. The whole volume of water is typically used and to lauter, the bag is just lifted out and let to drain. Sounds like no-sparge to me.

The greatest thing about home brewing is the ability to experiment. I once heard Michael Dawson say (and I’m quoting from memory), “Whats the worst that will happen? You’ll get some beer”. So, experiment, have fun, enjoy some beer, and share your experiances.