Terrible Efficiency

Brewed a blonde ale yesterday and batch sparged for the first time. Needless to say I sparged way to fast and had terrible efficiency. 55% terrible in fact.

If this fully fermented, which it should it would leave me with a 3.76 abv Blonde ale. This would be one of the styles I could get away with this with, but I'd like to up the alcohol a bit.

Would there be any harm in adding about a pound of corn sugar after 2 weeks of primary fermentation and letting the yeast chow down on that? This is going to be a dry beer as it is, would this dry it out even more?

You can't batch sparge too fast, so that is definitely not the issue with low efficiency.

The corn sugar might be a good addition, but it really depends on the rest of the recipe.

Personally, I wouldn't monkey with it. The low ABV is style appropriate and will make a great summer beer to drink while brewing your next one.

I dont know what the hell I did wrong then. Held my mash temperature for 75 minutes at 150. Had a good crush. Ran it thru the mill twice at the LHBS. I just want to get it from 3.75 to 4.75.

Grain bill was simple- 9lb US 2 Row, 1lb Carahell

I batch sparge and if I batch sparge to fast I will get terrible efficiency. Slow up the sparge and the efficiency goes up. Also, check your math to verify you actually got a low efficiency.

If it were me I would leave it alone. It sounds like you have a tasty session beer. If you do add sugar to bump up the abv make sure what you put into your beer is sanitary and put it into a secondary and rack your beer on top of that.