Ongoing Efficiency Issues

I have some ongoing efficiency issues that I would love to work out. Every few batches, I end up with a rediculously high OG, my latest beer was an IPA that was 8 points higher than anticipated. To some, this is a good problem but to me it's hard to brew a recipe as it was intended when you're that far off. Here is the recipe:

7.25 Gallons
80% Efficiency
Estimated OG: 1.064
MEASURED OG: 1.072

14.75 lbs. Briess 2 Row
1.32 lbs. Briess C40
Water: 106 Ca, 18 Mg, 20 Na, 308 S04, 45 Cl, 0 HCO3 (Tasty McDole's water); I don't measure my pH but use Bru'n Water. The estimated pH was 5.3.
Mashed at 152F for 60 mins. and a 10 minute thin decoction mahout at 170F
Fly sparged at 1 quart per minute

I left the hopping out because I think it's irrelevant to the conversation.

A few things that I'm wondering about...

-I have Briess 2 Row potential at 1.036, I think this is correct but I'm not sure.
-could the low pH (5.3) unlock more efficiency than I was expecting?
-I dropped my thermometer early in the brew session and never thought to recalibrate it, I checked it after the brew and it was reading 3 degrees high. SO, I ACTUALLY MASHED AT 149F. Does a lower mash temp unlock potential or does it just make the wort more fermentable?
-I took this recipe from a 5 gallon batch at 70% and scaled it to 7.25 gallons at 80% using Beersmith. Are there any inaccuracies related to scaling?

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Process seems okay, but not much info given. How did you measure the volumes? What temp were the volumes recorded at? When did you measure the og? Did you wait till it was at room temp?

Reading 3 degree low would mean you mashed at 155 not 152...

Low mash Temps have a slower conversion rates.

pricelessbrewing said:

Process seems okay, but not much info given. How did you measure the volumes? What temp were the volumes recorded at? When did you measure the og? Did you wait till it was at room temp?

Reading 3 degree low would mean you mashed at 155 not 152...

Low mash Temps have a slower conversion rates.

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I meant to say the thermometer was reading high. I've fixed it in the original post.

I measure my volumes with markings inside my kettle and a mash paddle that I made when new. I have markings every .25 gallons.

When did you measure the gravity and volume? What temp was it when you did so? Did you wait for the gravity sample to cool?

pricelessbrewing said:

When did you measure the gravity and volume? What temp was it when you did so? Did you wait for the gravity sample to cool?

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I measured pre-boil (knew it was high at that point) and I sparged to the boil volume that Beersmith dictates. It was measured at 110F but I always use Beersmith's hydrometer adjust tool. Is that inaccurate?

The post boil gravity was measured at 65F after sitting overnight.

Ryat66 said:

I measured pre-boil (knew it was high at that point) and I sparged to the boil volume that Beersmith dictates. It was measured at 110F but I always use Beersmith's hydrometer adjust tool. Is that inaccurate?

The post boil gravity was measured at 65F after sitting overnight.

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Yea, hydrometer correction tools are inaccurate. Did you measure the post boil volume at 65F after chilling over night?

WhaI'm trying to get it is that without accurate volumes, Temps, and gravity readings taken at the same time, there's no way to accurately know any of your efficiencies. All volumes must be converted into volume at room temp, otherwise they will be up to ~4.5% This is why I ask what temp the work was at when the volume was recorded. If you enter 1.060 and 5.75G at boil instead of 5.50 then you're going to a falsely high efficiency.


In this case, since you measured the post boil volume and gravity it would be the brewhouse efficiency. Preboil gravity and volume gives you the mash/kettle efficiency.

While I am not discounting what you're saying, I keep very tedious notes on all of my brews. In fact, I use Beersmith to record all of my steps and I use the notes section to keep track of any additional things that I see as necessary. I am consistently hitting my boil volumes and gravities per Beersmith, except for these beers in question.

Having said that, I went back through my brewing notes to see if I could find any patterns with the beers that have better than expected efficiency. Well, they had something in common: all of them were hoppy styles and had copious amounts of gypsum added. My chemistry knowledge is limited so I have no way to determine if there's a link but I think it's worth investigating on my part. I use RO water so I am fairly confident in the consistency of my water with the help of Bru'n Water. The one piece of information that is lacking is a true pH reading and this situation has convinced me to pull the trigger on researching and purchasing one.

