Is effiency really important??

I thought about this and would like to really if effiency is really important?
I brewed a haus pale ale which had a effiency of 1.055 and says i reach 79.66%

Just brewed a captain hooked on bitters , it says OG should be 1.052, beersmith says 1.056 due to a change of malt( biscuit instead roasted malt) a i got a 1.049 which give me a poor 63.77 %. Will it change the taste of my beer or only the ABV?
Ive a 36QT mash tun , did a 60 min mash with a batch sparge, How can I improve this??

Is the water ratio wasnt good? Did almost the same thing as my first brew and didnt get the same result, Of course, i added more water to the second, but I calculated it with brew365 mash calculator.

Beerbuck said:

I thought about this and would like to really if effiency is really important?
I brewed a haus pale ale which had a effiency of 1.055 and says i reach 79.66%

Just brewed a captain hooked on bitters , it says OG should be 1.052, beersmith says 1.056 due to a change of malt( biscuit instead roasted malt) a i got a 1.049 which give me a poor 63.77 %. Will it change the taste of my beer or only the ABV?
Ive a 36QT mash tun , did a 60 min mash with a batch sparge, How can I improve this??

Is the water ratio wasnt good? Did almost the same thing as my first brew and didnt get the same result, Of course, i added more water to the second, but I calculated it with brew365 mash calculator.

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Nailing efficiency matters for two reasons. One, for recreating the beer you've made if you would like to do so, and two, for balance. If you make a beer and blow your efficiency and you've hopped for a beer with more alcohol, you're going to have a beer that isn't properly balanced. You want all of your numbers to align so your finished product is as good as it can be. I check my preboil gravity so I can make adjustments if needed, but I'm usually right on these days.

Some people will add cost into the equation. Higher efficiency generally means you have to spend less on grain, but I wouldn't worry about that.

While the actual number isn't terribly important, consistency is. Unless you are getting lower than 60% all the time, I wouldn't chase efficiency. It would be a good idea to break down your process and find out where you lost efficiency on this one compared to the last one. If you aren't consistent in your efficiency, its hard to create recipes. If you are consistent, you can know exactly how much grain you need to hit your desired OG, instead of always under or over shooting.

Efficiency doesn't change the flavor, unless it is really low, much lower than 64%. Replacing roasted with biscuit is a much bigger change.

Your efficiency is going to vary, batch to batch, and simple mashes tend to do better just because base malts are exposed to their own high concentration of enzymes.

the efficiency you get will affect the balance of malt and hops in your beer. if you have a beer with 60 IBU's, your beer will taste very different at 1.040 or 1.060.

In your case less than 10 points will only minimally affect the flavor of your beer.

Bm says to add 2 more pounds of 2 row and replace the roasted by the biscuit.

Noob question : It is normal that it smeel the hops, not the beer?

Thanks for all for nice and quick answer!

Efficiency doesnt matter a lick

Consistency however is very important if you ever want to brew what you intended to brew.

I agree with carnevoodoo. Consistency and balance. Both of these go hand in hand because if your OG is off by a couple of points, it will throw off your balance and therefore give you a very different beer from batch to batch. Other than having to buy more grain per batch, low efficiency (or high for that matter) isn't really important. What is important is getting the same efficiency every time. If your efficiency greatly varies from batch to batch you will have a hell of a time trying to anticipate what it's going to taste like in the end.

Well that is as unanimous an answer as you'll ever see on an internet forum.

passedpawn said:

Well that is as unanimous an answer as you'll ever see on an internet forum.

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Lock this thread now and make it a sticky! We've made internet history!!!

Ok, not really a dissent, but something I've been wondering about. When we talk about efficiency, we are talking about the conversion of starch into fermentable (and some non-fermentable) sugars. This is important for the amount of alcohol that is produced (and contributes to mouthfeel). But what about flavor (other than what ethanol contributes)? We never talk about extraction of the flavor components from the grain. How fast is this compared to starch conversion? I guess this is really what one is doing when the do an extract plus steeping grains. The grains are being extracted for flavor (and sugars for some malts).

