Ack! 51.22% Brew House Efficiency... Help!

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coldrice

coldrice

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I do a single infusion mash in a cooler usually at 152F. Yesterday I brewed an IIPA, targeting 149F to 150F. Nailed It. 23# of grain in a 6.5 gallon batch and my o.g. was 1.062. This is not good. I batch sparged with 4 gal 170F water, stirred the mash well, etc... I cannot figure what I could be doing wrong. Recipe was 13# 2-row, Vienna, Carapils, Crystal 10L, Flaked Rye and Flaked Wheat. BeerSmith said my estimated o.g. was 1.091. I plugged in my true numbers and ended up with o.g. 1.062. It just don't make no sense! I'm pissing away money.
 
Have you looked at Brau Kaiser's work on efficiency? http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

He has an efficiency spreadsheet that is extremely helpful at determining where your innefficiencies are coming from. You will need to take gravity readings at different points throughout your brewing process
1st run
2nd run
3rd run
pre boil
post boil

plug this all into his spreadsheet and it will tell you exactly where you are loosing points.
 
Was your sparge water 170F? Or was that the temp the 'mash' reached after stirring at sparge time?

And because someone more helpful than me will likely ask, you may want to go ahead and post the full details of your mash process. Maybe a combo of thick mash - low sparge hurting you here with the big bill?
 
I had a bit of an efficiency issue yesterday also. I had a 16.5lb grain bill and only reached 1.065 and added some DME I had giving me 1.074 when hoping for 1.085ish. I know mine was due to a bad sparge though. I noticed my efficiency was way bad thanks to my refrac. I'll be redoing my manifold soon with copper and will use my CPVC manifold for fly sparging. Hell I might even do a template of my cooler and get jaybird to fashion me up a false bottom.
 
coldrice said:
I do a single infusion mash in a cooler usually at 152F. Yesterday I brewed an IIPA, targeting 149F to 150F. Nailed It. 23# of grain in a 6.5 gallon batch and my o.g. was 1.062. This is not good. I batch sparged with 4 gal 170F water, stirred the mash well, etc... I cannot figure what I could be doing wrong. Recipe was 13# 2-row, Vienna, Carapils, Crystal 10L, Flaked Rye and Flaked Wheat. BeerSmith said my estimated o.g. was 1.091. I plugged in my true numbers and ended up with o.g. 1.062. It just don't make no sense! I'm pissing away money.
Click to expand...

Did you check the OG of the first runnings?

My guess is you had too much grain, not enough water, and didn't get full conversion.
 
Do you grind your own grains? My efficiency jumped once I tightened the gap on my grinder and I'm in the 80's now and used to be in the 60's.
 
I'm all over the board right now... for a while I was hitting 72-76% consistently, went up to 78% for a batch... and dropped like a stone to 58%... Crush was pretty consistent and was using 1.25qt/gallon (mash seems pretty thick and I think that may be loosing efficiency)

After the 58% I crushed finer and thinned out mash to 2qt/gallon and reduced sparge amount to hit target volume and I jumped jumped to 91%.

was really happy at 78%... really close to my target of 80's

now I need to try and back it down to about 80-85% (my crush was pretty fine and may go to 1.5qt/lb instead of 2, my mash was very thin)
Really wish I hadn't played with 2 variables in last mash... now I need to figure out if it was the crush or the mash volume or combination of both...
 
i get my grain ground from Austin Home Brew Supply. I mashed at 1.25/lb, largely because my cooler/mash tun is only 9 gallons capacity. I did indeed use 7 gallons of strike water, the mashed seemed a bit thick. I only sparged with 4 gal of 170F water in accordance with the recommendation (per BeerSmith). This is of course contrary to the 1/2 gal/lb of grain 'rule of thumb'. I did not check the gravity of the initial running, I seldom do. Teacher, what do you mean "did I stir really well before taking the reading"? You mean after chilling and all? The only reading I took was prior to pitching the yeast. I did not take a pre-boil reading because I could not fir it all in my MegaPot. I added boiled water at the end to achieve final volume of 6.5 gal.
 
"I added boiled water at the end to achieve final volume of 6.5 gal."

You might be ok. I've had some problems with adding water to top off that just refused to mix completely in high OG beers, giving a false final read... even after a good shake!

I knew my mash numbers were good on that batch 75% + added 4lbs of dme, boiled and topped off. Pre-ferment OG came out 20 points low... final gravity numbers right... and tastes like an 8% abv imperial (good bit of alcohol presence like an 8% should have! makes me happy, worried for nothing!)

My problems have been with actual partial mash efficiency (the readings from the mash run off) next time take your pre-boil run off see where you are there... after trying a thinner mash and less sparge... Your crush should be consistent from AHBS.

seems to have made a pretty big difference for me. I just need to keep tweaking my corona grain mill....
 
coldrice said:
i get my grain ground from Austin Home Brew Supply. I mashed at 1.25/lb, largely because my cooler/mash tun is only 9 gallons capacity. I did indeed use 7 gallons of strike water, the mashed seemed a bit thick. I only sparged with 4 gal of 170F water in accordance with the recommendation (per BeerSmith). This is of course contrary to the 1/2 gal/lb of grain 'rule of thumb'. I did not check the gravity of the initial running, I seldom do. Teacher, what do you mean "did I stir really well before taking the reading"? You mean after chilling and all? The only reading I took was prior to pitching the yeast. I did not take a pre-boil reading because I could not fir it all in my MegaPot. I added boiled water at the end to achieve final volume of 6.5 gal.
Click to expand...

You do lose some brewhouse efficiency when you top off with water. The alternative is to sparge just a bit more and hold it back until you have room in your pot.
 
starrfish said:
"I added boiled water at the end to achieve final volume of 6.5 gal."

You might be ok. I've had some problems with adding water to top off that just refused to mix completely in high OG beers, giving a false final read... even after a good shake!

I knew my mash numbers were good on that batch 75% + added 4lbs of dme, boiled and topped off. Pre-ferment OG came out 20 points low... final gravity numbers right... and tastes like an 8% abv imperial (good bit of alcohol presence like an 8% should have! makes me happy, worried for nothing!)

Is this possible? Two water-based solutions, even of varying viscosities should have no trouble combining, in my opinion at least. They would blend more efficiently, to be true, if the viscous solution (wort) was warm/hot (it was 65F). That being said, I stirred the crap out of this baby... I'm no sciencetician though, so perhaps you are right. In fact, I really hope you are. I would feel much better about my alleged 51.22% efficiency.
Click to expand...
 

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