Scut_Monkey
Well-Known Member
Hello everyone. I recently started into all grain brewing and have enjoyed the fact that I can control much more of the brewing process in comparison to extract brewing. However, I cannot seem to increase my efficiency. My setup is fairly decent and I have been able to hold my mash temp and the local water report I have found shows to be decent for brewing. I am currently batch sparging with a single sparge. Both of my all grain brews have ended with brewhouse efficiencies of 50.5% and 48% which is very poor.
I attribute this to a poor crush of the grain as the 2 brew shops I have been at seem to only produce a very very coarse grind. In fact the first shop I was at the employee told me the I should only crush it enough to "crack the shell open" and that crushing the endosperm is not necessary.
For my last batch I had to purchase almost 16 pounds of grain to simply hit a OG of 1.048 which makes me feel that I am getting gouched by my brew shop and not happy. I realize that brew shops usually provide a rather coarse grind but feel this is a little extreme. I have asked if I can tighten the crush but they look at me like I'm crazy and the first person to ever suggest such a strange idea.
So as of now my two possible solutions are to ....
- Buy my own mill and crush myself. (anyone selling a corona mill?)
- Perform a mash out to see if it helps at all (I can't believe this would cause such a poor efficiency though.)
I would appreciate any insight and if anyone has pictures of a decent grain crush I would appreciate them. Thanks!
- Mike
I attribute this to a poor crush of the grain as the 2 brew shops I have been at seem to only produce a very very coarse grind. In fact the first shop I was at the employee told me the I should only crush it enough to "crack the shell open" and that crushing the endosperm is not necessary.
For my last batch I had to purchase almost 16 pounds of grain to simply hit a OG of 1.048 which makes me feel that I am getting gouched by my brew shop and not happy. I realize that brew shops usually provide a rather coarse grind but feel this is a little extreme. I have asked if I can tighten the crush but they look at me like I'm crazy and the first person to ever suggest such a strange idea.
So as of now my two possible solutions are to ....
- Buy my own mill and crush myself. (anyone selling a corona mill?)
- Perform a mash out to see if it helps at all (I can't believe this would cause such a poor efficiency though.)
I would appreciate any insight and if anyone has pictures of a decent grain crush I would appreciate them. Thanks!
- Mike