Mobstar

Recipes 

Efficiency...
I have a question concerning this topic. Does efficiency matter to the average home brewer? Can I just follow recipes without worrying about all these calculations? I'm far from a perfectionist and just wan to brew decent tasting beer for cheap.

This reminds me a lot of those cyclicsts "I call weight weenies" that spend so much money just to shave a few grams off their bikes.. Is this the same scenario? are brewers efficiency weenies or does it really matter to the average home brewer?

Thanks ahead for the comments!

BendBrewer

Recipes 

It matters to AG brewers when they are trying to hit specific gravities and volumes.

The same recipe in 2 different systems could vary drastically. One at 85% eff. could end up with a beer at 7.5% abv while the other brewing with a 65% eff. would end up with a beer at 6.5% abv. using the same recipe. Knowing your efficency allows you to scale the original recipe to your system to end up with the desired end product.

And we are dealing with a balance of malt and hops, we really want to know what are gravity is going to be so that we can introduce the appropriate amount of hops during the boil. A lot of us are trying to hit targets when we brew and if we didn't know our efficiency, what's the point of actually measuring out the grains. Just guess at that point.

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Beernip

Recipes 

I think that as long as you are consistent with your efficiency number you are fine in being able to predict the outcome of your wort.

You are right that some people don't care about efficiency (hit 60% every time) and just spend a few extra dollars on grains for every batch. Nothing wrong with that but if I can change my procedure or spend $.30 to balance the PH in my water to save $3 on grains I'll do it. Also depends on your mashtun and how big of beer you are making. I can make a 10% beer at 65% or a 13% beer at 80%. Do I want to buy a new mashtun to make a 12% barleywine (or 10G of a 6%) or try to increase my eff.

TotemWolf

Recipes 

I'm a former sniper. Brewing with knowing my efficiency would be like me taking the shot without windage and range dope. I would more mash blind than I would fire blind. Of course if you put enough lead downrange your bound to hit the target at some point. But I want to make the shot the first time and every time. The more a can tune in my scope (efficiency) the better my shot (wort).

crlova2

Recipes 

I just bought beersmith and am trying to get everything ready for my first AG batch on Friday. A couple things are giving me problems though so please give me some feedback so I can figure out the best thing to do. I am doing a 10 gallon all grain IPA and my confusion is on the mashout and sparge volumes that beersmith is giving me. In one case when I select a medium bodied single infusion it is telling me to mash with 37.5 qts at 165.2 F (cooler pre-heated) and then mash out with 21 qts at around 195. Then it says to drain all of that and then sparge with around 3 gallons. I feel like this isn't right because sparging with only 3 gallons doesn't seem like it is going to do much. The least amount of mashout volume it will allow me is 14.1 qts at boiling in order to get me to 168 F. This is still only leaving me 4.3 gallons of sparge. Should I just skip the mashout? I mean I have a 75 qt mashtun so I have the room to do the large mashout to bring it up to temp but is my efficiency going to suffer from such a small sparge? I feel like adding 5 gallons or less of sparge to 30 lbs of grain isn't going to do much but I have never done all grain so that is why I am asking. Any input or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Bobby_M

Recipes 

Skip the mashout and just sparge hotter.

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AZ_IPA

Recipes 

Yep. I agree (then again, I learned that from Bobby )

craigevo

Recipes 

Hi Kaiser, I am interested to know more about your scenario of too high a boil-off rate causing 'thermal loading on the wort'.

I see from your linked wiki on batch sparging that this would 'burn' the wort which scares me !

I have a 15 gallon kettle which I bought in case I wanted to do 10 gallon batches, but I have actually made a mistake since I seem to only end up doing 5 gallon batches. But anyway, thats another matter... my concern now is that Im getting 25-30% boil off over an hour - presumably because the surface to height ratio of the wort in the kettle is higher than normal due to the wider kettle.

Do I have cause for concern ? what would the effects of this wort burn be ? just more melanoidins ? or other differences ?

I could boil a but more gently, but I reckon I would only get down to about 20% at best and still keep a rolling boil. Or I could buy a smaller kettle !

Thanks,

Craig

shay1989

Recipes 

I have a question that Im sure there is an easy answer for that I just don't know so if someone wouldn't mind steering me the right direction on this recipe I am attempting I would really appreciate it. I'm going to make an Arrogant Bastard clone and I want to end up with about (7 gal) of wart because it's a 90 minute boil and I want (5 gal) when its done boiling. I'm going to be batch sparging which I think is about 75% efficiency according to my book. (this is my first attempt at an all-grain if you couldn't tell.) So first off if it calls for 16 pounds of grain and a desired OG of 1.071, is there a way to calculate how much water I need to sparge with to come out with 7 gallons of wart(since I'm assuming the grains will soak up quite a bit) and if I'm batch sparging do I need to increase my amount of grains? I grind them at my LHBS. Even after reading through a lot of the threads I'm still pretty confused on this

IPAAAA

Recipes 

16lb total grain

16x1.5 (qts of water calculation)= 24 qtrs of water divided by 4(4 qts in a gallon) = 6 gal water for the mash

16x.125 (grain absorption calculation) = 2 gal of water absorbed by grains during mash

6-2= 4 gals of wort is what you should get from the mash

So 7 (total boil amount needed) -4 (wort amount already collected) = 3 gal of water needed to sparge with

Hopefully that helps you. You will should get about 4 gallons of wort from the mash then will need 3 more gallons to sparge with to reach your 7 gallon boil size. It might be a little more then 3 gallons depending on ur MLT setup and what not but this should get you started.