another efficiency post

So I just completed doing my 6th AG brew and I can't seem to get my efficiency up.

My efficiency history has been:

Stout 1 - 62%
Stout 2 - 60%
Bavarian Weizenbier - 50%
Belgian Ale - 55%
Pale Ale - 49%
Hefeweizen - 50%

I have redone my MLT and got a cooler that holds temps much better now.

Target OG was 1.055

The recipe for this latest Hefe was:
7lbs wheat malt
7lbs 2-row pale malt
Magnum - @ 60 min
Amarillo - @ 15 and 5 min

I mashed with 4.4 gallons of 170 degree F filtered water. I had to add a couple ice cubes to get the temp done to 155 where it stayed for 60 min. I checked the pH and it was 5.2. After 60 min I did a starch test and it was negative. I drained all the wort from the MLT and then added 4 gallons of 175 degree sparge water. I let it sit for 5 min and then drained the MLT completely.

I collected 6.25 gallons of wort. At 170 degrees the the hydrometer reading was 1.026 so that would be 1.053 for the preboil gravity.

After the boil I had 5.5 gallons of 1.058 wort for an efficiency of 50%.

I have checked my thermometers and they are accurate. I have bought new pH strips because the first ones sucked. I struggle a little bit keeping my sparge temps as high as they should be but the aren't that low.

WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I DOING WRONG!!!

Should I just suck it up and be happy with using 14lbs of grain to gravities in the 50s?

Who is grinding your grain? Is it pre-crushed? Without crunching the numbers to verify your math, it sounds like a milling problem.

Are you using a braid? Batch sparging? See, I dont get it. My last 2 heffes have used 10lbs of grain and I have gotten 1.053 with 5.5 gallons after the boil. That is 79% eff or so. My sparge temps have only been about 155-160...

Who is crushing your grain, that is the only thing that could really affect it to that degree... seriously, temps don't THAT much. What sort of thermometer do you use? I want to help.

Pol

The grain crush is certainly one possibility, but I suspect your sparging methods could also be responsible.
There's a couple of points:
1. Before draining to the kettle, you should give the grains a good stir, then wait 5 minutes and recirculate a little before draining. The stirring will help the water to dissolve the sugars. (if you add a spoonful of sugar to a cup of coffee, but don't stir, much of the sugar will just sit in the bottom of the cup. If you stir, the sugar will be dissolved.)
2. You're trying to sparge 14 lbs grain with only 4 gallons water. I don't think this is enough sparge water. If you sparged with two batches of 3 gallons each, I think your efficiency would increase, but then you would collect an extra two gallons wort. You could cut the mash water down to 1 qt per pound which would save one of the gallons. If you cut the grain back by 2 lbs, you would save another 1/2g in mash water, and I suspect you'd end up with a higher o.g because 12 lbs grain is easier to sparge than 14 lbs.
You could also cut back a little bit on the sparge water, but keep both batches of equal volume, and sparge with a minimum of 5 gallons.

-a.

The Pol said:

Are you using a braid? Batch sparging? See, I dont get it. My last 2 heffes have used 10lbs of grain and I have gotten 1.053 with 5.5 gallons after the boil. That is 79% eff or so. My sparge temps have only been about 155-160...

Who is crushing your grain, that is the only thing that could really affect it to that degree... seriously, temps don't THAT much. What sort of thermometer do you use? I want to help.

Pol

Click to expand...

Yes I am using a SS braid and batch sparging. I am also getting my grains crushed at the LHBS. I have wanted to get a barley crusher but I can't put out that kind of money at the moment. Maybe that is what I need to save up for next.

I am using a TruTemp digital thermometer and I have checked it for accuracy at freezing and boiling temps. On this last batch I doubled checked it with two other thermometers so I am sure that it isn't the problem.

ajf said:

The grain crush is certainly one possibility, but I suspect your sparging methods could also be responsible.
There's a couple of points:
1. Before draining to the kettle, you should give the grains a good stir, then wait 5 minutes and recirculate a little before draining. The stirring will help the water to dissolve the sugars. (if you add a spoonful of sugar to a cup of coffee, but don't stir, much of the sugar will just sit in the bottom of the cup. If you stir, the sugar will be dissolved.)
2. You're trying to sparge 14 lbs grain with only 4 gallons water. I don't think this is enough sparge water. If you sparged with two batches of 3 gallons each, I think your efficiency would increase, but then you would collect an extra two gallons wort. You could cut the mash water down to 1 qt per pound which would save one of the gallons. If you cut the grain back by 2 lbs, you would save another 1/2g in mash water, and I suspect you'd end up with a higher o.g because 12 lbs grain is easier to sparge than 14 lbs.
You could also cut back a little bit on the sparge water, but keep both batches of equal volume, and sparge with a minimum of 5 gallons.

