My efficiency is HORRIBLE!!

Here is my info . .

10 Gal Rubbermaid w/ 9" long and 1" wide SS heater hose with nothing inside.
1st time doing all grain so didn't take readings at every point that i should have . . . might have actually saved me from this . .
Grain bill 10.25 lbs
1.25 qt/lb

Mashed in at 155F with 3.2 gallons of water for 60 minutes. Stirred only once in the beginning to make sure there were no dough-balls.
Before Vorlauf(sp?) the temp was 152. I Vorlaufed 1.2 gallons and then threw that back on top of the grainbed via tinfoil on top.
I then added 6.2 gallons of 180F water (which made my brand new igloo cooler make some weird crackling noises, but no cracks where found in the inside after everything was said and done.) and mixed VERY WELL.
Let this sit for 10 minutes while the first runnings where being heated.
I then vorluafed this as well for about 1 gallon and then turned the spiggot on to full blast and added gallon back to top of MLT.
I then brewed for 30 minutes per AHS's directions. (This was new to me! I actually used 1 hour boil in the sparge calculations, and am thinking this was also a VERY big contributor to the low OG)
After the beer was cooled down, I let it sit for about 2 hours since my water could only get it to around 90, I pitched at around 75F with a 800ml starter.

Here's my problem, and I really think it is because of the boil times . . . but I measured my OG before pitching . . . 1.031!!! My gravity was supposed to be around 1.048!!! So, either my efficiency is EXTREMLY BAD, or I just didn't boil off the correct amount of water so bring my gravity up. I have already pitched, but is there some way to at least raise this somewhat when I get home? I really would like to have a SOMEWHAT alchoholic beer. HAHA

Also, anyone have any suggestions for me? When to take readings and so forth, so my next batch will be better? Or so that I can report back with my numbers and you all can tell me where things need to be improved?

how many gallons did you end up with in the fermenter? 5 or much more?

I had about 5.9 gallons in the fermentor and a little more left in the kettle. But I usually leave the last half inch or so in the kettle because of all the trub at the bottom.

The extra gallon of volume accounts for a bit of the missing gravity. 6 gallons of 1.031 would make 5 gallons of 1.037 if you boiled off more.

But, the other chunk of gravity must be from efficiency (or hydrometer sample or reading) problems.

If you feel the need to try and patch it, you could boil some DME in a very small amount of water and then add it to boost the gravity.

how much DME to how much water? I have some Light DME that I use for my starters.

Also, any ideas on the readings I should take next time to help you (and me) determine where I need to fix things?

All in all, the first AG batch went pretty smoothly. Wasn't that much harder to do then an extract batch. The color came out GREAT too, but its just that damn gravity!! haha

Also, the gravcity reading was a little off because I forgot to fix it per the temp. So it was actually 1.033 but not much of a difference.

I had a similiar problem on my first few batches. I know its not the professional way, but here is what I did and now I always get 75% or better. Everytime I add water from mash to final runnings I stir the grain well and vorlauf until clear.

I highly suggest using this spreadsheet. It will tell you what is going on with your system. Details about the sheet can be found at braukaiser.com

@Boerdeji : that is some INSAINE spreadsheet! If I ever figure out how to use it I will! haha Thank you.

@Walker : You have always been a GREAT help to me. Thank you.

So, any ideas on how much DME and how much water I should add? How long should I boil it for? 20 min??

It really isn't hard. I complete it for every brew and therefore always know what is happening in my brewery. All you need is a pitcher for measuring.

hoppymonkey said:

I had a similiar problem on my first few batches. I know its not the professional way, but here is what I did and now I always get 75% or better. Everytime I add water from mash to final runnings I stir the grain well and vorlauf until clear.

Click to expand...

I will try this next time for sure. I will also try stirring a few times throughout the 60 min mash.

The only thing I would be afraid of is extracting the tannins from the grain while stirring so often.

I have found a big thing with efficiency is the grind of the grains. If they aren't cracked enough then your numbers will be low.

+1 on the grain crack. i don't have this problem b/c I'm 10 miles from BMW and always Crack mine on Ed's grinder. IN return I am a very loyal customer.I mean think about it. ~$200 for a grinder or $100 bucks worth of grain and couple more kegs.

PS. Don't stir during mash as this will likely drop the temp too much.

