I tried, but I'm still confused...

So I did my first AG this past weekend. A simple APA to have an hand. Trying to figure out a house brew...

I'm using brewsmith. Using numbers from a recent PM I did I entered the brewhouse efficency at 56% (or something similar). Why I shot so low I don't know, but being my first...yadda yadda...

My question...I hit my pre-boil gravity and my OG on the nose. Brewsmith says my efficancy was in deed 56%. This tells me I should be setting that number higher to be reaching a higher efficancy and brewsmith to be guiding me in that direction when I'm adding grains. Is that correct?

At least you know where you're starting from. However, just jumping brewsmith up to 70% efficiency doesn't mean you're going to get it. All that it will tell you is that you need less grain to get to 1.045 than you would at 56% eff. So then you'll use less grain, still be at 56%, and shoot WAY low.

The problem is likely in one of 4 places:
1) Grain Crush
2) Mashing and Sparging Technique/Temperature
3) Water usage
4) Boil usage

What was your recipe? What did you mash at (temp)? What amount of water did you strike with? What amount did you sparge with? What volume of water did you have pre-boil? How much did you get into the fermenter? How much was left behind in the kettle?

That should give us a good start to helping you out.

Kilted we should hook up sometime, I would have loved to be there to scratch my head right along with ya trying to figure out what to do. I plan on going AG very soon.

Gary-
There's another local on here, blacklab I believe that PM'ed me a very similar message a few days ago...I say we all get together and try and figure this thing out. Be great if we could also find some one local that actually knows what they are doing!

I'm heading out of town for two weeks starting next week, but let's continue chatting and see if maybe something mid/late January would work.

Sounds great to me, more the better, maybe Santa will have brought me AG equipment by then.

Kilted Brewer said:

So I did my first AG this past weekend. A simple APA to have an hand. Trying to figure out a house brew...

I'm using brewsmith. Using numbers from a recent PM I did I entered the brewhouse efficency at 56% (or something similar). Why I shot so low I don't know, but being my first...yadda yadda...

My question...I hit my pre-boil gravity and my OG on the nose. Brewsmith says my efficancy was in deed 56%. This tells me I should be setting that number higher to be reaching a higher efficancy and brewsmith to be guiding me in that direction when I'm adding grains. Is that correct?

Click to expand...

No what Beersmith is telling you is you guessed correct in your efficiency. This assumes that your pre-boil volume was correct. If you want to improve your efficiency you have to figure out what you can change that would improve it.
The biggest culprit is often the grain crush. Many LHBS use a very conservative crush that doesn't result in very good efficiency.
Besides your crush you could takes us through your mashing and sparging steps including times and temperatures. Perhaps some more experienced brewers could give you suggestions on how to improve it.

My first AG I estimated 70% in Beersmith and got 62% resulting in a session beer. However when I bought my Barley Crusher I didn't change my setting from the 65% I was usually getting. I got 82% instead. This resulted in a much bigger beer than anticipated. I seem to have settled around 80-82% efficiency so now I can brew beers with predictable gravities.

Craig

I'll post the recipe tonight when I get home. I thought I found it on here, but I can't seem to locate it anymore...

Kilted Brewer said:

Gary-
There's another local on here, blacklab I believe that PM'ed me a very similar message a few days ago...I say we all get together and try and figure this thing out. Be great if we could also find some one local that actually knows what they are doing!

I'm heading out of town for two weeks starting next week, but let's continue chatting and see if maybe something mid/late January would work.

Click to expand...

I don't know how far away Eugene is but there are quite a few experienced brewers there that post on this site

http://www.tastybrew.com/

They seem like friendly and knowledgeable people.

I have been to tastybrew and yes there are a lot of experienced brewers on that site and in the Eugene area. Unfortunately, Eugene is a about an hour and a half to two hour drive and us PDX folks need to build a good brew community.

I understand.
I live in the beer wasteland that is south Florida, and I don't know anyone else that brews. All my knowledge has come from sites like this.

My first AG was Edwort's Haus also. I knew my efficiency would suck, so I got an extra 2 pounds of 2 row. Cost an extra $3.40.

Read, read, read. My first AG hit 86% and I have NO doubt that had everything to do with the amount of research I did here on HBT. There are good step by steps in the Wiki section that should get you in the right direction. You can also do a search for efficiency and come up with plenty of suggestions for how to get it up. OR just do everything exactly the way you did before and assume the same efficiency in your recipe program.

Kilted Brewer said:

Be great if we could also find some one local that actually knows what they are doing!

Click to expand...

Did someone page me? I've made about 10 all grain batches and got all the kinks worked out pretty well. Although I don't have my AG setup right now, I'd be willing to stop by and show you clueless n00bs how it's done

You learn a lot when you look back on your brew day and realize you were trying to clean the house before SWMBO comes home from a week on the east coast, dealing with SWMBO on the phone cause she's going to miss her connecting flight back, dealing with SWMBO on the phone cause she has no idea what to do because she missed her connection, jumping back and forth from the home office rereading directions on how to AG, vacumming up water leaking into my basment, yadda yadda....

I skipped a step or two in the whole mash schedule. And if I just listened to the find folks here on HBT and got a 10gallon beverage cooler instead of a 5 gallon.... We'll see what kind of schwag I produced and hopefully learn from it for next time.

Evil...I'm still game to get schooled by a vet like yourself

Perhaps we can combine this with the Stout tasting the was being requested. Stout tasting to follow the brewing of course.