Benjibbad

Recipes 

Just by looking at this mashing at 148 for 60 mins sounds kinda short. You might want to up your mash time to improve your efficiency. Did you do an iodine test?

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Primary 1: Cedrella Vanilla Porter
Primary 2: Empty
Primary 3: Empty
Primary 4: Coastal Red
Primary 5: Empty
Secondary 1: Empty
Secondary 2: empty
Secondary 3: empty
Keg1: Cherry Lambic
Keg2: A-10 IIPA
Keg3: Crazy Cuban Monk (Cedrella infused Tripel)
Keg4: Kolsch weisen hybrid

sundowner

Recipes 

The thing about giving brewing advice, if you don't...nevermind...

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Benjibbad

Recipes 

ok.... I'll bite, correct me if I am wrong but mashing at lower temps creates more fermentable sugars which will normally result in a dryer beer. But due to the lower temps it takes longer to convert those starches to sugars. An iodine test would show if the conversion is complete. Asuming the OP is doing a single infusion mash then one could assess that the lower efficiency (which 65% isn't really bad) could have been caused by incomplete conversion. In theory the OP could increase his efficiency but allowing a longer mash time. The 170 degree water would stop the enzymatic conversion and rinse out the sugars available in the grains. Am I correct or did I miss the shot bus?

__________________
Primary 1: Cedrella Vanilla Porter
Primary 2: Empty
Primary 3: Empty
Primary 4: Coastal Red
Primary 5: Empty
Secondary 1: Empty
Secondary 2: empty
Secondary 3: empty
Keg1: Cherry Lambic
Keg2: A-10 IIPA
Keg3: Crazy Cuban Monk (Cedrella infused Tripel)
Keg4: Kolsch weisen hybrid

sundowner

Recipes 

Most of the conversion takes place in the first 15 minutes. Many a good beer has been brewed mashing at 148F for 60 minutes. I don't see how it could lower efficiency...more fermentables yes...lower efficiency no. A blond ale is suppose to be dry and crisp.

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A person who knows everything, knows nothing...

Scut_Monkey

Recipes 

If you are really questioning whether a poor efficiency is due to poor conversion vs poor lautering you should check out Kaiser's work on this. He developed a spread sheet linked below. He also has a wiki page that explains most of this and a podcast on basicbrewing.com. It's very helpful but you do have to take more gravity samples than you normally would if you weren't trying to figure out where your inefficiency was. It's just something you have to plan on doing for your next batch.

I tried listening to the Brewstrong podcast on hot side areation as well but I found it so boring and way over the top with technical information. I couldn't pay attention to it at all. If they found you don't need a tube to run into your brew kettle great but I would still do it simply to get a good siphon and because I find it easier to vorlauf.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/efficiency-analysis-spreadsheet-107911/

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/efficiency-analysis-spreadsheet-107911/