Finished brewing, few questions.

Okay ladies and gents, as most of the world knows, I brewed today. I succeeded in every form as far as i'm concerned. I have a few questions though, to make sure I am doing as I should.

My grain bill was 10.625 lbs in full; target OG post boil was 1.046.

I can't figure out how to finalize my efficiency in Beer Smith yet, but another calculator says if I got 6.5 gallons of wort from 10.625 lbs. of grain mashed with a pre-boil gravity of 1.050 (didn't measure this, I now know to do this).

It says I hit 82% efficiency. Do you HAVE to measure your pre-boil gravity if you know you hit your target OG post boil???

GrantH said:

It says I hit 82% efficiency. Do you HAVE to measure your pre-boil gravity if you know you hit your target OG post boil???

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In short, no. But the advantage to checking preboil SG isn't to calculate efficiency, well at least not directly. The reason I check preboil SG is to make sure I'm on track to hit my post boil goals, if that makes sense. If I'm too high, I can add some water, or add more hops to adjust my IBUs. If I'm too low, I can add some DME or lower some bittering hops. Once the boil is over, it's too late to make those adjustments so that's the reason for the preboil SG check.

Makes sense now that someone explained it to me. Not that I have the stuff to "fix" it unless it is high, but it's good info to know. Can I simple buy a Pale DME to keep on hand, or will it change with the style beer? I need some for starters, so I figure I can order a couple pounds at a time. I hit my FG perfect, so i'm not so worried, I just wanted to measure efficiency if possible.

Use this to calculate efficiency; http://www.brewheads.com/efficiency.php
Just enter your grain bill, then enter the amount you got after the boil and your post boil gravity... You can indeed use pale/light DME for adding on low efficiency batches or using for starters.

This says 56.8, but surely i've done better than that? I guess I could be off that much as I really only siphoned out like 4.8 gallons into the carboy...but everything else is spot on. I'm not too worried, i'll just shoot for a better number next time.

You'll get better. I started in the mid 50's, also. Now I'm getting 79% and I'm happy with that.

I think that more important than a specific % is to be consistent (although 56% is too low, and I think you'll correct that). I'd rather have 68% each and every time than 85% today and 72% tomorrow. If you hit 70% every time, it makes formulating recipes easy and consistency is important.

Yooper said:

I think that more important than a specific % is to be consistent (although 56% is too low, and I think you'll correct that). I'd rather have 68% each and every time than 85% today and 72% tomorrow. If you hit 70% every time, it makes formulating recipes easy and consistency is important.

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I agree with this. I generally seem to be in the 75-79% range these days, so I make my recipes at 77%... If I go a little over/under no biggie.

Awesome. I'll be keeping a better eye on things the next brew I do. I think I want a Stout. I need to read up on those though. They seem "exotic" for some reason.

I love stouts! They are by far my favorite style. I recently brewed Midwest's Irish Stout kit and it is very good. I usually don't brew from kits, but I liked the sound of the ingredients on that one. It tastes a lot like Guinness, and it's only been in the bottle for 8 days. I'm looking forward to it in a month or two..

First is a keg setup and jockey box, rather than bottling. This way I can keg up 2 5 gallon batches and enjoy it with some friends every not and again. Ice is free as well, as far as i'm concerned.

Will be fermenting in carboys and carbing up in the kegs. Really looking forward to this.

GrantH said:

Do you HAVE to measure your pre-boil gravity if you know you hit your target OG post boil???

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No. If you know you will hit your target gravity, you don't need to take any gravity reading prior to fermentation; but you don't know you will hit your target OG until after the boil

Yooper said:

In short, no. But the advantage to checking preboil SG isn't to calculate efficiency, well at least not directly. The reason I check preboil SG is to make sure I'm on track to hit my post boil goals, if that makes sense. If I'm too high, I can add some water, or add more hops to adjust my IBUs. If I'm too low, I can add some DME or lower some bittering hops. Once the boil is over, it's too late to make those adjustments so that's the reason for the preboil SG check.

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I dare not disagree with this, otherwise I might get whipped.

Stauffbier said:

Use this to calculate efficiency; http://www.brewheads.com/efficiency.php
Just enter your grain bill, then enter the amount you got after the boil and your post boil gravity... You can indeed use pale/light DME for adding on low efficiency batches or using for starters.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't use a calculator that assumes that imperial gallons are the same as US gallons. That could introduce an error of up to 20% as the imperial gallon is 20% larger than the US gallon.

-a.

ajf said:

I wouldn't use a calculator that assumes that imperial gallons are the same as US gallons. That could introduce an error of up to 20% as the imperial gallon is 20% larger than the US gallon.

-a.

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I also use BeerTools and BeerSmith and they both match this calculator on my recipes, so I'm comfortable with the calculations it gives me! I used to use TastyBrew as well, which also matched...

Stauffbier said:

I also use BeerTools and BeerSmith and they both match this calculator on my recipes, so I'm comfortable with the calculations it gives me! I used to use TastyBrew as well, which also matched...

Click to expand...

Don't know about BeerTools, but Beersmith v 1.40 clearly differentiates between US and Imperial gallons.

Tasty Brew just mentions gallons, and assumes that the only gallon is the US gallon.

Brewheads specifically states that the US gallon is the same as an Imperial gallon, and this is completely wrong.

Google "convert 1 imperial gallon to US gallon" and you will see what I mean.
I have lots of recipes based on imperial measures because I started brewing in England before they went metric. If I were to use Brewheads to calculate my efficiency on one of the old English recipes, it would give me a figure that was about 20% lower than the true efficiency.

-a.

I just tried BrewersFriend's efficiency calculator for the first time. It also gives me 79% efficiency for the batch I brewed today. That's 4 different calculators INCLUDING Brewheads that I used to calculate this batch. All of them gave me between 78.5-79.3% efficiency. That's pretty much an average of 79% on all of them. I don't ever expect any of the sites to match 100%. I'm guessing Brewheads made the mistake of saying Imperial vs. US is the same thing, but that the calculator is actually set to US which is why it matches the other calculators I use. A variance of 1*F between 4 different calculators is an acceptable tolerance for my standards!