I got mine from AustinHomeBrew.com and from what I hear they are pretty good at their grind. Now, I've never grinded before so I couldn't tell you how good their grind is compared to others. But, I am guessing that this wasn't the reasoning behind the low efficiency. I am going to be buying a Corona Mill soon, and will be FINALLY buying large bags of grain to start saving on $$. $35 bucks a batch is just way too much for me. I wash my own yeast, and am trying to cut costs wherever possible.

Walker said:

The extra gallon of volume accounts for a bit of the missing gravity. 6 gallons of 1.031 would make 5 gallons of 1.037 if you boiled off more.

Click to expand...

with your temp correction, 1.033 @ 6 gal is nearly 1.040 @5 gal.
So I think if you had added the right amount of sparge water and or boil off the right amount to get to 5 gallons in the fermenter, you'd be pretty close to the 1.043 target.

GLoBaLReBeL said:

Here is my info . .

Grain bill 10.25 lbs
1.25 qt/lb

Mashed in at 155F with 3.2 gallons of water for 60 minutes....

I then added 6.2 gallons ...

Click to expand...

While you may have other issues like coarse crush going on and oversparging for such a short boil (by the way, you could have boiled for 30 minutes prior to starting your 30 minute hop schedule), one thing to note here is the disparity between runnings volumes.

Given a grain absorption of about 1/2qt per pound, I'm estimating your first runnings were about 2 gallons. You sparged with another 6 gallons (by the way, 8 gallons preboil is too much even for an hour long boil). The closer your runnings are to being equal, the higher your efficiency is.

What could you have done?
1. Mash thinner. If you mashed with say 4.5 gallons, your runnings would be 3.25. Then you'd want to sparge another 3.25 gallons for a total of 6.5 which is a more appropriate preboil for a 5 gallon batch. Notice the two runnings are equal.

Another method is to break the two sparges into equal batches. Instead of one with 6 gallons, make it two with 3 gallons each. Again, the runnings are closer to the same volume. This takes extra effort.

Bobby . . . seriously . . . I can only hope to be able to answer questions as clearly as you do in the years to come! That made soo much sense to me it is SCARY! I'm going to print out all these posts and make notes and I can't wait for my next AG!

On a side note. . . I did my calculations of my boil off using just water and I got 1.8 Gallons and hour. Is this the correct way to calculate my boil off?

I didn't know I could boil off for 30 min first, and THEN start my 30 minute hope schedule. AHS's instructions don't lead you to believe this. I wish I would have known, because it would have worked out perfectly. (Or at least much better)

I only have about 10 brews under my belt, but I'm getting better thanks to this site! Everyone here rocks and the site has helped me out tremendously!! Now . . one last question before I leave . . . since I want to raise my gravity, how much DME to water should I use to at least get my gravity up a few points? Also, will adding this today hurt anything? (I pitched last night at around 11:30 PM, and I will be able to add the DME today at 5PM.)

midfielder5 said:

with your temp correction, 1.033 @ 6 gal is nearly 1.040 @5 gal.
So I think if you had added the right amount of sparge water and or boil off the right amount to get to 5 gallons in the fermenter, you'd be pretty close to the 1.043 target.

Click to expand...

My gravity was actually supposed to be 1.048 . . . so ya Not the best either way you look at it HAHA.

Mine really inproved when my wife bought me a grain mill! But then again is it the grain mill, more time learing my equipment, slower sparge, and what I was doing? Who knows. But I average 75 to 80%.

Bobby_M Never reall looked at it that way. I will have to pay better attention.

Keep with it Globalrebel! I have only done 2 all grain brews. My first was EdWort's haus pale, I only hit 58% efficiency... I was ready to roll my brew kettle down my driveway. I didn't pay enough attention to my water volumes, and the crush from a LHBS in Albany looked barely crushed! I hit 1.040 against target 1.053.
This weekend I finally got to do my second All Grain. Did EdWorts Bav. Hefe. This time I got the grain from Austin Homebrew, and paid attention to my water. I hit 74% efficiency. My Og was 1.056 against a target 1.052. I was very happy to say the least!

Boerderij_Kabouter said:

I highly suggest using this spreadsheet. It will tell you what is going on with your system. Details about the sheet can be found at braukaiser.com

Click to expand...

Holy beautiful....I've never seen that before...I need to hang out on Kai's wiki more often. Definitely gonna try this sucker out, thanks BK!

Yeah Kaiser does a great job and has really improved my brewing with his research.

