Effic. Sucks......

My effic. just plain sucks.....no matter what I do it seems as though I cannot get about 60-63%. I am using the Igloo 60 qt cooler with that little ridge in it with the wheels, then a SS braided hose for my filter. I stir at my mashin for a couple of mins, let rest for an hour, then batch sparge and once I have added my sparge water I stir another couple of mins and let rest for about 10-15 mins and then let her flow out. What can I do to improve this or am I doing something wrong here? HELP!!!! A man brewer in need of some serious help with serious issues.....

Try stirring it after 15 minutes & check the temperature. Square coolers can get too cold in the corners.

Are you doing one sparge or two? If you are only doing one, add a gallon of 180F water to the mash after the sparge runoff, let that rest & then check the gravity. If the gravity is over 1.015, that's the problem.

Well I am only doing one sparge! Should I divide the water and do two sparges then?

One thing that you may be encountering (read this from Palmer) is your cooler is large.

http://howtobrew.com/appendices/appendixD-3.html

I bet if you made a high gravity or doubled your batch size you'd be in business.

How fine is your crush? Thats a sure fire way to pick up some efficiency points, crush finer. I've hears some say, crush fine enough that you're scared. Just a thought.

clayof2day said:

How fine is your crush? Thats a sure fire way to pick up some efficiency points, crush finer. I've hears some say, crush fine enough that you're scared. Just a thought.

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I agree. This is something that helped me too, especially if you are batch sparging. My grain looks like this.You should see lots of the white endosperm from the inside of the husk. What is the temp of the water used in the 2nd infusion.

The cooler is one of the tall square cube coolers, so the volume goes up and not out.....would that make a difference? I am not sure on how fine the crush is, I get it done that the LHBS. Can they change their crush or do I need to invest in a grain mill now too.....Wife would love that.....:O I used 177 degree water for my sparge.

Bed depth makes no difference when you are batch sparging. Tell your LHBS that you aren't getting very good efficiency and you'd like to crush the next batch a little finer. Most mills are adjustable & the store may not know people are having problems. Sometimes just running it through the mill twice helps.

One thing to consider is how high from the bottom of the cooler is the nipple that you attach your SS cord?? If there is quite a distant than the dead space (or residual volume) is going to be higher and thus decrease your efficiency. In my cooler I had to elbow down and then reverse elbow to get the nipple closer to the bottom since the height was about 1 1/2 inches And if this is the case then you need to do the above or sparge twice to reduce the amounts of sugars left from the dead space. When I did double sparges I always ended up with more preboil volume so I had to boil longer to get to my finished volume.

From your other thread about this there was some confusion as to when you are measuring the SG. Is it preboil or post boil??

david_42 said:

Bed depth makes no difference when you are batch sparging. Tell your LHBS that you aren't getting very good efficiency and you'd like to crush the next batch a little finer. Most mills are adjustable & the store may not know people are having problems. Sometimes just running it through the mill twice helps.

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Ahh, tis true. I fly sparge and was thinking on this. I missed that in the post. Sorry to throw you GAB!

What's the ph of your mash and your sparge water? If you're not getting solidly into the proper mashing range, you won't get very good efficiency. Same is true of the sparge water. You'll get higher efficiency when the ph of your sparge water is between 5.5 and 6. I use a very small amount of lactic acid to get into the range.

I once had low eff. too.

And there was no single answer to what my problem was. I just had to be extra strict on dividing my batch sparges in half, and I did crush my grains finer. My tempratures(thermometers) needed a bit of adjusting too.

And even then I'm only up to a 72% (on last attempt atleast)

But I'm always fine tuning it... I guess thats just part of the brewing adventure.

But you should keep a Journal of your brewing technique, so you know what you did to get X% eff. last time you brewed. This way you can logically figure out what does need improving and what doesn't.

Also, when trying to find the problem, never change two variables at once. For example don't change your pH and your grain crush at the same time, or you will not know which one helped/hurt your eff.

Hang in there

There are only two possible causes for low efficiency:
1. Poor mash.
and/or
2. Poor sparge.

Mash problems could be caused by a bad crush, inadequate mixing, wrong water/grain ratio, wrong temperature, or inadequate time. An iodine test would identify most (but not all) mash problems.

Sparge problems could be caused by low temperatures, inadequate mixing, not waiting for the sugars to dissolve. Taking the gravity of the final runnings of the sparge can help in diagnosing these problems. If the gravity is much above 1,010, you are leaving undissolved sugars behind. If the gravity is close to 1.010, add some more sparge water, stir, for a minute or so, and recheck the gravity. If the gravity has increased significantly, then your mixing/waiting is suspect. I must admit, I don't know what value to assign to "significantly". Perhaps some other batch spargers could contribute something here.

-a.

