Author: Marshall Schott
Back with our second show in the last 3 weeks thanks to your awesome support! In this episode, contributor Jake Huolihan and I chat about a method that allows brewers to cut both time and complexity out of their brew day by skipping the sparge step. Commonly referred to as no sparge brewing, this method involves mashing with the full volume of brewing liquor, meaning a much higher liquor-to-grist ratio, which some believe can produce wort with varying differences in quality compared to traditionally sparged beers. We address these concerns and discuss an exBEERiment Jake performed on no sparge brewing as well as our experiences using the method ourselves. Listen now wherever podcasts are available!
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| UPDATES |
New Podcast Show Ideas: Voting Results
Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond to last week’s survey seeking opinions on potential new podcast show ideas, we had over 1000 responses, which helped a ton! Here are the results starting with the idea that received the most votes:
| Brü & A | Brü’s Views | Cone-2-Cone | Brü’rs Digest |
| Contributors answer questions about xBmts, our experience, etc. | Contributors and a guest share their opinions on a specific topic. | We hash out disagreements between contributors and others | Someone rants for a few minutes about a topic on their mind. |
| 410 votes | 318 votes | 307 votes | 236 votes |
Confirming our expectations, Brü & A rather handily won with 92 more votes than the second most popular idea, so with that…
What do you want to know?!
Use the form below to submit questions, we’ll go over all of them and select a bunch to be answered on the first Brü & A episode.
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On Being Hacked
As many people are very well aware, this website was hacked recently, resulting in all kinds of annoyingly weird stuff including people who clicked links from Facebook, Google, and other places being redirected to a spam site. We thought we had things all fixed last week, but kernels of malicious code remained. I bit the bullet and paid for better site security so as to reduce the risks of this happening again in the future, and I’m happy to report that Brulosophy.com is finally clean and secure. I want to sincerely apologize to those who were redirected to crap sites or who were unable to access the site during the clean-up phase, it was very frustrating knowing this site was causing issues for others. Thanks for sticking it out.
BrÜtility Belts Are Available!
Due to the predictably yuge response to our announcement that BrÜtility Belts are now available to purchase, I was forced to order another batch.
As stylish as it is convenient, the BrÜtility Belt is available for $30 shipped to anywhere in the United States (add $12 for international shipping), a small price to pay to change the way you conference (and perhaps brew)! Use the form below to let me know you want a BrÜtility Belt and I’ll respond with payment details.
Spring Cleaning Giveaway
You still have time to enter for your opportunity to win some free swag! Check out last week’s article (toward the bottom) for more details. I’ll be drawing winners randomly this weekend. Cheers!
If you have thoughts about the episode or anything else, please don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments section below!
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10 thoughts on “The Brülosophy Podcast | Episode 002: No Sparge Brewing”
Thanks guys, this has become my go to home brewing site. I look forward to your weekly experiments and now I find myself looking forward to your podcasts. The first 2 have not disappointed.
The podcast is fantastic, I’ve listened to it a few times now. I’m excited to hear your thoughts on the hopping experiments, especially the whirlpool vs. dry hop. I keep on meaning to try it myself, but there’s a few too many brews on the list-temp control vs. not, hop hash vs. pellets in a dryhop, & developing a good kolsch for summer to name a few. Keep up the great work!
Guys, those beers were different, in more than just sparging vs no sparging. I don’t know Jakes water profile but he said he didn’t acidify his sparge water. The entire no sparge batch was at whatever pH was measured during mashing and would have gone into the kettle at around that same pH. By sparging with unacidified sparge water on the other batch you would have undoubtedly raised the pH of that batch (unless your tap water is like 6.0 or less). If the lauter pH raised above 5.8 you can start to extract nasties from your bed. Either way those beers, once they hit the kettle, were different. I expect those beers had different pHs in the kettle and they had different pHs entering the fermenter. That’s a massive variable you didn’t control for. That being said the podcast is awesome! Love me some content driven beer podcasts. Thanks for not being misogynistic and having 3 hour episodes.
Both were no sparge… he did that so he wouldn’t have to worry about acidifying sparge water. But yeah, they were different by nature of the fact 1 was hit with a bunch of SMB when the other wasn’t, for sure. It’s not that we didn’t control for other variables, it’s that this was a first and we needed to establish a baseline… now we know (sort of) 🙂
Wait I thought it was batch sparge vs. no sparge.
I just relistened, and that’s definitely what Jake said, batch sparge on one and no sparge on the other. It would have been interesting to know and compare the pHs of the kettle and then the fermenter because what it sounds like he did was essentially acidify all of one batch (the no sparge) and half(ish) of the the other (the batch sparge) because he only acidified the mash and then tap water rinsed the grain into the kettle. On that note I’d be interested to see a series of experiments comparing differences in mash pH, kettle pH and fermenter pH 🙂 The literature seems to argue that there are big effects at each step and I know lots of commercial breweries closely monitor and adjust at each.
Aww man, my bad, I thought you were referring me to the xBmt article that was published today. All mixed up!
One thing I’ve always heard (received wisdom) is that a thicker mash enables the enzymes to work better, and the finished product is different in a thin mash (batch sparge/BIAB) because the enzymes are diluted. What’s been your experience with that?
You need to update the podcast tab to include this episode… I missed it for while.
On it!