RM-MN

Recipes 

And you didn't have 2 spare hydrometers on hand? This must be the first one you have broken.

captainkirk83

Recipes 

I had the same problem yesterday with my second Biab attempt. First one went great but the efficiency yesterday was only 55% and will likely end up at 4% abv than 5%. I'm blaming the crush from lhbs as it did not look as fine as my last one where I got over 75%. Thanks for all the answers and I'll ask for a finer crush next time.

Side question. Will low efficiency affect the final beer quality other than lower alc and ticking me off?

bradfordmonk

Recipes 

I think my low efficiency in my case was the crush of the grains from Midwest.

I did find a picture I took, I mixed in some of my grains I crushed and the ones I had from NB.

Most of the kernels(?) you can see are what MW sent me, as that's what the whole bag mostly looked like from them. The white/bright pieces is mostly from me and crushing my Abbey malt. SO it's tough to illustrate how crush looked because I mixed the grains in the bucket.

I was almost going to run them through my corona, and I should have gone with my instinct to do that

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acidrain

Recipes 

Four pages and only this one mention of stirring.

Stirring is just as important as crush.

Four things affect BIAB: crush, stirring, temp, and squeeze.
I always had better efficiency with full volume mash (no sparge), and like others have said, the mash-out is un-necessary.

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bradfordmonk

Recipes 

Yup, I do stirring and squeezing (my temps have been great with just putting blankets over, I usually shoot a degree or two higher so temps settle, it's cold out here in Philly and I do the brewing outside). I just think the original issue was with the grain crush, because that was the biggest concern, at least from me. I did it once before and did well with BIAB for first attempt, and this was the only thing that changed from 1st attempt to this attempt.

I will say Midwest has great customer service. I brought the issue up to them to just make them aware of the issue and they got back to me. Said they saw a thread on here (probably this one) and noticed the grains didn't looked crushed properly. They have one person milling the grains and over time it just gets out of whack if not payed closer attention to. So they were definitely understanding of the issue and went above and beyond to do what they could to rectify the issue.

So I give them huge props, and would definitely order from them again where (to be honest) was just thinking of avoiding. They want us to make great beer. And I see that while looking around about people who deal with them locally.

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midwestsupplies

Recipes 

Hello All,

We just wanted to take a moment to comment on the crush of the grains coming out of our grain room. It sounds like there were some problems recently with the grain mill. I have informed the guys in the mill room as well as the floor manager of the problem, and they have assured me they are looking into it today.

I apologize if we caused any problems, or made anyone's brew-day more difficult than it needed to be. If you want, you can always feel free to contact us via phone, email, or live chat. We are always more than willing to correct any error that was our fault.

Again, sorry for the trouble.

Cheers,

Nick @ Midwest.

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seckert

Recipes 

yes actually this was the first one i have broken...lol and of course my lhbs is closed today, so this next batch will be done blind as well...i trust my technique though so im sure it will come out!

fizgig

Recipes 

I stirred and stirred, I didn't squeeze it super hard but I pressed on the sides of the bag.

I ordered grain for 2 different batches in that order, should I get these re-crushed?

rmaloney86

Recipes 

I would, someone might tell you differently but those are hard to distinguish from uncrushed grains

bradfordmonk

Recipes 

This is what I'm now using as a baseline...

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Evaluating_the_Crush

That doesn't look like any of the good crushed grain, nor does it look like any of the bad examples. That's what mine looked like, and I'd say it doesn't look crushed pretty much at all.

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