80-85% Efficiency

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CKing

CKing

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My last three batches have seen efficiencies between 80-85%
Is it safe to say I should adjust to 80% on BeerSmith for future recipes, or leave it at 75% for a few more?

Aside from adjusting grain quantities, how much does this increase affect hop schedules?
 
If you have more pre boil volume then you will have to adjust your hop amounts depending on how much more volume you have.
 
I do not think it will affect your hops at all even if you change your boil volumes. If you have a larger boil volume and boil down to 5 gallons you are still ending up at 5 gallons of wort with the same amount of hops.

If you change the amount of time the hops are boiled that will change the hop profile but I do not think very much after a 60 min boil

I happen to be pretty laid back in my brewing though and pretty much just do not worry about these things. A 5% increase while cool to think about really does not have much effect on the beers I brew. I suppose if you are brewing big barley wines and such it would have a larger effect.
 
Varmintman said:
I do not think it will affect your hops at all even if you change your boil volumes. If you have a larger boil volume and boil down to 5 gallons you are still ending up at 5 gallons of wort with the same amount of hops.

If you change the amount of time the hops are boiled that will change the hop profile but I do not think very much after a 60 min boil

I happen to be pretty laid back in my brewing though and pretty much just do not worry about these things. A 5% increase while cool to think about really does not have much effect on the beers I brew. I suppose if you are brewing big barley wines and such it would have a larger effect.
Click to expand...

You bring up a good point if one were to still boil down to 5 gallons. I was talking as if he were just to do a 60 minute boil with what he had and ended up with more post boil volume in the end. Either way the difference is probably marginal if we are talking a couple quarts more pre boil than what was expected.:mug:
 
I brewed a stout yesterday and somehow ended up 6 points over my target OG for an efficiency of 89%! No idea how that is possible, my hydrometer doesn't lie though! I did condition my grain on this batch and crushed it finer than normal.

Hop schedule won't matter, their effect has to do with the volume of water not the OG.
 
Boil volumes remain the same, I typically collect around 6.75 gallons and boil down to 5.5 gallons
I'm not too concerned, and am actually happy on getting more efficiency in my mash.
The last few recipes have had the abv increased between 1/2 to 1 percent so it's not like the beers are ending up much different than planned.
Just curious to find out if there's anything I should plan on changing in how I go about my recipe design.
 
If you are planning on entering your beer in competitions then I would try and get it as close as you can.

Me I enter my beer in the ultimate competition every day when I drink it. I have tweaked a few recipes to what I like in a beer and that is what I drink. But like I said I am kind of laid back about the whole brewing thing as long as I end up with beer I like I am happy
 
If you crushed your grains more that usual then you just answered your question. Professional breweries crush their grains to talcom powder trying to get more efficiency but then they have giant rakes to keep from sticking thier mash! As long as you're not sticking your mash then you're not too fine. We consistently get 86 percent efficiency post boil according to Pro Mash.
 

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