How to get mash efficiency up

My last two brews I had an efficiency of 32% then 50%, so there is improvement but I really want to get up to the 75 - 85% range. Any tips on how to do so?

I just did an American Wheat Ale and after my mash was done the water sitting on top of the grains was about 165°F and the grain bed was about 154°F, my target was 152°F

Is it possible I didn't mix the grains up enough?

A more thorough description of your process would be helpful, ie. amount of grain, amount of dough in water, temp of dough in water. In addition are you batch sparging, fly sparging, BIAB or no sparging?

How long do you let the mash sit, and do you check for conversion with an iodine test?

It sounds like you need to mix the grains up more, in addition, it sounds like you may be mashing with too hot of water. (I normally dough in with water that is at 167 degrees F)

Any idea of your water profile also?

Do decoction mash if you can,actually it's for not fully modified malts like mine which i make myself.

As said above - more info is needed to really help. What was the recipe? How big a batch? How much water did you use for the mash and sparge? How long did you mash for? Did you mill your own grains?

5 gallon batch
Fermentables:
2.75lb American Wheat Malt
1.75lb American 2-Row pale
8oz American Crystal 60L
8oz Honey Malt
8oz Carapils

Heated 2.5 gal of water to 167°F and mashed for 60mins

so you are mashing a little over 1.5:1 ratio, with my system the strike water is 10 degrees higher than my desired mash temp to hit my target. who mills your grain for you? the LHBS or do you mill yourself? another thing that pops into my head is sparge method, what temp do you heat the water to, and do you stir in the sparge water with the grain or just dump it in?

I get better efficiency by letting the sparge water sit in the mash tun for 10 minutes before draining, I also split my sparge into 2 seperate additions.

You are sparging right? running all your water through the grain and not topping up with water in the boil kettle? please list out all your steps so we can get you some solid points to work on.

Not nearly enough info...

Sorry...
Grain bill = 7lb
grain temp = 65°F
Mash temp = 167°F
Mash volume = 2.5gal
Mash time = 60mins
Sparge temp = 170°F
Sparge volume = 4.5gal

After draining all my mash water I put a small plate on top of my grains and pour my sparge water on to it. Then let that drain immediatly.

I thought I would have a gallon boil off, turns out I boil off half a gallon. This is my first batch on this stove, plus just got a new kettle.

Oh, my goal OG was 1.040 I got a 1.028

What was your measured OG?

Edit: Have you looked through this sticky yet? https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/maximizing-efficiency-when-batch-sparging-77125/

You don't have enough base grain to make a 5 gallon batch at 1.040. Where did you get the recipe?

zickefoose said:

I thought I would have a gallon boil off, turns out I boil off half a gallon. This is my first batch on this stove, plus just got a new kettle.

Click to expand...

How much water did you start your boil with? How much did you finish with? It does look like the grain bill is a little light, like Blender said.

Edit: I had a question, but found the answer.

zickefoose said:

After draining all my mash water I put a small plate on top of my grains and pour my sparge water on to it. Then let that drain immediatly.

Click to expand...

Looks like there's a lb grain missing. The specified grains add up to 6 lb not 7, and at 75% efficiency would result in an OG of about 1.032

Your sparging method is going to yield very low efficiency. You don't need a plate on top of the grains. Just add the sparge water and then stir really well before vorlaufing and draining. With a batch sparge, it is this stirring that dissolves the sugars. If you don't stir, you will get low efficiency.

-a.