What is your average efficiency? What was the calculated efficiency on the last batch? Do you think it's crush related? I had some swings in my efficiency which I finally determined was due to inconsistent crush. Purchasing a grain mill has solved this problem. I noticed wheat malt would lower my efficiency because wheat needs a tighter crush. Did any of your recipes use wheat?

oujens said:

What is your average efficiency? What was the calculated efficiency on the last batch? Do you think it's crush related? I had some swings in my efficiency which I finally determined was due to inconsistent crush. Purchasing a grain mill has solved this problem. I noticed wheat malt would lower my efficiency because wheat needs a tighter crush. Did any of your recipes use wheat?

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I target 80% and usually come within 2-3 points of Beersmith's OG target. Actual efficiency on the last batch was 85%.

I have certainly thought crush but I have used the same LHBS for every brew, I can't imagine their mill is that variable. However, are you saying it could be?

Having said that, I put a mill on my Christmas list to the wife, it was sort of my next step in equipment. So, maybe that will stabilize things a little bit.

None of these recipes I've had issues with included wheat, usually about 92% 2-Row and 8% Crystal malt.

Last year I purchased a bag of Great Western 2 row and went from 80% to 86% for all those batches. Went to 80% with Rhar, Briess; am on my 2 nd batch with Canadian pale malt and am getting ~75%, still fermenting so we'll see how they taste. It's a *****, but with different maltsters you get different efficiency, not all bags come with a tag,at least not at NB.

Ryat66 said:

I target 80% and usually come within 2-3 points of Beersmith's OG target. Actual efficiency on the last batch was 85%.

I have certainly thought crush but I have used the same LHBS for every brew, I can't imagine their mill is that variable. However, are you saying it could be?

Having said that, I put a mill on my Christmas list to the wife, it was sort of my next step in equipment. So, maybe that will stabilize things a little bit.

None of these recipes I've had issues with included wheat, usually about 92% 2-Row and 8% Crystal malt.

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I started to take notice of the crush and found that to be why I would swing between 65-75% efficiency with a similar grain bill. I now hit 80% consistently. It was just a thought.

I plugged this into a calculator and if you measured a pre-boil gravity of 1.072, that's an extraction efficiency of @ 87%. I honestly don't see the problem here if you're getting this consistently. The only problem I see is that you keep adjusting your recipes on a lower efficiency! If you changed your 2-row to 13 lbs. instead of the 14.74, you would have hit 1.064 (pre-boil). If 1.064 was supposed to be your O.G., that's a bit more complicated...but I think the key is to simply adjust your grain bill to your efficiency.

I think another aspect that may have been overlooked is the grains being used. You said that every few batches your efficiency fluctuates...depending on the potential yield from each grain, your efficiency may seem to be fluctuating...but I am just shooting from the hip now...

pricelessbrewing said:

Low mash Temps have a slower conversion rates.

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I am curios about this statement. I know absolutely nothing about conversion rate, but lower temp more fermentable sugar, higher temp less fermentable sugar, so I would think just by that it would be opposite to your statement? I am interested to learn more, can you explain this to me or point me in a direction for more information on this?

Thanks

hottpeper13 said:

Last year I purchased a bag of Great Western 2 row and went from 80% to 86% for all those batches. Went to 80% with Rhar, Briess; am on my 2 nd batch with Canadian pale malt and am getting ~75%, still fermenting so we'll see how they taste. It's a *****, but with different maltsters you get different efficiency, not all bags come with a tag,at least not at NB.

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I sort of wonder if this might be some of the issue too. I mean I normally use Briess 2-Row but I have been known to switch it up from time-to-time. I probably should just decide on a 50 lb. bag of base malt and buy specialty grains as I need them.

Trying to remove the variables is proving to be difficult.

Biscuits said:

I plugged this into a calculator and if you measured a pre-boil gravity of 1.072, that's an extraction efficiency of @ 87%. I honestly don't see the problem here if you're getting this consistently. The only problem I see is that you keep adjusting your recipes on a lower efficiency! If you changed your 2-row to 13 lbs. instead of the 14.74, you would have hit 1.064 (pre-boil). If 1.064 was supposed to be your O.G., that's a bit more complicated...but I think the key is to simply adjust your grain bill to your efficiency.

I think another aspect that may have been overlooked is the grains being used. You said that every few batches your efficiency fluctuates...depending on the potential yield from each grain, your efficiency may seem to be fluctuating...but I am just shooting from the hip now...

