no sparge

Howdy,

I've been using BeerSmith for a while now and it's worked well for me thus far. However I am going to try experimenting with no sparge brewing. I've tried to find a way for BeerSmith to 'do' no sparge recipes. And by 'do' I mean listing no sparge as a technique, taking existing recipes and having the grainbill recalculated for no sparge, etc. I know there is a work around in ProMash, but is there a feature or similar work around with BeerSmith?

TIA.

When I create a no sparge batch, I just select one of the Single Infusion choices.  Then I increase the quantity of mash-out water until I've got enough to run off the amount I'll need for the boil.

Hi,
 Greg basically has it here - he describes one method that works OK for no sparge.

 Another acceptable alternative is to use any of the "batch sparge" profiles for mashing and then adjust your equipment settings to account for the fact that you have a large mash tun.  If you do this you can put the whole quantity of sparge water in the mash tun at once to essentially perform a one step batch sparge.

 Finally, you may need to adjust the brewhouse efficiency for some recipes to match your actual brewhouse efficiency since the overall efficiency is usually a little lower for batch sparge.  This is best done from the "Scale Recipe" command since it will scale the grain bill and other factors to match your efficiency.

Cheers!
Brad

Thanks for the help guys. I tried this and it seemed to scale the grain bill accurately. However, it didn't seem to calculate the volume of water correctly. It was way low. In fact for ~16 pounds of grain (after the recipe was scaled from 11 pounds for 50% efficiency ) it showed a mash in of about 20 quarts 165.9dF when for the original recipe it showed about 14 quarts at 165.9dF for the original recipe. So I guess my question is how do I get the appropriate amount of mash water in the recipe? Do I need to calculate it by hand?

Sorry for all the questions.  :-/

Well,

 I guess it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.  Some no sparge brewers will fill their mash tuns to near capacity when mashing so they can do a slow drain to achieve something like a batch sparge.

 Others use a "normal" amount of water in the mash tun (say 1.25-1.5 qt/lb) and then add water to top up the batch while it is in the boiler.  This usually results in much lower efficiency.

 The former can be accomplished by changing the amount of water in the mash profile (edit the mash details and change the amount of water or water to grain ratio in the mash step).

 The latter can be done either by treating the "sparge" step in BeerSmith as a separate water addition (i.e. treat the "sparge with..." or "batch sparge" step water amounts as amounts you will add to the boiler instead.

Cheers!
Brad