Efficiency too high?

At first I was pleased but now this is becoming a problem. I'm consistently getting low 90s mash efficiency and mid 80s overall efficiency. When brewing AG kits hitting way too high OG and ending up with stronger brews than planned. My temps are good and batch sizes have been spot on. Do i have to intentionally alter something to get worse efficiency or what?

Add more water? :cross:

MalFet said:

Add more water? :cross:

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Or use less grain. Either way.

Silverbullet said:

At first I was pleased but now this is becoming a problem. I'm consistently getting low 90s mash efficiency and mid 80s overall efficiency. When brewing AG kits hitting way too high OG and ending up with stronger brews than planned. My temps are good and batch sizes have been spot on. Do i have to intentionally alter something to get worse efficiency or what?

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Whatever the efficiency of your setup is, consistency is the goal. Once you know the efficiency of your setup, you adjust your recipes accordingly (reduce your grain bill) in order to hit your target gravities.

Keyth

I use the grain amounts that come in the kit and after the boil the amount is the same so more water won't help. I usually fly sparge and batch sparged the last one thinking it would lower efficiency. Should I alter my crush?

Either of the above. If you are getting kits it might be easier to add more water than taking grain out. Play around with it a bit.

Silverbullet said:

I use the grain amounts that come in the kit and after the boil the amount is the same so more water won't help. I usually fly sparge and batch sparged the last one thinking it would lower efficiency. Should I alter my crush?

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No, you don't need to alter your crush. Either scale up your volume (sparge volume mostly) so that you can hit your OG, or instead of buying kits just buy the ingredients you need from a recipe.

If you hit 85% efficiency each time, it's easier to just plan your recipe for 85% efficiency. My system is set up for 75% efficiency, so I can easily predict/plan my recipes and ingredients.

Silverbullet said:

I use the grain amounts that come in the kit and after the boil the amount is the same so more water won't help. I usually fly sparge and batch sparged the last one thinking it would lower efficiency. Should I alter my crush?

Click to expand...

The principle limitation of kits is that they target a average efficiency range, which you don't have here. Adjusting your system to fit the kit, rather than the other way around, strikes me as a strange way to go, but if you want to do it, leave some of the sugar in the grain as you sparge. Don't change your crush, as that will just muck with your conversion in a way that's not reliable (if it does anything at all). The easiest approach would be to just sparge less (depending on your method) or dump some of your late runnings and replace the volume with water.

I'm pretty consistent at this point so I think I'll just tailor my own recipe off whatever kit I'm eying. Thanks for the quick suggestions from the gurus!

I was in the middle of a brew (Scotch Ale) when I initially posted and was shooting for 5.5g into the fermentor with an OG of 1.060. I was at 1.058 preboil. Post boil came in at 1.075 but I had enough head space to top up and watered it down to 1.065. Close enough. I missed the great suggestion of just sparging less and topping up from there if I have too. Much easier to implement with minimal changes and can adjust on the fly. Thanks again for all the suggestions everyone. This is an issue I never foresaw needing to account for....

Am I missing something? I brewed a Brown Ale today, based on a a custom recipe from Beersmith; the estimated OG was 1.057, and I got 1.033 (corrected for temp.) I always thought that the estimated OG was based on 100% efficiency, and that 80-85% efficiency was the best anyone could hope for. I'm still new to AG brewing, so I guess my question is: why would you be concerned about too high an efficiency? Clearly, my assumptions must be wrong (that estimated efficiency assumes 100%, and that 80-85% is the best that can be hoped for). Please enlighten a noob who is trying to increase his efficiency without having to buy $10,000 worth of custom brewing equipment.

Generally most recipes are formulated for around 70% efficiency, unless otherwise noted. To increase efficiency (if you're getting really low efficiency) you want to make sure you don't have any dough balls, make sure your crush is good, make sure you're getting complete conversion, make sure your mash ph is ok, and double check your sparging technique.