Efficiency or should I say Inefficiency...

I am smacking my head a against a wall here.
I am constantly getting between 50 and 60% efficiency according to Beersmith and an online efficiency calculator.
I recently did an ohio steve recipe

10lb american 2 row
1lb crystal 40
1lb cara pils
12oz wheat malt

60 minute mash at 152

I have a 10Gal Igloo cooler converted to a mash tun with a boil screen.

I have consistently missed my OG and I am getting frustrated.

I will step you through my process, Please critique and let me know where I can improve.

I always rinse my mash tun to make sure it is relatively clean. Then I dump some boiling water in there to heat it up a little bit.

I heat my strike water, in the case of the last recipe I heat 4.25 gallons to 162F.

I dump the water that was in the mash tun and add the strike water. I use an instant thermometer to read the temp. It reads 160ish. I dump my room temp grains in and give it a good stir to make sure there are no clumps.
( My first thought is maybe I need to stir more vigorously, since I only stir to make sure nothing is sticking together)
I take the temp again and I am reading between 151 and 152F. I put the lid on the cooler and start the timer for 60min. About every 15 min, I come back give it a quick stir and take temp. I am within 1 degree for the entire hour.
At the end of 60min I vorlauf about a gallon or two until it runs clear. After I see no more grain, I collect the first runnings.
My 4.75 gallons of sparge water is now at 170F and I batch sparge adding the 170 degree water to my mash tun. I give it another quick stir and let it sit about 10 minutes and vorlauf one more time. Once clear I collect what I need for my pre boil volume about 6 gallons.
I boil for 60 minutes adding my hops as per recipe. I chill using a wort chiller. Once at about 65F I take my gravity reading and I am at 1.040!?!?!
I expected 1.065-1.070!

I know this is a long post, but I really would like some help with this. I am a bit of a perfectionist and I don't want to just add more base grain to compensate. I really would like to know what I am doing wrong.

Thanks in advance to all your help!

How does your crush look?

I have had this issue with the crush from my LHBS and from Midwest supply. I am no expert on grain but it looked ok.... again I am no expert. I am planning on doing another cheapish beer to try and troubleshoot and I am going to ask my LHBS to double crush the grain.

What is a boil screen? Do you mean a bazooka style mesh tube?

Are you crushing your own grains? If not, are you always getting them from the same source? If so, I would consider sourcing crushed grain from another vendor to see if that has any effect.

You beat me to it with your answer.

If you're stirring the mash every fifteen minutes, I can't imagine it's not getting incorporated.

Yeah I am using the bazooka tube screen thing and I did try and source from LHBS and from Mid West supply with the same result.

Obvious item, but needs to be asked, have you calibrated your hydrometer/refractometer?

ok.... not to sound retarded but, do you mean by just checking if it read 1.000 in water?

jaylakejr said:

ok.... not to sound retarded but, do you mean by just checking if it read 1.000 in water?

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Yes, 1.000 in 60 degree water, or whatever the sheet that comes with it says. If your water is relatively soft you can just do it in tap water and be close enough. Otherwise, use distilled water.

It's probably fine, but they can go off. 15 points is a lot though.

I'll double check at home and get back to you.

I would also calibrate you temp readers. The crush might be your real issue. I would also look into doing a starch conversion test next time and make sure it looks converted that way. But realistically the only reason why it wouldn't be converted would be due to a temp issue.

One question, during my sparge, should my water temp be 170? or should it be higher to compensate for the temperature loss once added?

tv187u said:

I would also calibrate you temp readers. The crush might be your real issue. I would also look into doing a starch conversion test next time and make sure it looks converted that way. But realistically the only reason why it wouldn't be converted would be due to a temp issue.

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I actually thought temperature was the problem too, so on a previous beer what I did was used two thermometers to double check the accuracy. One was an instant read and the other was a regular old dial thermometer and they were within 1 degree of each other.

jaylakejr said:

One question, during my sparge, should my water temp be 170? or should it be higher to compensate for the temperature loss once added?

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I don't batch sparge. I fly sparge, but I think your sparge water can be hotter as long as it doesn't bring the final temperature of the mash back up above the 170 degree mark. My sparge water is often pumped up to my HLT at around 180. By the time I get some heat loss from the HLT and that 180 water works its way through my mash, I don't have any concern of going over that mythical, and probably overly cautious, 170 mark.

I wonder if my sparge water temp is too low... I think Saturday I will be brewing again and I want to get all my ducks in a row to try and up my efficiency. I am having my LHBS double mill my grains.