-a.

Click to expand...

I didn't stir the grains before the first draining, but I did stir them when I added the second batch of sparge water. I will give this a try next time.

Could I drain what is in there first and then sparge with my 4 gallons of water, 2 gallons at a time? Or are you just saying that I need more water? My brewpot can only take 7 gallons max and it would take several hours for me to boil off that kind of volume.

ski36t said:

After the boil I had 5.5 gallons of 1.058 wort for an efficiency of 50%. ?

Click to expand...

I use BeerAlchemy and this gives me 60% efficiency.

I guess that's all dependent on the grain stats that it uses, but it is closer to what you were getting from your other.

FWIW, you are still within the style guidelines of a hefeweizen, right?

I did a mini mash and I check my efficiency and it was horrible, but come to find out my hydrometer is off, always low.

I'd reduce the grain to 6 lbs each of wheat and pale. I know this seems to be going the wrong way, but reducing the grain, reduces the amount of water required for the mash, and that water could be put to better use in the sparge.
With the 12 lbs grain, I'd mash with 3.4 gallons water, then do two batch sparges of 2.5 gallons each. I think that this should increase your efficiency enough to more than make up for the missing two pound grain without noticeably changing the amount of wort collected.
If I'm wrong (and it wouldn't be the first time), then you could always make up the gravity with a bit of DME.

Good luck.

-a.

Edit. Promash also says 60% efficiency for your figures.

Beerrific said:

I use BeerAlchemy and this gives me 60% efficiency.

I guess that's all dependent on the grain stats that it uses, but it is closer to what you were getting from your other.

FWIW, you are still within the style guidelines of a hefeweizen, right?

I did a mini mash and I check my efficiency and it was horrible, but come to find out my hydrometer is off, always low.

Click to expand...

I am doing at Magic Hat Circus Boy Clone. They list 1.055 on their website

ajf said:

I'd reduce the grain to 6 lbs each of wheat and pale. I know this seems to be going the wrong way, but reducing the grain, reduces the amount of water required for the mash, and that water could be put to better use in the sparge.
With the 12 lbs grain, I'd mash with 3.4 gallons water, then do two batch sparges of 2.5 gallons each. I think that this should increase your efficiency enough to more than make up for the missing two pound grain without noticeably changing the amount of wort collected.
If I'm wrong (and it wouldn't be the first time), then you could always make up the gravity with a bit of DME.

Good luck.

-a.

Edit. Promash also says 60% efficiency for your figures.

Click to expand...

I am using 36 pts for my 2-row and 40 for my wheat malt to calculate my efficiency. Are these too high? Where else can I find a list of gravity and color for grains?

Try http://www.promash.com/
Download the free eval version and run through the tutorials.
If you like it, you can pay (I believe it's $25.00). If not, it's just cost you a little bit of time.
There are other similar programs, but I've never used them.

-a.

Ok I figured out what I was doing wrong in my calculation. I am now calculating 60% efficiency like you guys. This makes me feel a little better about how I have been doing but I will try some of the things you guys were talking about.

I would look at your crush still. You have a pretty good record of low efficiency and it seems pretty consistent. With a braid and a 10 gallon system, you should not have a problem pulling 70-75%... I agree, 14lbs of grain is ALOT to get a 5 gallon batch, it would not take long to justify getting a mill.

Pol

Take a look at this thread I started a couple days ago. I'm certain you are not using enough sparge water. To get a decent efficiency with 14 pounds of grain you will need at least 7 gallons of sparge water.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=30466

Yah, shoot, good point! I ran off 7.5 gallons with 10lbs of grain this past weekend for my heffe... You need a good runoff or else you will lose some sugars, that is where fly sparging rocks, it flows and I just run it off until my kettle is full, OR until my PH gets too high, OR my gravity gets too low.

Pol

RichBrewer said:

Take a look at this thread I started a couple days ago. I'm certain you are not using enough sparge water. To get a decent efficiency with 14 pounds of grain you will need at least 7 gallons of sparge water.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=30466

Click to expand...

When you say 7 gallons of sparge water you mean 7 gallons minus what was in the MLT to begin with right? Otherwise I would have 9 gallons of wort...way too much for me to handle.

I don't want to speak for RichBrewer, but I do believe he meant you need 7 gals of sparge water. To get good efficiency for 14 lbs/5 gal batch you really need to collect more than 7 gals pre-boil and boil for longer. Otherwise, there's just no way to get all the sugars out and your efficiency WILL be low.

