super high efficiency, Biab??

Hello everyone. I want to see if anyone has had this experience...

I recently brewed an ordinary bitter, 6 gallon recipe with 8.75 lbs of grains. I mashed in my kettle for about 2 hours and did a mash out for probably 30 minutes at 168, mostly because I had a friend come over and we were chatting and eating lunch. I had my usual crush that, usually, gets me 76 percent efficiency.

Well my efficiency on this batch was 94 percent !?!?! I had super high OG readings and had to dilute it up to 7 gallons because I really wanted a low gravity brew. I calculated this efficiency in beer smith.

Are you positive you measured your volumes correctly?

Positive, I made sure to collect all the trub after I siphoned off my wort and I had a total of seven gallons, 6 of wort and 1 of trub mixed wort. Also i squeezed my hop bags to get the wort from them too.

I've done a longer mash without seeing any benefits. Could be the long mash out upped the efficiency.

Similar issue yesterday.... I was so totally pumped about the out of this world efficiency.... then I double checked teh accuracy of the scale I use for my grain bill.... wah wah wahhhhhhh. Yep, that 20lbs of 2-row was more like 22lbs. DOH

you mashed out for 30 minutes at 168? I am pretty knew to all grain, but wont that denature some of the amylase enzymes and result in fewer fermentable sugars and more unfermentable starches?

I have done probably a dozen BIAB batches and consistently and wind up in the mid-high 80's for efficiency.

teamhzrdpball said:

you mashed out for 30 minutes at 168? I am pretty knew to all grain, but wont that denature some of the amylase enzymes and result in fewer fermentable sugars and more unfermentable starches?

Click to expand...

The mash is done at that point, mashout just helps get all the sugar into solution a bit easier, enzymes no longer needed.