Thanks Guys!

14er · 10-11-2011, 02:54 AM

I started brewing about a year ago and started with all grain. After lurking around here and reading all the great posts and advise I was finally able to dial in my brew and today I hit 80% efficiency on KingBrianI's Carmel Amber Ale. It's going to be a bit stronger than I planned on but I'm just happy to be out of the low 60%'s.

Thanks!

**Primevci** · 10-11-2011, 03:47 AM

so what was the biggest efficiency booster do you think i just started all graining it so was jsut wondering i do batch sparge method.

14er · 10-11-2011, 01:50 PM

The two biggest boosters were switching from a large square MLT to a 10 gallon MLT and milling my own grain. Those two combined gave me 15 points. I also started using 5.2 in my mash, that gave me almost 5 points. I fly sparge, but should have been batch sparging with my old MLT...the beers I was making were good, just never got good enough effiency to have more that 4% abv.

**ToastedPenguin** · 10-11-2011, 02:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 14er

The two biggest boosters were switching from a large square MLT to a 10 gallon MLT and milling my own grain. Those two combined gave me 15 points. I also started using 5.2 in my mash, that gave me almost 5 points. I fly sparge, but should have been batch sparging with my old MLT...the beers I was making were good, just never got good enough effiency to have more that 4% abv.

Interesting to read that switching to a round MLT increased efficiency, Is it a smaller cooler or is it the same volume as the square one?

I use a square/rectangular MLT and was hitting 72-75% my first couple times using it but I suppose if the square MLT was larger than the round one is, a smaller beer may not be efficient in such a large volume.

14er · 10-11-2011, 02:51 PM

The square cooler was much larger, not sure of the volume. I am guessing the increase has more to do with the grain depth being much deeper in the new MLT when fly sparging? I'm still a noob to this so not sure.

**ToastedPenguin** · 10-12-2011, 03:52 AM

You doing 5g or 10g brews?

14er · 10-12-2011, 03:19 PM

I've been doing 5g batches but I'm going to start doing a few 10g batches soon.

**ToastedPenguin** · 10-12-2011, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 14er

I've been doing 5g batches but I'm going to start doing a few 10g batches soon.

Ok that makes sense, if you were doing 5G batches in a large MLT then your grain bed depth would most likely be to shallow and that could lead to some efficiency issues.