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Homebrewing

Posted by Nick B. on 2013-02-08 00:47:26

Good point on the geek homebrewers. AFA trading off efficiency, I prefer to look at it the other way around. Brewers who do sparging trade off quality for a few percent in malt costs. George Fix's (RIP) piece on sparge-free brewing got me started on it in 1995 or so. I've actually never sparged, I started out with the intent of sparge-free mashing. IIRC, his calculations suggested that the typical homebrewer would have to use 15-20% more malt than if they'd sparge. I worked out that with my apparently highly efficient mash tun, I'm using more like 10-15% more. In the end, my malt costs are about 0,31€ a litre. Oh dear, I'm "throwing away" maybe 5 cents a litre by not sparging. Quality has it's price. My hop costs are about 0,41 € a litre, FWIW. Yeast, I guess maybe 0,12 €...? Water, no idea, as I use so much in cleaning and rinsing, probably way more than I actually use in mashing.