I can see the case, particularly for a mildly flavored beer, where a super high conversion efficiency might lead to a higher final ABV that could throw a beer out of balance. I particularly wonder about this when contemplating trying to get massive amounts of flavor in a low ABV beer. It seems to me that one approach would be to have a lower efficiency of starch conversion, yet maintain flavor extraction.

To restate by example. With a higher conversion efficiency, say one makes a 5 gal batch and only uses 8 lbs of grain to get an OG of 1.050. Now maybe someone with poorer conversion needs 10 lbs of grain to get an OG of 1.050. That's two extra pounds of flavor components! How noticable will this be in the final product?

That all being said, I vote for consistency. Of course I do like to experiment too though.

pjj2ba said:

To restate by example. With a higher conversion efficiency, say one makes a 5 gal batch and only uses 8 lbs of grain to get an OG of 1.050. Now maybe someone with poorer conversion needs 10 lbs of grain to get an OG of 1.050. That's two extra pounds of flavor components! How noticable will this be in the final product?

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Well, it stands to reason that there will be a shift in the final product when you come upon that sort of situation, and too much extraction can lead to astringency and the like, but I think the differences you'll see are probably small. I would think that the average drinker might not notice these shifts, and even someone with a good palate might have a tough time picking it out.

I haven't done an AG batch yet, so feel free to ignore me if you want. What I've read about making a difference in efficiency has been the crush. How are you crushing your grains? Also your batch sparge. Describe the process you use for that? I hear a lot of people have good success filling with sparge water, then stirring it up real good, then draining it off in 5-10 minutes.

I don't see why nearly everyone can't get to about 70%. That should be pretty easy.

However, if you are getting a bit below that, and your beers are great, No Worries!

Efficiency is useful for planning a recipe if you can hit the same number each time. Also, some pro brewers might like to hit a certain efficiency to save $$$ per batch. The difference cost of a batch of homebrew is hardly worth thinking about.

RegionalChaos said:

I haven't done an AG batch yet, so feel free to ignore me if you want. What I've read about making a difference in efficiency has been the crush. How are you crushing your grains? Also your batch sparge. Describe the process you use for that? I hear a lot of people have good success filling with sparge water, then stirring it up real good, then draining it off in 5-10 minutes.

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I have also read and agree that the crush certainly plays a role in efficiency. A finely crushed grain's starches are more easily and thoroughly converted, but are a pain in the a$$ when it comes to sparging!

The crush is important. I have half a keg left of Edwort's Haus Pale Ale that is really unbalanced due to a bad crush. I had 64% efficiency and it came out tasting kind of like blue moon. It's obviously overhopped for the amount of sugars I acutally had. Not that blue moon is hoppy or anything... Then again, this is my first batch of Ed's HPA. Maybe I'm not as far off as I think....

carnevoodoo said:

Well, it stands to reason that there will be a shift in the final product when you come upon that sort of situation, and too much extraction can lead to astringency and the like, but I think the differences you'll see are probably small. I would think that the average drinker might not notice these shifts, and even someone with a good palate might have a tough time picking it out.

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I think it would matter entirely on what the reasons are for low efficiency. If you're getting low efficiency because of a terrible crush, I could see that effecting how much flavor you're getting from your specialty grains.

Synovia said:

I think it would matter entirely on what the reasons are for low efficiency. If you're getting low efficiency because of a terrible crush, I could see that effecting how much flavor you're getting from your specialty grains.

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well, yes. That could be true.

On a note about crush, you should see the modern mills in place these days. All water-based to remove o2 from the process and to ensure a cleaner crush. They essentially squeeze the endosperm out from the husk. Pretty damn neat stuff. There are also mills that crush and they run through filters with no regard to the husk. They pulverize it.

I think if you are looking to get better efficiency, there is a ton of information out there on things to try (crush, sparge, mash out temp, grain/water ratio, etc.) but I think, for the homebrewer, if you can get above 70% and can hit the same efficiency consistently, you are golden. In other words a decent (70%-75%) efficiency nailed consistently is one of my primary goals in brewing.

only 70 % efficiency good enough?

If I could get that consistently, I wouldn't necessarily complain. I usually get around 75% (with a variation of +/-2%) and am happy with that.