Brewed again today and beat the predicted by 2 thousandths batch sparging.I mashed at 154 for 1 hr.Mashed out(added 2 gal boiling water and rested for 10min)which had me close to 170 and vorlaufed the whole volume once for my first half of wort.Then sparged with 3.5 more gals of 174 water and stirred well(i stir frequently through the whole mash process)and drained SLOWLY(tiny trickle,takes near an hour).That's my process.I started out with 12# grain and heated a total of 9 gals water(.3.5 mash-in,2 mash-out,3.5 sparge).I boiled 7.5 gals to end up with 5.75 gals in the fermenter.This was our(SWMBO and I)5th AG batch in 13 days and i think we're improving as we go:rockin: .
Cheers

P-Blah,blahBlonde
P-AmberAlert
S-Schwheat!
S-IslandPaleAle
S-SwirlyPearlyWheat
Bottled/Aging/Drinking-Lost track

Okay, so if I am reading everyone correctly here I need to see if LHBS will crush my grains a little finer for me, then also check the PH of my water, which I haven't ever done. Where do I get a test kit for this or is it just as easy to add that PH stuff and make it the same everytime?

I almost wonder if I should change my mashtun to the pipe system instead of the SS braid? Thoughts? If I am getting some areas that are channeling, that would help solve that wouldn't?

If you're batch sparging, channelling isn't an issue - that's only when you're fly sparging.

Ahhh.....okay! So would letting the sparge run out slowly verse letting it flow if I am batch sparging, would that help anything as well or not?

I've only done three mashes, but everything I've read indicates that it doesn't matter. Once you add your sparge water to the grain bed and stir, you're dissolving the sugars at that point (which is why you let the grains rest for a few minutes); at that point, you just need to get that sparge water out of there, it's already laden with sugars.

I've having efficiency problems as well, but I'm strongly suspicious that I simply haven't sparged enough. My last beer was fairly large (expected OG of 1.063, IIRC), but I only collected about seven, maybe a little more gallons pre-boil because I didn't want to boil forever. Next batch (which will also be decent-sized), I'm going to check the gravity of the second runnings and then decide whether to do a third running.

I also bought some PH 5.2 Buffer, which is supposed to help efficiency. Unfortunately, I forgot to add it until halfway through the mash, so I don't know how much it helped (I then again forgot to add it to the sparge water).

Okay, so converting my SS braided siphon wouldn't make a difference then unless I am going to fly sparge.

It was somewhere on this forum where i read about sparging.Someone said to sparge slow(1 hour).So that's what we started doing and our efficiency has improved.I can't say for sure if that's the sole reason though.We're also grinding a little finer,and we're mashing out which we didn't do the first couple times.It seems that there are as many techniques as there are homebrewers .BTW,we use a rectangular cooler(coleman with wheels)and a SS braided hose.
Cheers

I have read a lot of threads on batch sparging and more experienced brewers than I always indicate that it is grain crush that is the sticking point. That and you need an accurate thermometer. Are you adding some hot water at the end of the mash? If you get a good crusher you can grind it down finer to see if that helps, also might save money in the long run by purchasing bags of grain. The SS braid should work well and changing it should not affect efficiency. You will get better with each batch, for now get a couple of puonds of extra grain to make up for efficiency.

GABrewboy said:

Okay, so if I am reading everyone correctly here I need to see if LHBS will crush my grains a little finer for me, then also check the PH of my water, which I haven't ever done. Where do I get a test kit for this or is it just as easy to add that PH stuff and make it the same everytime?

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I think its your PH. Order some 5.2 Ph buffer from your LHBS. I bet you'll see at least a 10%-20% difference in your efficiency.

Onescalerguy said:

It was somewhere on this forum where i read about sparging.Someone said to sparge slow(1 hour).So that's what we started doing and our efficiency has improved.I can't say for sure if that's the sole reason though.We're also grinding a little finer,and we're mashing out which we didn't do the first couple times.It seems that there are as many techniques as there are homebrewers .BTW,we use a rectangular cooler(coleman with wheels)and a SS braided hose.
Cheers

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That's for fly sparging, slower is better. With batch sparging you generally open the valve all the way and let er rip.

Crush is very important, stirring is a close second. When batch sparging you need to get all the sugars into suspension before you vorlauf. Getting the mash as close to 170 F as you can and carefully stirring it for a few minutes with a short rest of a minute or two before vorlaufing will help.

Don't forget that you'll not get really high efficiently with batch sparging. That's why most people up the grain bill.

If you're using software, enter the recipe og and it should up the bill for you anyway.

orfy said:

Don't forget that you'll not get really high efficiently with batch sparging. That's why most people up the grain bill.

If you're using software, enter the recipe og and it should up the bill for you anyway.

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Well I get 80% efficiency batch sparging, thats good enough for me

I already use pH stabilizer for my mash and sparge, and my homebrew shop doesn't grind their grains particularly finely, but my friends and I have been getting at least 75% efficiency every time which is fairly decent. I attribute this to accuracy in temperature, and ensuring that we get a 170 degrees F mashout. I may not be the best person to give advice in this thread, because we fly sparge, but I can definitely say that temperature makes a big difference. Obviously, sugars do no good if they're not dissolved into the water that you're draining from your mash tun.