More sparge water

equals higher efficiency!

I wanted to do a 180 minute boil today, and so I collected a ton of water and by the time it boiled down, I was at 86% efficiency. Wow!

And a whole tank of propane!

And tannins!

how does one discover their efficiency?

180 min boil... whoa!
Did you get any scorching? did your finished product end up darker than normal?

I've almost gotten caught up in the super high efficiency craze lately.A lot of people convinced me to be happy with consistent efficiency, rather than high efficiency at the expense of quality beer.So I just calculated that if your regular efficiency was 72%,to boost it to the same gravity as the 86% efficiency batch only takes 2 x-tra lbs of grain.To me thats only $2.Thats why I'm happy making relatively good beer at 72%.

Oversparging to get better eff. will make poor beer.

Good crush, good temps, good sparge will produce good eff. and good beer.

I get 85% currently with a GOOD crush and a thin mash to boost the mash eff.

I sparge for a 90 min. boil

My grain crush and thin mash have been the two biggest contributors to better eff. I am not all about great efficiency, but once you have the process nailed down, it is of course fun to see what improvements can be made to streamline the process

This being said, I do not think that oversparging and boiling for 3 hours would be considered an improvement due to the generally poor quality of late running wort.

I completely agree with Pol. You should be able to get decent efficiency with a sparge that only requires a 60-90min boiloff. If you can't, accept the lower efficiency.

BobbyM agrees with me...

OKAY LOCK THIS THREAD! We need to mark this day!

I purposely collected wort to allow for a long boil. It is a Scottish Ale and I wanted to really caramelize the hell out of it. There was no scorching, but a good layer of caramelized wort on the bottom.

I watched my runoff closely, and the gravity never dropped so low on the runnings that I was worried about tannins (I understand the idea of fly sparging and not letting your gravity drop too low. It is basic brewing principle.) This beer will be just fine, if not excellent.

I am happy with my normal 70-75% efficiency. I was just amazed at the jump just because of a little extra water. I won't be doing 3 hour boils on a regular basis, because that's really not appropriate for most styles.

The Pol said:

BobbyM agrees with me...

OKAY LOCK THIS THREAD! We need to mark this day!

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Our agreement ratio would probably double if we stayed out of the debate forum.

That debate forum is just silly. I can't even read it anymore, so I stick to the brewing forums. I'm thinking that I might even cut back on some of them too, so I don't have to read about PET vs glass again.

Bobby_M said:

Our agreement ratio would probably double if we stayed out of the debate forum.

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True, true...

carnevoodoo said:

That debate forum is just silly. I can't even read it anymore, so I stick to the brewing forums. I'm thinking that I might even cut back on some of them too, so I don't have to read about PET vs glass again.

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Aluminum brew pots.

As long as the SG of the runnings doesn't drop below around 1.004 you should not get tannin extraction.

That said, finer crush will help a ton.

All that I DO know is that when I sparge 7.5 gallons for a 90 min boil... my runnings are down to 1.008 every time. I cannot imagine running off another 2.2 gallons.

But like he said, this is not a common practice. And in any case, to each thier own.

There is a difference between mash efficiency and lauter efficiency as Kaiser has pointed out. It seems the OP isn't getting good lauter efficiency to begin with.

PseudoChef said:

There is a difference between mash efficiency and lauter efficiency as Kaiser has pointed out. It seems the OP isn't getting good lauter efficiency to begin with.

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Often it's from sparging to quickly. 60 min sparge is what I am for. That's for a fly sparge.

I am generally around 30 minutes for my fly sparge.

I batch sparge and I don't think I do too bad around 75% efficiency on a normal sparge. I don't have to worry about running off too fast because it isn't like fly sparging.