Still an Eff. Noob

Second all grain brew last night. I made the Guy Fawkes Pale ale. Basically it was edworts pale ale, with an extra lb of 2 row pale to make up for my lack of efficiency, which I think I calculated out to be 65% brewhaus last time and about 71%post boil. I am still very confused about calculating efficiency, but using this calculator http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/ I It tells me I got an efficiency of 84.45%! That is from the pre-boil sample with had a gravity of 1.054. The sample I cooled of post boil wort had an OG of ~1.062! Does about an 85% efficiency seem accurate? Recipe is

9lbs pale 2 row
2 lbs vienna
8 oz crystal 10L.

Any help is appreciated I am in the process of soaking in Kaiser's and Bobby M's guides to efficiency, I just havent quite figured it out yet.


edit: Here is what the calculator gave me.
Gravity at 100% Efficiency: 1.063 - max
Gravity at 75% Efficiency: 1.047
Brew House Efficiency: 84.45%
Points / Pound / Gallon (ppg): 30.9

Ps: I'm not just a cheapass who won't buy beersmith, I would love to have it, it just did not appear to have a mac version!

i use bobby_M guide. It works wonderfully however i find doing things longhand vs using an automated calculator works better for learning. Plus brewhause could have been wrong. You never know

+1 to doing things longhand for a bit to learn. I use a ti-83 that I programmed a bunch of the equations into once I got sick of filling my brewlog with pages of equations.

The most important part of figuring efficiency is measurement. Weight, volume, gravity. A half gallon difference in wort can make a pretty decent difference in efficiency.

Did you use iodine to check for complete conversion? A few drops of the water from your mash and a drop of iodine is all you need. If it changes black or purple, let the mash sit a little longer before you start to lauter.

No I did not. I know you are supposed to do that, but I just wanted to focus on the processes more for these first few brews.

+2 on checking your remaining volume. I use Beersmith, which you can setup to allow for trub. I aim for so many gallons in the secondary. Any remaining wort above the trub that I can't fit in the secondary gets added back to my volume and I recalc. If I'm not up the top, I subtract what I'm missing.

My guess is you overboiled and don't really have 85% efficiency, but that's a normal gravity beer so it's definitely doable.

I am happy in the low to mid seventies. If I push the limits any further on grinding and/or sparging, I could affect the taste and what's another pound of grain at the end of the day if you are buying in bulk.

FreakinA said:

No I did not. I know you are supposed to do that, but I just wanted to focus on the processes more for these first few brews.

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Bah. you're not 'supposed' to do anything if you ask me. The point of doing it is to see if you got full conversion. If you only get 75% conversion, the highest your efficiency can possibly be is 75%. It's more of another step you can do in nailing down what point in your process you're missing something than an actual neccessity. You seem to have the process down pretty well, though. It's all about the beer once it's done, the numbers are just so you can repeat something if you liked the way it came out!

Also, I have a mac and I use QBrew. It's no BeerSmith, but it's decent. Google should be able to point you to where to download it, I don't remember where I got it from...

If you had exactly 5 gallons in the fermenter, you got 80% brewhouse on the nose. Accurate volume measurement at the point of gravity testing is key.

Edit: correction, I get 77.72% assuming 5 gallons. Still very nice.

Here is the formula for figuring out potential gravity from malted grains. These numbers are based on the current Briess Malt analysis'.

Pale Malt
Fine Grind (FG) = 80%
Moisture Content (MC) = 4%

Vienna Malt
FG = 77.5%
MC = 3.8%

Crystal 10
FG = 75%
MC = 7%

All percentages are expressed as decimels in the formulas

(FG % - MC % - .002) x 46.214 = PPG

(0.8 - 0.04 - .002) x 46.214 = 35.030212

(0.775 - 0.038 - .002) x 46.214 = 33.96729

(0.75 - 0.07 - .002) x 46.214 = 31.333092

Take all of those and then multiply them by the pounds of grain you used for each one

(9 x 35.030212) + (2 x 33.96729) + (.5 x 31.333092) = 398.873034

Divide this total by the number of gallons ( assuming 5)

This equals 79.7746068

Divide your SG by this number and that will give you a percentage expressed as a decimel.

Since you said you got 1.062 just express you gravity as the last 2 digits to obtain your results

62 / 79.7746068 = 0.77718967 or 77.72%

By the way this was all typed up on my iPhone as 85% of my posts are on here so this takes a lot of going back and forth from the Internet to a calculator and other apps. This isn't relevant, I just thought I would share.

Thanks so much for all the help fellow HBTers.
I did take liquid measurements just going by the side of what my buckets say at various stages. My Mash water was 3.5 (14qts)gallons of 166 degress which dropped it to about 155, 3 degrees hotter then I wanted so I threw in 8 icecubes, stirred for a minte and it was 153. I had no mashout and collected 2.6 (10.4qts) gallons for my first running. My next sparge was 9 quarts of 180F water. I then wanted to get just under 7 gallons preboil so I batched again with 8 qts of 180F water giving me pre-boil volume of ~7 gallons. After transfer and removal of all that hops stuff I have a smidge over 5 gallons of wort, well not I guess its beer since its been bubbling. My gravity reading I took says about 1.062 which is over what I was going for which makes me pretty happy. I guess next time I will plan my recipe for slightly higher efficiency then I accounted for this time(65%).

Is the desired number mash efficiency or brew house efficiency?

As brewer, I care more about mash efficiency, as I could boil for 1 or 2 hours, and get different OG's from the same mash efficiency.

After reading through this and thinking on the subject, the calculator mentioned at the top (which I wrote) is reporting mash efficiency, not brew house efficiency. I can rename the calculator or create a variation on it that gives both numbers.

This article seems to help with the terminology:
http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2008/10/26/brewhouse-efficiency-for-all-grain-beer-brewing/


I need a home brew! TGIF

Larry, I love your little calculators. I dont have input on the question you ask, but your Brew day sheet really helped me record everything and your various calculators helped me alot.

FreakinA said:

Larry, I love your little calculators. I dont have input on the question you ask, but your Brew day sheet really helped me record everything and your various calculators helped me alot.

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Thanks, that is a very nice compliment. I use these tools myself when I brew. Glad they are helping!

Dude get BeerSmith it will help you out greatly!!!!!

Jud said:

Dude get BeerSmith it will help you out greatly!!!!!

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10 char?

Beer Alchemy is native for Mac and works pretty well. Trial download available at

www.kentplacesoftware.com/products/BeerAlchemy.html