Brew Efficiency Question

How exactly is efficiency figured? Doing my first all grain tomorrow and I want to have as much accurate info as possible. Thanks

(what your OG should be - acctual OG) / (what your OG should be) =%efficency

I think I got that right, someone correct me if I am wrong...

Well, the best advice I can give you is to keep very good notes on all the water volumes you use, the exact weight (or close) of your grain bill, the OG of your preboil wort (stirred well) and the volume of preboil wort. That will allow you to later analyze the brew session and figure efficiency.

Post your recipe and your final volume of wort and specific gravity. Remember to compensate for the temperature when you take your SG reading. Someone here can them walk you through your calculations.

GT

There's some basic hydrometer directions and calculations on this page:
http://www.homebrewersupply.com/content/view/18/27/
I found it helpful. I'm sure there's even better pages out there. I just had this one bookmarked.

The simple answer is comparing your specific gravity with what is the potential sg for the volume you have. Palmer's book "How to Brew" will help with figuring your potential. But one thing I don't know that maybe someone can answer is what sg do you measure. When I measure the sg of preboil wort I get a higher efficiency than if I measure the post boil wort. Since efficiency is a function of the mash, I figure the numbers should be the same. Anybody know what I'm missing?

borntobrew said:

The simple answer is comparing your specific gravity with what is the potential sg for the volume you have. Palmer's book "How to Brew" will help with figuring your potential. But one thing I don't know that maybe someone can answer is what sg do you measure. When I measure the sg of preboil wort I get a higher efficiency than if I measure the post boil wort. Since efficiency is a function of the mash, I figure the numbers should be the same. Anybody know what I'm missing?

Click to expand...

You can calculate efficiency at several steps along the way. It will provide different information. For example if you want to know how efficient your mash process/equipement is you measure your pre-boil volume and SG and calculate that. This is most usefull when dialing in your mash/sparge process. If you want to know your "Brewhouse" efficiency you would calculate that based on the volume of wort you place in your fermentor and its SG - this will tell you how efficient your whole process is. Your brewhouse efficiency will always be less then your mash efficiency - the difference between the two will reflect your losses during the boiling, cooling and transfer process

GT