90% Efficiency ?????

I am looking for some help on efficiency. I have done about a half dozen all grain batches and calculated the efficiency on all of them. With my efficiency at 76% to 81% I felt pretty confident I was doing it correctly. I brewed the other day and when I was going through my notes I calculated my efficiency at 90%. Now I would be very happy if it where correct but I have a feeling that I must have screwed something up. I did use a 5.2 buffer for the first time and was told that it might help with efficiency. I mashed with 1.5 qt of water per pound of grain for 1 hour @ 158 F. My temp did drop to 153 # by the end. I then sparged with 175 F water for 45 minutes. And collected 7 gallons of work. I stirred the wort and pulled a sample. I chilled that sample to 60 F and it read 1.050.

Below are my grain bill and my math. If anyone can let me know if this is correct and if not what I did wrong I would appreciate it.

GRAIN BILL
Malt 1: 9# Maris Otter Gravity Points 38
Malt 2: .75 # Flaked Barley Gravity points 32
Malt 3: .5# Dark Crystal 135 L Gravity Points 33
Malt 4: .13 # Chocolate malt Gravity points 28

MATH
G= Amount of Grain
P= Gravity points
W= Amount of pre boil wort (7 Gallons)

G*P/W I used this formula for all 4 grains.

WORK:
Malt 1: 9*38/7 =49
Malt 2: .75*32/7=3
Malt 3: .5*33/7=2
Malt 4: .13*28/7=. 5

Total = 55

I then add the total points together, round up and then divide the gravity points in my pre boil by that number. In this case my per boil gravity was 1.050.

50/55= .90 or 90 % Efficiency

Sorry it so long I just wanted to give as much info as possible.

Thanks,

~d

I'm not confident in my answer but........ I average 10 points higher when I use PH 5.2 than when I don't. It's not apples-to-apples because I average 75-80 with 5.2 and 65-70 without it. But it could account for the difference.

Hopefully one of the "mathier" brewers will step in here, I are math wee todd did.

BTW, what style is this, and what'd you hop/ferment it with? It looks pretty tasty from the grain bill!

Promash says 90% with the information you gave. Good Work........

BeerSmith sez 94% Either way that's really high eff.

I'm jealous.

Thank you all for getting back to me.


~d

Bernie Brewer said:

BeerSmith sez 94% Either way that's really high eff.

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Does this mean I can increase my efficiency by 4% just by using BeerSmithh to measure it?

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chriso said:

I'm not confident in my answer but........ I average 10 points higher when I use PH 5.2 than when I don't. It's not apples-to-apples because I average 75-80 with 5.2 and 65-70 without it. But it could account for the difference.

Hopefully one of the "mathier" brewers will step in here, I are math wee todd did.

BTW, what style is this, and what'd you hop/ferment it with? It looks pretty tasty from the grain bill!

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I used Kent goldings 1 oz at 60 .5 oz at 30 and .5 oz at 5min. I used an Irish ale yeast. I was just playing around and using up som left over grain. Time will tell if it was worth it or not.

earlyd said:

...collected 7 gallons of work. I stirred the wort and pulled a sample. I chilled that sample to 60 F and it read 1.050.....

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So this is your boil kettle efficiency, correct? Not your overall efficiency?

maltMonkey said:

So this is your boil kettle efficiency, correct? Not your overall efficiency?

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I am still new to all grain brewing so this might sound stupid but what is the difference???

earlyd said:

I am still new to all grain brewing so this might sound stupid but what is the difference???

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Kettle efficiency measures the of your mash/lauter -- how much of the available sugar made it into your kettle? Overall efficiency (taken by measuring volume and OG in the fermenter) accounts for wort losses in your kettle deadspace, hop absoption, etc.

To me it looks like your mash thickness may have something to do with it. At 1.5 you will typically see better efficiencies than at 1.2.

earlyd said:

I am still new to all grain brewing so this might sound stupid but what is the difference???

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When people talk about efficiency they normally refer to brewhouse efficiency--you calculate this with the gravity and volume of wort you end up with post-boil.

What you're referring to is the boil kettle efficiency which is always quite a bit higher than actual efficiency. For example, I always get 92%-95% boiler efficiency, but my actual efficiency is only 78%-80%.

wow! What setup are you using?