All-grain brew day (lots of photos)

After about 8-10 AG brews so far, my efficiency is not what I'd like it to be. So I thought I'd photograph everything and take extra good notes. Then maybe someone can tell me what's wrong with my efficiency.

I set the BeerSmith overall efficiency to 65%. Actual efficiency was 59.5%. Estimated mash efficiency was 70.9% while the actual mash efficiency was 69.4%. Looks like my efficiencies aren't too far off what they should have been, minus collecting too much wort and not boiling it down enough. I just wish I could get my mash efficiency above 60%

First, the recipe.

http://pensphreak.com/homebrew/Apricot%20Wheat.html


According to BeerSmith, I should have 7.85 gal pre-boil @ 1.043 and 6.25 gal post boil @ 1.056

Here's my setup. 10 gal pot with 10 gal Igloo mash tun.


In the BK, there's a side pickup tube.



In the mash tun, there's a copper manifold



Treated the 4.9 gal of strike water with 5g of Calcium Chloride

Heated the strike water up to the correct temp, 168F



Stirred the grains into the water



After stirring for a few minutes, I was at about 154F. I through a handful of ice in and hit my temps spot on, 152F



After an hour of mashing, and a few more minutes of stirring, my temps had fallen to 148F. Don't know if it was the extra ice I through in or the calculations.

Vorlaufed maybe 8-12 cups



Then ran it all full speed into the BK.

First runnings were 3.4 gal of 1.066
Second runnings were 5.2 gal of 1.024



Added 185F sparge water to bring the grains up to 168F and ran that off.

Mash



As the boil gets close, I skim the protein



Instead of the 7.85 gal @ 1.043 I had 8.60 gal @ 1.039. So as long I boil it off 20 minutes longer, I should end up with the same thing.
Added the only hops into the hop spider at 60min



Added whirlfloc and servomyces at 10min

After flameout, I stirred it like crazy and let it sit for 15 minutes. Ran it half speed into my Therminator



Coming out at around 76F



Here's the trub pile after my 'whirlpool'





In goes the 1L yeast starter



Final post boil gravity. 5.5 gal into the fermenter, 1.050 @ 70F. Should have been 1.056. Post-boil was about 6.4 gal vs the expected 6.25. So I guess I didn't boil off as much as I thought. BeerSmith seems to think that had I boiled the 6.4 gal down to 6.25, the gravity would be around 1.053. So all in all, my efficiency wasn't that far off expected.

FYI. I use 100% RO water treated with only 5g CaCL. I used a brew water spreadsheet and it seemed to indicate my water would need a lower pH so that's why I added some acid malt.



Of course, when I tested the mash pH with some strips, they seemed like the pH was way too low. I don't know if these strips are all that accurate, or if I even sampled it correctly.

With your dip tube in your BK, is the siphon effect of the water or wort enough to pull all the fluid from below the ball valve? without the need of a pump?

franksnbeans89 said:

With your dip tube in your BK, is the siphon effect of the water or wort enough to pull all the fluid from below the ball valve? without the need of a pump?

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Yeah, it's almost an inch below the ball valve. I don't have a pump and it pulls from below the valve and through the plate chiller.

Hey next time your a couple degrees over on your mash temp just stir it down to the correct temp. no need for ice

What do you want your efficiency to be? You have a nice setup and an obvious understanding of how to brew. If you are hitting 75 to 80 percent which it looks like you should be then you should be fine. You are way ahead of me I'm on 3rd AG but have been really happy with efficiency. Remember grain is cheap.

Next time adjust your grain absorption and try to calculate your mash tun dead space. If you hit your pre-boil using these new numbers then start adjusting your boil off to get the final volume. One thing at a time.

Nice photos and run down... I have less AG experience than you so take this as you will.

It would help to measure first runnings to know what your absorption rate is for future reference. Also you did not mention the amount of sparge water.

I'm guessing about 1.5 gal of your strike is absorbed by grain in this recipe, leaving you with about 3.5 gal of first runnings, meaning you had 4.35 gal of sparge water. I believe Denny would say you should aim for first runnings=total sparge volume. So perhaps adding another half gallon to the strike and reducing sparge by the same would help... Especially with a batch sparge like this I get the sense that having higher volume for the mash will dissolve more sugars in solution so that when you drain initially, there is less need for a lot of sparge water.

WarBac said:

What do you want your efficiency to be? You have a nice setup and an obvious understanding of how to brew. If you are hitting 75 to 80 percent which it looks like you should be then you should be fine. You are way ahead of me I'm on 3rd AG but have been really happy with efficiency. Remember grain is cheap.

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It seems like most recipes I find online or in books are geared toward 75% efficiency, so that seems like a reasonable and attainable target.

