Efficiency and volume question

Brewed my 2nd AG batch today and everything went well and I still need to improve my system a bit, but I have some questions maybe someone can help with.

I used beersmith to formulate my recipe and after the first AG I got most of the numbers dialed in (or so I thought).

I've got a cooler with ss braid and a keggle for boiling, along with my alum turkey fryer pot for heating water
13 lbs of grain (first time using my new crankandstein with the default gap setting)
Single infusion batch sparge at 154F for 60 min
All leaf hops (3oz)

Preheated cooler with boiling water, and added 16.25qt 170F water (beersmith called for 16.25qt at 168.3F but from last time I knew I needed to go a little higher)
First runnings came out to be around 2.25 gal with a corrected SG of 1.092
Sparge with 5.25gal 170F water (beersmith called for 5.28gal)
Second runnings corrected SG=1.035
Pre-boil volume was just under 8gal, I'd say about 7.75 - 7.85 (my dipstick is only in half gal increments) and corrected SG of well mixed wort was 1.049 (beersmith calls for 7.58gal with SG of 1.043)


So I had my laptop out in the garage to listen to music while all this was going on so I punched the numbers into beersmith as I got them. Using the efficiency calculator for "Efficiency into boiler" it came out with 80.9 - 81.9 (depending on iff it was 7.75 or 7.85). I thought wow thats really good, that new mill really worked great.

Everything went well throughout the boil. I use an autosiphon with a paint filter over the end, I'm not very happy with this I really need to put a spigot on and some other way of filtering but I did rack out 5.25gal as predicted by beersmith.

My temp corrected OG was 1.060 (beersmith predicted , and beersmith says my actual efficiency was 67.1%.

My big question is shouldn't my OG have been higher since my pre boil SG was 1.049 (6 points higher than beersmith predicted)? After typing all this it occured to me that it might be that I have more loss due to not being able to siphon everything out, which would have put me at a higher volume that if I had a better way to transfer I could have boiled down more to get a higher concentration at the same volume

I know I'm just missing something obvious here, and it could be related to the other beers I started drinking once I started my boil.

James

Bokonon said:

My big question is shouldn't my OG have been higher since my pre boil SG was 1.049 (6 points higher than beersmith predicted)? After typing all this it occured to me that it might be that I have more loss due to not being able to siphon everything out, which would have put me at a higher volume that if I had a better way to transfer I could have boiled down more to get a higher concentration at the same volume

I know I'm just missing something obvious here, and it could be related to the other beers I started drinking once I started my boil.

James

Click to expand...

That's right. Losses in your process will reduce the resulting efficiency because, as you said, you're leaving sugary godness in the kettle. A ball valve/pickup may help, but your real issue is filtering the hops. There are many many threads on here about that topic. This is what I've been using. It works great, but may be more of a hassle if you use an immersion chiller that you want to sanitize at the end of the boil. I use a CFC.

7.8 gal @ 1.049 gives you 382 points. At you post-boil gravity of 1.060, you should have had 382/60 = 6.37 gallons of wort.

Did you lose 1+ gallons in transferring? If not, your readings are off somewhere.

Thanks for the replies. I think on my next batch I'm going to try using something to put the hops in, I've got some extra paint straining bags so I'll try to come up with a solution to that. I'm using an IC now but when I finally get a spigot welded on I'll get something like the hopstopper and a CFC or a plate chiller.

I should have figured out exactly how much wort I left behind, but thats one thing I didn't do. It was a long day and I had to get everything cleaned up as quick as possible.

Thanks
James

A gallon would be a lot of loss. The most I ever lost was half that, and that batch had 9 ounces of leaf hops in the kettle.

I use a bazooka screen in my kettle to catch the hops (I use leaf or plug 95% of the time) and it works great.

Now I really wish I would have measured what was left. I even stuck a 2x4 underneath one side of the bottom of the keg to get all the liquid in the corner my autosiphon was at. Hopefully next time I won't have to bother with that, but no matter what I do I'll measure I'm unable to remove just for future calculations.

James