This is what my log book looks like for each brew. Surprisingly, it isn't much work and ensures I pay attention during brewday, leading to better and more accurately brewed beer.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f70/bells-oberon-clone-31422/#post1507619

Dave258 said:

Keep with it Globalrebel! I have only done 2 all grain brews. My first was EdWort's haus pale, I only hit 58% efficiency... I was ready to roll my brew kettle down my driveway. I didn't pay enough attention to my water volumes, and the crush from a LHBS in Albany looked barely crushed! I hit 1.040 against target 1.053.
This weekend I finally got to do my second All Grain. Did EdWorts Bav. Hefe. This time I got the grain from Austin Homebrew, and paid attention to my water. I hit 74% efficiency. My Og was 1.056 against a target 1.052. I was very happy to say the least!

Click to expand...

Well, looks like I can rule out the crush from AHS

I went into this first AG with the mentality of "I'm just going to have fun, drink some beers and see how it goes. I was disappointed with my gravity , but in the end it was fun to finally use all the equipment that I had been building! Plus, next time I'm going to have some friends over to convince that AG is the way to go! ( If we all go AG, buying 50 lbs of grain will be more cost effective and we all win!!)

Join a local brew club and do bulk buys( northcountrymalt.com). Our club buys 42 bags at a time and My costs is somewhere between $28-$32/ 55lb bag. Its awesome. Buy all my base malts there and stay loyal to BMW for everything else.

Hmm . . . I'm going to look into that! I bet shipping ain't cheap. How long does grain last? I'm guessing like a year or so in a rubber maid container?

It does last a good while if taken care of. I buy those "space bags" from walmart and store 25lbs a bag in a dark closet. I only buy 2-row, 6-row,munich, and wheat malt from there in quanity and keep a bag of each on hand.( althought I did end up with pilsen from the last buy by mistake). We also bulk buy hops by the Lb( $7-13/Lb) and I keep those on hand and trade to other brewers for different hops. So basically every planned brewday just requires a trip the BMW for specialty grains and yeast and I'm set. The SWMBO gave me the evil eye for a while when I came home with that much grain, but I haven't spent more than $10 on ingredients since.( Notice I said nothing about equipment) This hobby is ADDICTIVE.

GLoBaLReBeL said:

I only have about 10 brews under my belt, but I'm getting better thanks to this site! Everyone here rocks and the site has helped me out tremendously!! Now . . one last question before I leave . . . since I want to raise my gravity, how much DME to water should I use to at least get my gravity up a few points? Also, will adding this today hurt anything? (I pitched last night at around 11:30 PM, and I will be able to add the DME today at 5PM.)

Click to expand...

I know I'm bringing this back from the dead but I wanted to do this math for my own purposes anyhow...

Say your boil is done and you're way under target. You have 4.5 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.040 and your target was 1.050.

Vw = 4.5
Gw = 1.040
Gt = 1.050

You want 5.5 gallons total with a gravity of 1.050(your target) going in to your fermenter, so you have room for trub.

Vt = 5.5
Dv = 5.5-4.5 = 1

Meaning you want to add 1 gallon of liquid total(with malt extract added).

Dry and liquid malt extract have different potentials. For the sake of this problem, we will use dry malt extract because it's easier to measure.

Potential of dry malt extract = 45 points per pound per gallon(http://hbd.org/uchima/tech/extract.html)

That means that adding one pound of DME in one pound of water will result in 1 gallon of wort with gravity of 1.045

We know we want to add 1 gallon of liquid to our under-gravity wort. We don't know how much DME to add to it; that is what we will be solving for.

Our original wort was 40 ppg(points per pound per gallon, since we had a gravity of 1.040)

The equation to figure out our gravity after adding liquid to it is easy:

((4.5g)(40ppg) + (1g)(x))/5.5g = 50ppg

x here is the gravity(expressed in ppg) we would need our 1 gallon addition to be to result in 50ppg final wort to go in the fermenter.

Solve for x...

50ppg * 5.5g = (4.5g)(40ppg) + (1g)(x)
50ppg * 5.5g - (4.5g)(40ppg) = (1g)(x)
95ppg = x

That means we need 1 gallon of 95ppg(or SG 1.095) solution to add to our 4.5 gallons of 1.040 wort to result in 5.5 gallons of 1.050 wort.

The potential for DME is 45 ppg.

45ppg * 1g * y = 95ppg

Solve for y to get the amount of DME in pounds we will have to add to our 1 gallon of water.

y = 2.11 lb

If we add 2.11 lbs of DME with potential 1.045 to 1 gallon of boiling water, then mix that with 4.5 gallons of wort with gravity 1.040 we should have a result of 5.5 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.050.

Right? Someone check my work