Having a hell of a time figuring out my system's efficiency. Help- Brewing tomorrow!

Hi all, tomorrow is going to be my 4th 5-gallon AG batch and I'm still struggling with these numbers. Let me run some numbers by you and see if you can guide me to the answer. I shoot for 5.5G into the fermenter at pitching so I can lose a quart each when racking to secondary and to keg. I guess technically these are 5.5G batches. In the following actual examples I will refer to the max theoretical yield calculated for these grain bills via the calculator at tastybrew.com, and the number beersmith is spitting out for me.

Batch 1 grain bill (a red ale):
7# Maris Otter
1# Crystal 40
8oz. Wheat malt
4oz. Roasted barley
1lb light DME (threw in because preboil was reading 1.036)
Max points= 73.6
Actual volume & gravity 5 gal of 1.051
Gives me 69% via tasty brew
Beersmith gave me 65%

Batch 2 grain bill (a pilsner):
10# Pilsner malt
Max points= 63.6
Actual volume & gravity 5.5 gal of 1.050
Gives me 79% via tasty brew
Beersmith gave me 68%

Batch 3 grain bill (Belgian IPA):
4# Munich
4# Pils
1#1oz Torrified Wheat
1#1oz Crystal 60
1# Candi sugar
0.5# Brown sugar
Max points = 66
Actual volume & gravity 6.25 gal of 1.053
Gives me 81% via tasty brew
Beersmith gave me 70.6%
(Notes about batch 3: I oversparged so all volumes were higher than intended, plus I had a mysteriously low amount of boil-off. Finally the whirlpooling was terrible and so I lost a full gallon in the kettle trying to avoid racking crap to the fermenter. I normally would lose 1/2 gallon to the kettle.)

Can anyone figure out what I'm doing wrong, or at the least, tell me what numbers I should trust? I'm brewing the Bell's 2-hearted clone tomorrow and I want to hop it correctly for the right gravity. I bought 12# of 2-row in addition to the 2# of vienna and 0.5# each of the cara-pils and crystal 20, so I have enough grain in case my efficiency is really that low, but I don't want to just dump it all in and come out too high on OG because of underestimating the efficiency. This grain bill punched into tastybrew gives max points of 97. If I'm at 65% eff, I get OG of 1.063, but if I'm at 81%, I get OG of 1.078. I think you can understand my concern...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

A few things come to mind:

1) Are you getting a consistent crush on your grains, or is it whatever your LHBS has it set at when you go in? That with a few small temperature fluctuations could throw your numbers off.

2) The Beersmith calculation includes loss of wort to cooldown evaperation and trub loss, while the Tasty Brew calculator does not. You can tweak or eliminate these variables in the BeerSmith equipment profiles.

3) Are you accounting for temperature on your gravity readings?

Given your historical numbers, however, I'd plug 70% as your average efficiency, but continue to measure and tweak from there. The numbers will be consistent as soon as all of the other variables are!

I use Beersmith, but I think the best thing you can do is get to know your system as well as you can. After brewing on your system for a while you know what to expect as far as efficiency is concerned. After you brew the same beer a few times and you are getting consistent #'s, you can compare that to what BS is estimating and adjust your grain bill accordingly to hit your desired OG. At least that is how I do it.

In response to TopherM, I'm definitely adjusting for temp on the reading.
I would think that the tastybrew not inherently counting for cooling shrinkage wouldn't matter since I'm telling it the final volume into fermenter. Even if that's wrong, do you think it accounts for a 10% difference between TB and BS?

I understand that crush variability (all done at LHBS mind you) would change my actual efficiency, and I can't control that until I receive my Barley Crusher. The large discrepancy between TB and BS is my biggest cause for concern.

They both use the same base calculation, so variables being equal they would both spit out the same number, so there is a variable(s) in the BeerSmith equation that the simple TastyBrew equation doesn't account for, and I still bet it is one of those variables in the equipment profile.

Either way, the BeerSmith one is probably more accurate.

Losing half a gallon most of the times, and a gallon on that third batch? I'd much rather have a gunkier yeast trub than lose a gallon of wort! It all settles out in primary.

I tend to agree with you in hindsight. On the pilsner batch I was *very* dissatisfied with the clarity of what I was racking to the fermenter, yet it came out crystal clear (at least when racking, we'll see about chill haze) and tastes very clean - to the point where I question needing a prolonged lagering. I have been ramping down the temp from the 54 ferm temp the last several days and it's at 39F. Does time in the keg getting CO2 forced into it count as lagering time?

I think with this Bell's recipe I'm going to treat it like my efficiency really is 65%, and if it comes in too high I can add a little top up water. Better than the other way.

Also, to clarify, I'm not normally losing 1/2 gallon in the kettle. I shoot for a quart. The half gallon is trub from the primary and yeast from the secondary that I try to leave behind.

The first batch volume was low because I had way MORE boil-off that batch.

I seem to have a hell of a time predicting boil-off. There is wild variance and I'm not sure why.