Hanso said:

Nice photos and run down... I have less AG experience than you so take this as you will.

It would help to measure first runnings to know what your absorption rate is for future reference. Also you did not mention the amount of sparge water.

I'm guessing about 1.5 gal of your strike is absorbed by grain in this recipe, leaving you with about 3.5 gal of first runnings, meaning you had 4.35 gal of sparge water. I believe Denny would say you should aim for first runnings=total sparge volume. So perhaps adding another half gallon to the strike and reducing sparge by the same would help... Especially with a batch sparge like this I get the sense that having higher volume for the mash will dissolve more sugars in solution so that when you drain initially, there is less need for a lot of sparge water.

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This was my first batch sparge with a 1.5qt/lb grain/water ratio. Usually I use 1.25. Thanks to BeerSmith, I had 4.9gal strike water and about 5 gal of sparge water, one step

ok, so use less sparge but keep strike the same? you may not need so much sparge and it could be overly thorough of a rinse. Just a guess. Seems like everything else adds up.

I'm guessing it is in the sparge/lauter. It looks like you are batch sparging. Are you mixing the grist in between your batch sparging?

Thehopguy said:

Hey next time your a couple degrees over on your mash temp just stir it down to the correct temp. no need for ice

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Ditto. Stir it down to within a couple degrees above your target, It will lose some heat to the dead space in the tun and the thermal mass in the cooler if you didn't pre-heat.

Mrburch said:

I'm guessing it is in the sparge/lauter. It looks like you are batch sparging. Are you mixing the grist in between your batch sparging?

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Yeah, I mix for about 3-5 minutes when I dough in and before each sparge

I re-read my notes and it said to add 4.5 gal of sparge water, and I added 5. So that explains why my pre-boil wort levels were higher than expected.

I did the math and found out that my mash conversion efficiency was only 80%. That seems pretty low to me and that's probably the main source of my low overall efficiency

When you said you went wide open when lautering, how fast are we talking about? Slower the better, no?

eobie said:

When you said you went wide open when lautering, how fast are we talking about? Slower the better, no?

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I've always read that when batch sparging, it's ok to go wide open.

pensphreak said:

I've always read that when batch sparging, it's ok to go wide open.

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I have read the opposite and that was the first thing that stuck out to me. I always go with a trickle. I may be wrong but I seem to get pretty good efficiency with a similar setup.

This is from John Palmers how to brew although when looking for this info I did see plenty of people saying the speed did not matter so who knows.

The wort should be drained slowly to obtain the best extraction. Sparge time varies depending on the amount of grain and the lautering system, .5 - 2.5 hours. Sparging means "to sprinkle" and this explains why you may have seen or heard discussion of "sparge arms" or sprinklers over the grain bed for lautering. There is no reason to fool with such things. There are three main methods of sparging: English, batch and continuous.

How's your crush??? Are you milling your own grains??? I run a similar setup and with premilled grains I'd get around 62% but once I bought my own mill and adjusted the crush properly I'm now up to a consistent 75-80% efficiency.

It's hard to tell from the picture of the wet grains as to the crush but to me it looks a little course? May be the rice hulls though I'm seeing. Sounds like your process is pretty solid.

I get my grains crushed at my LHBS. I have no idea what the mill is set to

pensphreak said:

I get my grains crushed at my LHBS. I have no idea what the mill is set to

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I think we've found the problem.

I have probably done the same number of AG batches as you, first getting crushed grains from NB and then getting a sack from my LHBS and using their mill. Just wasn't getting good efficiencies in any of my batches. After using the LHBS mill and just looking at the gap which seemed to big for me, I finally got my own mill and I'm like 80% or higher my last few batches. Might be worth the investment.

pensphreak said:

I get my grains crushed at my LHBS. I have no idea what the mill is set to

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I know everyone will tell you to get your own mill (like the poster above me), but I was absolutely amazed at the crush I got when I asked my LHBS to double mill my last order.

Even though I BIAB, and am not worried about stuck sparges, the hulls were well in tact, and there was only a slight bit of flour, but the grains were very much smaller than from a one pass.

If your guys will double mill, try it once.

GinSlinger said:

I know everyone will tell you to get your own mill (like the poster above me), but I was absolutely amazed at the crush I got when I asked my LHBS to double mill my last order.

Even though I BIAB, and am not worried about stuck sparges, the hulls were well in tact, and there was only a slight bit of flour, but the grains were very much smaller than from a one pass.

If your guys will double mill, try it once.

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I'll definitely try that next time. It may get me high enough that I won't need to buy my own mill.

You didn't pour your vorlauf off did you?

HawkATP said:

You didn't pour your vorlauf off did you?

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No, it went right back on top of the mash