Hoping I Improved Efficiency

Hey guys, noob here. :cross:

I had a few people help me out a while back on my efficiency of brewing, and i was working at around 50-60% efficiency :-(

Anyways, i know that 1/2 the problem was using a food processor or a coffee grinder for grain "crushing", and the other half was my lack of a decent mash tun.

Well now i have a grinder. Got it from a local place for a pretty decent price. I'm still building my rubber keg LMT, so i was doing a halfassed setup this time. Wanted to mess around with the grain mill, so i made a small batch. It's a pain in the ass to mess around with more than a few lbs of grain with no mash abilities. So here's my results.

2.5lb 2.4l 2-row
.5lb 80l crystal
1lb crushed cracked corn
tons of hops, lol

1 gallon with 120* rest (for the korn) then 155 for 45 then up to 170 and strained.

slowly poured 2 gallons of 175* water over the grains. This is where having a mash tun would have been much better, this was more like fly sparaging, but with me pouring it, i'm sure it didn't work well. This is also the reason i made such a small batch.

finished the boil with 2 gallons, almost exactly. 1.058 gravity.

I tried doing math that some people showed me. One guy posted in a recent thread (right above this one) that you do (wortsize*grav)/grainlbs .... but that always comes up with mid 50's, even if i pretend the gravity was 1.2, which i know isn't right

someone else posted something where it was

2(58)/4(36) = 80.5%

which i think is (size*grav)/(lbs*36) but i'm not sure what the 36 stands for, just some arbitrary number? Or something to do with the type of grain you use?

Help me out here, I hope i'm doing a little better than before. I'm sure i still have lots of room to improve

So i found a site that linked to the brew wiki, and found that the 36 was the potential gravity

So i did the real math

(2 x 58) / ( (2.5 x 36) + (.5 x 33) + (1 x 37) ) = 80.3%

So i'm hoping my math is right. 80% sounds good for me. It's leaps and bounds over my previous 63% LOL

Hey sorry about that. I realized my post on the other thread was using a quote way out of context. I fixed it to avoid confusion.

Tommy

actually what i posted was

grain# X 36(avg PPG) / wort size = maximum OG at 100% efficiency

obtained og/max og = brewhouse efficiency

right on. well i think i got that part figured out now

What do most of you guys run for a normal efficiency range around here? The pro's on the forum run like 85-90? normal being 80 ish? Or do you guys run better than that?

every one runs a little different. some hit 70's and are happy with that others keep tweaking their process until they are in the high 80's. the key is to remain consistent from brew to brew, it helps predict grains needed and ibu's correctly.

Yea, I'm OK with 70's, stoked with 80, and if I ever hit the high 80's I'll throw out my back doing an Irish jig.

right on, i should be happy then? lol, works for me.

I'm working on my MLT and i'm gonna go for another beer on sunday when i can second stage this ipa i just made. It's bubling like crazy, which is good, it seems very healthy.

Just a weird update. I was reading the January issue of BYO and checked the efficiency of some of the all grain recipes in the magazine. They listed 6 top winners in American brewing competitions. One of the guys used just over 10lb of grain to come to a 1.049 which came out to about 68% efficiency? This was for an APA. Seems to me like an award winning brewer would be doing a little better than that? Or did they just adjust the recipe to make it a little easier to emulate at home for armature home brewers?

99blackgt said:

Just a weird update. I was reading the January issue of BYO and checked the efficiency of some of the all grain recipes in the magazine. They listed 6 top winners in American brewing competitions. One of the guys used just over 10lb of grain to come to a 1.049 which came out to about 68% efficiency? This was for an APA. Seems to me like an award winning brewer would be doing a little better than that? Or did they just adjust the recipe to make it a little easier to emulate at home for armature home brewers?

Click to expand...

It's a beer competition, not an efficiency competition.

Also, doesn't BYO adjust all their recipes to 65% efficiency?

99blackgt said:

Just a weird update. I was reading the January issue of BYO and checked the efficiency of some of the all grain recipes in the magazine. They listed 6 top winners in American brewing competitions. One of the guys used just over 10lb of grain to come to a 1.049 which came out to about 68% efficiency? This was for an APA. Seems to me like an award winning brewer would be doing a little better than that? Or did they just adjust the recipe to make it a little easier to emulate at home for armature home brewers?

Click to expand...

Jamil shoots for 70% and he is the guy with most ribbons. High efficiency doesn't equal great beer. It just means you aren't wasting grain.

yeah, i know you don't NEED to be efficient to make good beer, just figured if you spent all the time perfecting brews, you would have gotten good at making efficient mashes, even if you accidently got better with time, i would think you could do better than 65-68% ya know?

Not that i'm any better, lol, so far my AG average is about 60%. I'll shut up now B-D

I'm sure Jamil's mashing is quite efficient. He just isn't sparging it to death.

bakins said:

Also, doesn't BYO adjust all their recipes to 65% efficiency?

Click to expand...

Yes, the info at the front of the mag says this...

must have missed that. I've only got byo for the past few months, been readin a buddies besides that. So i haven't scoured the pages that well, yet.