My guess is 60% is about as good as you're going to get with your method, not that there's anything wrong with that. If you want to make bigger beers, you're either going to have to 1) get a bigger kettle and boil the entire volume for longer or 2) sparge until your kettle's full, sparge the remaining wort into another container and add it to the kettle as you have space, or 3) boil for a while in 2 separate kettles, and possibly combine them when you have room or do the entire boil split, splitting your hops accordingly.

Hope that helps.

Get the BrewSmith program at brewsmith.com

Im at around 91% with this program and of course the "Brew Magic"

How long do you guys boil? Do most people just do a 60 minute boil or do a lot of people do more than that to increase their gravity?

It depends on how much pre-boil wort you collect. If you're doing a normal gravity batch (~1.050) then you won't be collecting too much wort and 60 mins is plenty. If you're collecting more wort for a high gravity beer then 90 or 120 mins may be necessary.

You are worried about volume of wort but it seems you are forgetting to factor in the amount of water absorbed by the grain. for a ten gallon bacth this weekend i mased with and sparged total with of about 16 gallons of water (i used 17lbs of grain) and ended up with 12.5 gallons of wort that in 60 min i boiled down to a little less than 10 gallons.

I would say in a typical 5 gallon batch the grain would absord around 2 gallons of water.

Feel free to correct me but this has been my expierence.

Reverend JC said:

You are worried about volume of wort but it seems you are forgetting to factor in the amount of water absorbed by the grain. for a ten gallon bacth this weekend i mased with and sparged total with of about 16 gallons of water (i used 17lbs of grain) and ended up with 12.5 gallons of wort that in 60 min i boiled down to a little less than 10 gallons.

I would say in a typical 5 gallon batch the grain would absord around 2 gallons of water.

Feel free to correct me but this has been my expierence.

Click to expand...

You get 2.5 gallons of boil-off per hour!!! Dang! Last time mine boiled off .75 gallons in 60 min.

How in the world are you accomplishing this?

I am taking into consideration the grain absorption. This last time I mashed with 4.37 gallons of water and recovered 2.25 gallons from the first runnings. Then you guys are telling me to sparge with 7 more.... This would give me 9.25 gallons total.

I would have to boil for over three hours to get down to my target volume.

A vigorous boil should result in more than 3/4 gal evap per hour. That seems on the low end.

Not sure, i guess the hurricane burner is a boiling SOB. I guess i am eyeballing it to a point. The seam in the middle of a commercial keg is what? 7.75 gallons? When i am doing a 5 gallons batch i make sure to have at least to that seam in my keggle covered because i know after an hour on the boil i will drop to around 5.5 gallons.

I'm pretty sure I'm losing more than 2 gallons an hour to evaporation, as well. I need to start accounting for that better, I think that's a core reason my efficiency sucks. Started my last batch with about seven gallons in the keggle, ended with about 4.5 in the fermenter and not a lot of waste. I'm using the Banjo Cooker and boiling pretty aggressively. I'm thinking of collecting around nine gallons of runnings for the doppelbock and boiling down to 5.5, with a 90-120 minute boil.

the_bird said:

I'm pretty sure I'm losing more than 2 gallons an hour to evaporation, as well. I need to start accounting for that better, I think that's a core reason my efficiency sucks.

Click to expand...

Boiling won't change your efficiency, will it? Whatever sugar is in the kettle at the beginning is still there at the end...the gravity just goes up in inverse proportion to the boiloff. If you start with 8 gal at 1.060, you'll have 7 gal at 1.069, then 6 @ 1.080, then 5 @ 1.096.

If you measure efficiency at any one of these points, you should get the same answer.

I should be able to collect more of the sugars from the mash, though. If I'm collecting nine gallons, there's naturally got to be more sugars in the wort (even at a lower concentration) than if I only collect 7 gallons. If I boil down the former for two hours (down to five gallons), I should have a higher gravity reading than if I boiled the latter down, also to five gallons, by only boiling for one hour.

Gotcha...I misunderstood your first post as "I'm boiling too much and losing efficiency"

If you're boiling off 2 gal/hr, your tradeoff of (less grain-higher eff-longer boil vs. more grain-lower eff-shorter boil time) is tilted more to the "longer boil" side than mine. I only lose 1 gal/hr, so on bigger beers I'd rather throw in a couple extra pounds of grain than do a 4-hour boil. Plus, my biggest kettle's only 9 gal...for now

Update...

I brewed a nut brown ale this weekend and got 75% efficiency. This was the first time using my Barley Crusher. I hooked it up to a motor and I am getting just under 500 rpms out of it. Might be a little much, but it appears that it did the job.

Thanks again everyone for the advice, you guys were right on.