Efficiency Troubleshooting Help-1st AG

Alright, after getting all of my equipment together, memorizing Bobby's all-grain primer, and being anal enough to type out my entire brewday the night before, I did my first AG yesterday using Ed's Stone IPA Clone recipe. Using a no mash, double batch sparge method, I hit all my temps and my pre-boil volume, but my pre-boil gravity was 1.044 (6.5 Gallons)

From that, I calculated my original gravity at 1.057, about 11pts off where I should be for 5 gallons. I boiled down to 4 gallons to get to 1.068 (next time I will definitely have DME on hand)

Ingredients
11lb Two Row Pale
1lb 20L Crystal
1lb Munich
.5lb Rice Hulls (rinsed)

Here's my procedure:

1. Heated 17qt of strike water to 180. Dumped water into cooler and closed lid until it got to 169. Doughed in, mixed thoroughly to take care of any dough balls and hit strike temp of 153. Mashed for 1 hour and lost 1 degree.

2. I vorlaufed and collected ~2.5 gallons on first running. I added 2.2 gallons of 185 degrees for my first infusion, raising the temp to 164. I stirred, let it set for 5 minutes and collected 2 gallons. Second infusion was 2.2 gallons of 185, raising the temp to 169.

3. Collected 6.5 gallons total.

So my efficiency works out to be about 56% which is not anywhere near what I was hoping. How can improve it? A couple things I thought might be the culprit.

1. My mash tun is a 70qt Coleman extreme with a 12" X 1/2" SS braid. I did have the valve open full way but it didn't drain out extremely fast. I get about .2 gallon of dead space.

2. Grain Crush? My grain is from AHS and I know they have a reputation of doing good crushes. There was about a two week span between crush and brew.

3. I'm being hazed by the Brew Gods since it is my first all grain.

Any thoughts/critiques? Thanks in advance.

Your times, temps and water amounts seem OK. The first thing I would look at is the grain crush. BTW rice hulls are totally unnecessary for that recipe.

Probably right about the rice hulls, but for the sake of the .85 and it being my first AG, it gave me peace of mind.

same thing happened to me on my 1st AG, then second all grain I collected about 8g and boiled down to 5.5 and hit my target OG with a AHS kit. I've never calculated my efficiency. I also did a 90 minute mash and 90 minute boil.

I just barely hit mine right for the first time, and I'd say crush too... My problems were hitting temps which you seem to have hit well. I'd say the same about the hulls, I've heard many people say that the ss braids are much less prone to stuck mashes (not invulnerable, just less likely). Keep with it, it took me til my 3rd AG to get it near 75%... but each times gotten better!

Thanks for the encouragement...Occam's Razor leads me to think it was probably the crush...makes feel better that I didn't screw anything up.


Pompeiisneaks...thank you for your service.

My first 2 all grain batches ended up being around 85% efficient using the Bobby_M method of double batch sparging. This latest batch was somewhere in the lower 60% area. The difference was how I crushed my grain. The first time I ran it through my LHBS's grain mill twice and got a really good/fine crush. 2nd time I got a kit from AHB that had an excellent crush. This last time I ran the grain through the LHBS grain mill and as I was about to run it through again the owner came by and recommended that I leave it as it was. Bad decision on my part.