Efficiency way high

This weekend I shared the joy of homebrewing with my father in law. I kept the recipe simple to not overwhelm him but wanted to show him how AG sessions go.

I just finished my first cooler->MLT conversion and saw the benefits right away. Hit my mash temp right on at 153. held for 60min.

I was anticipating an OG of 1.061 and well.... take a look.



If you can't see it, it's reading 1.098.

Any ideas how this happened? I use promash for all my recipes, and that's where I got the expected OG of 1.061.

what was your recipe?

what was your sample temperature? Did you temperature correct?

I would think that it could possibly be airbubbles.

What was your grain bill? What does your hydrometer read in water? What temperature did you take the reading at?

10 gallon grain bill for a 5 gallon batch?

Grain bill was very simple:
10# 2-row pale (us)
2# crystal 60L

ratio was 1qt water/1# grain

the sample temp was about 75. Was that too warm for an accurate reading? That's usually what I go with. Maybe I've been mistaken all along?

Something's not adding up, I put 10# 2-row and 2# crystal 60L into beersmith and for a 5 gal batch, 100% efficiency only gets you to 1.086. But if you only ended up with 4 gal in your fermenter because you boiled off way too much, then a 90% efficiency will give you 1.097 which is believable. But there is no way you have 5 gal of 1.098 wort with the simple grain bill you gave.

it's definitely shy of 5 gal. I have a five gal carboy and there's some headroom for sure. I tried to accomdate for that with a little more sparge water. At boil I had 6.25 gal. probably lost 2 gal to evaporation.

IPA_33 said:

Grain bill was very simple:
10# 2-row pale (us)
2# crystal 60L

ratio was 1qt water/1# grain

the sample temp was about 75. Was that too warm for an accurate reading? That's usually what I go with. Maybe I've been mistaken all along?

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75 would actually bump your gravity up 2 points, so you're at corrected gravity of 1.110

take a sample of water @ 60*F and see what your hydrometer says. My guess is it will not say 1.000

I've heard the paper can slip on hydro's which lead to a very unaccurate reading.

Also, maybe you didn't stir your wort enough and you were reading mainly from your 1st runnings which could be ~1.110?

What's your water source... municipal or well? Do you happen to know the pH? If this isn't your first AG batch, what were your previous efficiencies?

If you had 6.25 gallons at boil time and lost 2 gallons, that's 32% loss. That seems way high.

Dumb question, but did you take the SG of the first runnings separately, or was that OG going into the fermenter?

menschmaschine said:

What's your water source... municipal or well? Do you happen to know the pH? If this isn't your first AG batch, what were your previous efficiencies?

If you had 6.25 gallons at boil time and lost 2 gallons, that's 32% loss. That seems way high.

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I don't know the PH, that's still a bit beyond me at this point. I only have about a dozen AG's under my belt. My previous efficiencies were always a bit under. Again, I changed from 1.25qts/lb to 1qt/lb. I'm assuming that has a lot to do with it.

YooperBrew said:

Dumb question, but did you take the SG of the first runnings separately, or was that OG going into the fermenter?

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post boil on its way to the fermenter.

IPA_33 said:

Again, I changed from 1.25qts/lb to 1qt/lb. I'm assuming that has a lot to do with it.

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That should really only slightly reduce attenuation (beer will have more body, higher FG) because a thicker mash is more conducive to enzimatic dextrin conversion. I don't think mash thickness has a noticable impact on efficiency.

Well, I'll definitely check the hydro for calibration purposes. Thanks everyone for your suggestions and thoughts. I appreciate it.

menschmaschine said:

That should really only slightly reduce attenuation (beer will have more body, higher FG) because a thicker mash is more conducive to enzimatic dextrin conversion. I don't think mash thickness has a noticable impact on efficiency.

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Mash thickness does have an effect because it dictates how much you can sparge based on a fixed preboil volume target. It's probably worth 5% if you compare say 1qt/lb with 1.5qt/lb.

Bobby_M said:

Mash thickness does have an effect because it dictates how much you can sparge based on a fixed preboil volume target. It's probably worth 5% if you compare say 1qt/lb with 1.5qt/lb.

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I'm trying to understand this, Bobby. You're saying that the more water used for sparging (relative to the amount used in the mash), the lower the efficiency? Would this be the same for both batch and fly sparging?

I would figure that if you get "full" conversion, regardless of the mash thickness, the same amount of sugars would be in the mash. So, a thick mash would have a higher concentration of sugars than a thinner mash. In other words, if you took a gravity sample of the first runnings of two identical mashes, except one is thick and one is thin, wouldn't the thick mash have a higher gravity? Lautering efficiency being equal, if more water is needed to get to a fixed pre-boil volume, the higher concentration of sugars in a thicker mash would even out to less water being used on a thinner mash with a lower concentration of sugars. Am I looking at this wrong?

No, sorry I wasn't clear. The thicker the mash, the more volume you reserve for sparging so the HIGHER your efficiency will be. It should be true for any sparge method. It is true that a thicker mash would have a higher gravity on the first runnings but it's the fact that you dilute it down with more sparge water as a part of the overall runnings gives you an efficiency boost.

OK, I see what you're saying. Thanks for clarifying.

Bobby_M said:

No, sorry I wasn't clear. The thicker the mash, the more volume you reserve for sparging so the HIGHER your efficiency will be. It should be true for any sparge method. It is true that a thicker mash would have a higher gravity on the first runnings but it's the fact that you dilute it down with more sparge water as a part of the overall runnings gives you an efficiency boost.

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so what is your normal qt per lb ratio when you mash?....just wondering what other people are doing.

IPA_33 said:

This weekend I shared the joy of homebrewing with my father in law. I kept the recipe simple to not overwhelm him but wanted to show him how AG sessions go.

I just finished my first cooler->MLT conversion and saw the benefits right away. Hit my mash temp right on at 153. held for 60min.

I was anticipating an OG of 1.061 and well.... take a look.

If you can't see it, it's reading 1.098.

Any ideas how this happened? I use promash for all my recipes, and that's where I got the expected OG of 1.061.

Click to expand...

Another silly question, but where do you get your grain & do you weigh them yourself? Is it possible you mistakenly used the KG scale instead of the LB scale?

LHBS, it's definitely in lbs not kg. I tested the hydromoter yesterday and it reads like it should in water. We'll see what happens with this batch, It smelled and looked delicious on its way into the carboy. I'm excited. Up next will be my xmas brew, a Coffee Cinnamon Smoked Porter.... mmmmm.