Double brewday - BIAB vs. Batch Sparge.

[charliefarley]

I had a long brewday yesterday to try a test between my normal method - BIAB and my first attempt at batch sparging.

Same recipe for both:
36L liquor treated with CRS to 50mg/L alkilinity
4.6kg MO
50g Chocolate
67C mash for 75mins
Raised to 80C rested for 15mins
50g target 90mins
25g fuggles for 10mins

Both methods took about the same amount of time from start to finish - around 6 hours.

Slightly better efficiency for the batch sparge at 1.034 pre boil opposed to 1.030 with both worts ending up at 1.038/1.042 respectively.

I wanted to dilute down the wort to the same gravity to do a more accurate final taste test but with 1.038 being slightly lower than I'd hoped I didn't bother. Shame really as the beers will obviously taste different due to the difference in gravity. One thing is for sure though and that I'll be doing batch sparging from now on purely due to efficiency.

For some reason I ended up with more wort in the fermenter from the batch sparge - not quite sure how that happened... more wort and stronger - its a clear winner.

[richc]

Basic Brewing Radio did an 'experiment' very much like this over the past few months, their opinion was that when tasted blind the difference was insignificant.

(http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrew ... ashexp.mp3)