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I apologize for the confusion but the recipe called for a 1.064 original gravity (into the fermenter) but I ended up with 1.072.

I reference pre-boil in a lot of my discussions and I think it adds unnecessary complexity.

Ryat66 said:

I apologize for the confusion but the recipe called for a 1.064 original gravity (into the fermenter) but I ended up with 1.072.

I reference pre-boil in a lot of my discussions and I think it adds unnecessary complexity.

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Oh, okay. I kind of figured because that would make this a very big beer! If you're averaging 80% brewhouse efficiency...you could have knocked the grain bill down to @ 11 lbs. 2-row / 1 lb. C-10...this would have kept the grain ratio nearly identical and brought your OG at/near the right spot.

**Disclaimer: I am using the Anticipated Yield for American 2-row and Crystal 10. I did a quick search and couldn't find the ppg typical yield for Briess, so pending that, my above statement is neither here nor there.

Biscuits said:

you could have knocked the grain bill down to @ 11 lbs. 2-row / 1 lb. C-10...this would have kept the grain ratio nearly identical and brought your OG at/near the right spot.

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On a 7.25 gallon batch?

hottpeper13 said:

Last year I purchased a bag of Great Western 2 row and went from 80% to 86% for all those batches. Went to 80% with Rhar, Briess; am on my 2 nd batch with Canadian pale malt and am getting ~75%, still fermenting so we'll see how they taste. It's a *****, but with different maltsters you get different efficiency, not all bags come with a tag,at least not at NB.

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Not so much different efficiency with different maltsters, but different extract potentials. Also, malt with less moisture will give you more extract/lb than moister malt, if both have the same dry basis, fine grind potential. I've seen a range of 1.036 to 1.038 for different pale 2-rows.

Brew on

Ryat66 said:

On a 7.25 gallon batch?

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I should stop posting today. Good call. I had my calculator set at 5.5 gal.

For a 7.25 it would be more like 13 lbs. 2-Row, 1.25 lbs. C-10.

Clarke said:

I am curios about this statement. I know absolutely nothing about conversion rate, but lower temp more fermentable sugar, higher temp less fermentable sugar, so I would think just by that it would be opposite to your statement? I am interested to learn more, can you explain this to me or point me in a direction for more information on this?

Thanks

Click to expand...

At work on my phone so will respond later with sources, but it had to do with enzyme activity. Beta in particular is much slower at 148 vs say 154. For low temp mashes, I usually do a slightly extended mash (70~) while for a higher temp mash around 155-158 I often mash for only 40-45 minutes and get a conversion efficiency above 94% each time.

Biscuits said:

I should stop posting today. Good call. I had my calculator set at 5.5 gal.

For a 7.25 it would be more like 13 lbs. 2-Row, 1.25 lbs. C-10.

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It's all good, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

In case you're curious...unfortunately, my kettle is a Polar Ware 42 quart. It's rather short and wide so I go to 7.25 gallon batches w/ hoppy brews so as to avoid taking too much trub to the fermenter.

I think I am one step closer to my answer, I did a re-brew on this beer from my original post.

To recap why I started this thread, on a recent IPA I was aiming for 1.064 OG and ended up with 1.072 and I've noticed wildly overshooting my estimated efficiency on ALL of my hoppy beers. I always shoot for 80% on my recipes but end up getting better than expected mash efficiency than my non hoppy beers.

So, I re-brewed this IPA with the exact same water makeup, grain percentages (more on that in a second) and my process is well...my process, I have it down. The only change I made was scaling the original recipe to 85% and guess what? I hit my OG.

With data from some 10 IPAs and pale ales I am almost ready to say that I think the combination of my low pH target and over 90% of 2-row base malt are giving me much better mash efficiency than I am expecting. Moving forward, I will plan my recipes accordingly. This isn't earth shattering stuff but just need some validation from other brewers until I become consistent.

Ryat66 said:

Moving forward, I will plan my recipes accordingly.

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Great news, I have a keggle-based HERMS system with a brewhardware.com false bottom and hit 90% efficiency on every brew. I use a 3 roller monster mill set to 0.040. How are you crushing your grains? LHBS mills are always out of adjustment and produce lower efficiency. I used to only get 80% efficiency when using pre-milled grains. I set beersmith to 88% to give me some wiggle room. Take your efficiency ratings with a grain of salt since with such a small batch a few ounce delta can skew the efficiency greatly. Play around with beersmith and you will see what I mean.

