Years ago the fellow who put together the brewing research and training department at the University of California advocated non-sparge brewing. I can't remember his name -- I'm having a senior moment -- but I'm sure a lot of you do, so help me out here. Anyway, his theory was that an extremely loose mash (something more like malt soup) favored rapid and efficient conversions at much more easily controlled temperatures. At mash-out the liquid is simply drained off. This greatly reduced the tannins leached from the grain husks, and there was very little unconverted starch in the unfiltered runoff. The big advantage of his system was the reduction in mash time and control over the mash temperature. I think the entire mash required only twenty minutes or less, and of course there was no sparge time after mash-out. If I could remember the name, I'm sure his papers could be found on the Internet. John Reese On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 09:08, jvoosen(a)usfamily.net wrote: