Low efficiency

A few days ago I made my second all grain beer for a 3 gallon carboy. I am getting better at getting the right about of water together in advance so that the carboy has the proper level of post-boiled wort. Great.

But now I'm noticing what appears to be typical newbie efficiency problems. I have a 5 gallon cylindrical cooler, not converted in any way, with a nylon bag that fits over the interior.

I mount the bag in, I pour the water in, then I put the grain in, stirring it. Then I check the temp, and immediately lower about 5-10 degrees fahrenheit to 155-ish degrees with room temp water. I leave it for an hour, then drain the contents. Then I add 1/2 gallon water which was probably around 150 to 170 degrees, let it sit (or I stir) for about 20 seconds, and drain. I do this with all the water I have, which in total with the mash water amounts to about 3.5 to 4 gallons.

Then I boil it down down for an hour. A gentle open lid boil on my electric stove.

This recipe has about 30% dark wheat grain in it, the rest being 2 row barley. When I stirred the wort, I noticed that there was a separation.. ie, significant amounts of darker wort and lighter floating lighter near the top mixing together.

My expected OG was 1.045 - 1.060. After I cooled the wort and carboy'd it, I pulled wort from the top and measured it. It was 1.044 (temp adjustment applied).

I need to improve efficiency. But where to start?

I'd start with the crush of the grains. Poorly crushed or cracked grain will yield less fermentables. Ask your LHBS to give you a fine crack for BIAB, or see if you can crack them yourself, and make sure they're cracked properly. FWIW, when I got a grain mill for xmas last year, I saw my BIAB eff. go from less than 70% to 75%+, sometimes near 80%.

iambeer said:

My expected OG was 1.045 - 1.060. After I cooled the wort and carboy'd it, I pulled wort from the top and measured it. It was 1.044 (temp adjustment applied).

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1.045 - 1.060 is a huge range... and you almost hit your range with a 1.044. So I'd say you either were not precise enough in your range, or you did just fine!

I BIAB, so it's not exactly the same, but the things that I've found are:

* Grain crush: I get different efficiencies depending on where I buy my grain from (I don't have a mill so I have the store crush them). Figure out which stores do it right, or buy a mill.
* I've had low efficiencies... due to measuring mistakes on my part. Adding an extra 1/2 gallon of water here or there makes a big difference!
* Stirring the mash. My first couple of times I didn't stir at all during the mash. I got better results stirring every 20 min or so.

Good luck!

I agree with all of the above starting with the crush but you also said you had some layering and you pulled your sample from the top which would be the lighter wort so that too could be the issue as you did not mix thoroughly and then sample

duboman said:

I agree with all of the above starting with the crush but you also said you had some layering and you pulled your sample from the top which would be the lighter wort so that too could be the issue as you did not mix thoroughly and then sample

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Yeah, that too. I always give my mash a few good stirs throughout the rest to make sure it's not stratifying. It also lets me see how much, if any temp I'm losing.
I highly recommend buying a mill if you're brewing AG or PM, that way you can control the crush you get. Even the mills in the grain room at Midwest don't give me an ideal crush for BIAB, the HBS down the street gives a crush that's only good for steeping. Today I hit ~78% eff. w/ an AG BIAB, dunk sparged.

I went from 62% efficiency to 75%+ by asking my LHBS to run the grain through the mill twice. Still tastes great without a hint of tannin bite.

+1 to crush...I do BIAB and use my own Monster mill to crush with the gap set at .040. I run my grain through twice and do a mash out step (168F for 15 minutes) I've hit darn near 90% efficiency but usually run around 80-85%. I would ask the LHBS to mill twice and then work in a mash out step and see where you end up.

Thanks for the responses. Lots of people advocating using a mill! I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet, but maybe I'll try asking my supplier to run the grain twice after I try everything else.

@jigidyjim.. Some good advice on my method to make a higher yield. I'll try stirring more often.

One thing I was considering was to run the sparge water through the grain twice or more. I read somewhere that as long as the sparge water comes out above 1.005, that it should be useable. My sparge was definitely above that after I used up all the water. Do you think running the sparge water through the grain two or three times is okay?

Also I read that the sparge water temperature is debatable. I'm not sure what the debate entails. But it seems no one is concerned about the temp of the water I used.