Have you calibrated your hydrometer with RO water?

Chris

-CHRIS- said:

Great news, I have a keggle-based HERMS system with a brewhardware.com false bottom and hit 90% efficiency on every brew. I use a 3 roller monster mill set to 0.040. How are you crushing your grains? LHBS mills are always out of adjustment and produce lower efficiency. I used to only get 80% efficiency when using pre-milled grains. I set beersmith to 88% to give me some wiggle room. Take your efficiency ratings with a grain of salt since with such a small batch a few ounce delta can skew the efficiency greatly. Play around with beersmith and you will see what I mean.

Have you calibrated your hydrometer with RO water?

Chris

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To be clear, I am still dialing in. Some of that is my own doing because I'd brew 2-3 batches and then decide I didn't like something about my process and change it, I full well knew that it would set off another round of variables but that's ok, I'm having fun.

My efficiency has always been higher than anticipated, in fact a review of my notes has shown me that I've never undershot, I've always thought that was strange because usually its the other way around when using the LHBS crush. However, I guess I was just underestimating the potential extraction

I did calibrate my hydrometer when I first got it but I didn't use RO or distilled water. I appreciate you bringing that up because while I doubt it's way off, it's at least worth establishing a base line.

Since you brought up the question about milling...my wife bought me a Barley Crusher for Christmas but I haven't used it yet since it's cold now and I brew in the garage so, I won't have a chance to use it for a few months. However, I did gap it to .039 using feeler gauges and I ran 2 pounds of Weyermann Pilsner malt through it. Here's a picture of the crush. What do you think?

-CHRIS- said:

Great news, I have a keggle-based HERMS system with a brewhardware.com false bottom and hit 90% efficiency on every brew. I use a 3 roller monster mill set to 0.040. How are you crushing your grains? LHBS mills are always out of adjustment and produce lower efficiency. I used to only get 80% efficiency when using pre-milled grains. I set beersmith to 88% to give me some wiggle room. Take your efficiency ratings with a grain of salt since with such a small batch a few ounce delta can skew the efficiency greatly. Play around with beersmith and you will see what I mean.

Have you calibrated your hydrometer with RO water?

Chris

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90% on every brew? That's not mathematically possible. Mash efficiency is a function of total water to grain ratio, and fluctuates accordingly...

pricelessbrewing said:

90% on every brew? That's not mathematically possible. Mash efficiency is a function of total water to grain ratio, and fluctuates accordingly...

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You're an engineer, huh?

I primarily brew ales and beersmith seems to fix the grist ratio at 1.25. I vary my strike water volume based on what beersmith tells me. I may see a few points lower on a big beer like a stout, but nothing really notable.

I am not familiar with BIAB, do you vary your grist ratios greatly?

Chris

-CHRIS- said:

You're an engineer, huh?

I primarily brew ales and beersmith seems to fix the grist ratio at 1.25. I vary my strike water volume based on what beersmith tells me. I may see a few points lower on a big beer like a stout, but nothing really notable.

I am not familiar with BIAB, do you vary your grist ratios greatly?

Chris

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Re: engineer. Almost, close enough for most applications, with better grounding in theory and less material sciences.

I meant total water (strike water + sparge volume) to grain, which is different from mash thickness. Mash thickness will affect the conversion rate vs time. Thicker mashes (1-1 25 qt/lb) tend to take slightly longer to fully convert than thin mashes (1.75-2).

I was able to finally narrow down my consistent overshoot on gravity. It was tied to an inaccurate 2 quart glass pitcher that I had originally used to mark my kettle and stir paddle. I figured it out on accident when I broke the pitcher and had to purchase another one, fortunatley the replacement was different.

I used the new pitcher to measure out some sparge water before heating and noticed that the water level in the kettle didn't seem to match the marks properly. So, I grabbed a 1-gallon pitcher from the kitchen that had quart increments and remeasured the water and it was at the same place as it was with the replacement pitcher. I had a light bulb moment, the original glass pitcher was the culprit, it was marked improperly during manufacturing and it never occurred to me that it was wrong! I mean, does anyone honestly question measuring cups and measuring spoons in their kitchen? I know I didn't question them...until now.

I have since re-marked all of my vessels: kettle(s), carboys, etc. and I now consistently hit estimated gravities and volumes. Lesson learned, trust but verify.