mash efficiency problems!?

So I've done 3 all grain batches and I got the volume wrong on the first so I can't compare to the last 2. I just brewed a red ale and this was my grain bill:
7lbs 2 row pale domestic
2 lbs white wheat
1 lb caramunich
.5 lb Munich

This is the problem...60 min mash, checked for conversion,good. Topped off after boil to 5.5 gallons and gravity was only 1.040? I'm using a 10 gallon round cooler for a mash tun and temp was 154. Any ideas? Thought my gravity should have been higher. My last batch also came in 10 points lower then I calculated.

If you had to top off after the boil, how much wort did you start with prior to boiling?

Also, there's no way to troubleshoot your process if you don't tell use what the process is. Describe each step where water or wort moved and list the volumes and temperatures.

Bobby_M said:

If you had to top off after the boil, how much wort did you start with prior to boiling?

Also, there's no way to troubleshoot your process if you don't tell use what the process is. Describe each step where water or wort moved and list the volumes and temperatures.

Click to expand...

Yeah, even down to where you bought the grain. Crush can have a huge impact on efficiency and many brewers on here are familiar with the crush from different vendors.

Bobby_M said:

If you had to top off after the boil, how much wort did you start with prior to boiling?

Also, there's no way to troubleshoot your process if you don't tell use what the process is. Describe each step where water or wort moved and list the volumes and temperatures.

Click to expand...

Adding water will lower the OG. Did you take the OG before you added the water? How much wort did you have?

If you had, say 4 gallons of wort, at 1.055 and added 1.5 gallons of water, you would lower the OG by 15 points, leaving you with an OG of 1.040. Remember that water has an SG of 1.000, so you would really reduce the gravity of the wort by watering it down. In those cases, it's good to check the OG and only dilute it if you're high on the OG.

Can do.
Dough in 3.5 gallons @167
Mashout 1gal @212 (btw not quite enough)
1 batch sparge of 4 gallons
Every time I added water gave 10 min rest before vorlauf, then I only had to add about half gallon to the sort to reached 5.5 gallons. I thought that that didn't matter though because it was just reconstituting a concentrate, basically??? Am I wrong about that too?

Also not exactly sure on crush my local store set it for me since I'm new to AG but when I ran it through the mill the Guy there said it was a pretty standard setting because I did happen to ask. Don't know if that even helps.

Well, you did water down with the .5 gallons of water. If you had sparged an extra .5 gallons, that would have contributed at least 10 gravity points vs. 0 with plain water. At that volume, it's not that big of a deal.

The big question I always ask is, did you stir the mash really well after you added the mashout and also after adding the sparge?

K so I did stir really well because of uneven temp I realized from my first mash I did. So I side take care to stir well then but I did only stir the mash twice during the 60 min rest could that effect it?

Btw I'm on my phone doing this so sorry about my posting. Looks like a 4 year old wrote this.

The other thing is did you stir the wort really well after adding the top-off water?
If not, your measured OG could be much less than the true OG as the gravity sample could have been diluted by the top-off water.

-a.

Yup I still needed to aerate the wort for the yeast and then I took my gravity reading.