Here's how to isolate it. Before you sparge, take an OG reading from the mash tun. Compare it to this chart: First Wort Gravity. You should be in the mid 90% for your conversion. If you are, then you know it's a lautering problem, if you are not, then it's temperature or crush.

I will definitely agree with questioning the crush you are getting. I was crushing at a LHBS and I was sure the crush was the issue. I even tried double crushing and it didn't help all that much. I found a new store and their mill was crushing much finer. Now I run consistantly 70-75%. It's a good chunk of cash, but I would consider getting my own mill if you can't get your LHBS to tighten their mill up for you. Heck, then you could buy some bulk grain and slowly work the cost of your mill back.

Could be a combination of a few little things. I wouldn't think a slighlty lower sparge water temp would make fifteen points of difference on its own. I could be wrong though, I've never actually tested it or batch sparged for that matter. Maybe a finer crush and slightly higher sparge temp will be all it takes to get you in the mid 60% range.

helibrewer said:

Here's how to isolate it. Before you sparge, take an OG reading from the mash tun. Compare it to this chart: First Wort Gravity. You should be in the mid 90% for your conversion. If you are, then you know it's a lautering problem, if you are not, then it's temperature or crush.

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This is a good suggestion I think.

I double batch sparge, and I noticed an improvement in efficiency when I began heating the first round of sparge water to 190 and the second round to 170. Because you're not doing a mashout step, you can use much hotter water in the first sparge than is normally recommended. It'll heat up the grain bed closer to 170.

I agree with the other suggestions to check your crush and thermometer as well.

I think evaluating your crush would be a good simple start. No use going though a long process of trial and error on other things, when just taking a look at the crush could be done in about 10 seconds. So, I think it's the best place to start.

I had the same issue you did. I did some searching on here and determined the likely culprit was my crush, as I had a good number of fully intact grains.

Here is a good resource:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Evaluating_the_Crush

take a look at that and see how your crush compares. Unless your temps are way off, I have a hard time believing that your efficiency would be that far off.

I'm not saying the other ideas are bad ones, not at all, I just think that without a good crush, none of the ideas anyone has given you here, will matter at all. If the crush is good, then take the other steps.

Awesome, I will try this and get back to you. Thanks a lot guys~!

jaylakejr said:

My 4.75 gallons of sparge water is now at 170F and I batch sparge adding the 170 degree water to my mash tun. I give it another quick stir and let it sit about 10 minutes and vorlauf one more time.

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I think that is one reason for low efficiency.

Upping the sparge water temp to 185 - 190 could help a little bit, but just giving the sparge water a quick stir is totally inadequate. You need to stir very thoroughly as with batch sparging, it is the stirring that extracts the sugars from the grain. I'll bet that that one change will increase your efficiency substantially.

-a.

Quick question.. are you using too much water? I quickly plugged in the amount of water into BeerSmith and it says for my setup and it says about 4 gallons strike and 3.8 gallons batch sparge.

That gives me 6.2 preboil volume which for my setup gets me to a 5 gallon batch on a 60 min boil

Disclaimer.. i'm brand new to AG and only have a few batches under my belt.

ajf said:

I think that is one reason for low efficiency.

Upping the sparge water temp to 185 - 190 could help a little bit, but just giving the sparge water a quick stir is totally inadequate. You need to stir very thoroughly as with batch sparging, it is the stirring that extracts the sugars from the grain. I'll bet that that one change will increase your efficiency substantially.

-a.

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I might be making this same mistake although my efficiencies are in the mid-low 70s.

ilikeguns said:

Quick question.. are you using too much water? I quickly plugged in the amount of water into BeerSmith and it says for my setup and it says about 4 gallons strike and 3.8 gallons batch sparge.

That gives me 6.2 preboil volume which for my setup gets me to a 5 gallon batch on a 60 min boil

Disclaimer.. i'm brand new to AG and only have a few batches under my belt.




I might be making this same mistake although my efficiencies are in the mid-low 70s.

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Not really sure, I use a mash calculator.

jaylakejr said:

Not really sure, I use a mash calculator.

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I kinda get the feeling that it's just a matter of too much water. How much wort do you have preboil?

If he is using a mash calculator it most likely isn't the amount of water. The calculator will usually tell you what your gravity will be throughout the process. Beersmith will tell me how much water I need based on my set up and how much grain I am using. It will then tell me what my preboil and original gravity should be based on that info.

I think crush is a big part of it. I have been having the same issue. I do everything to the T but my OG is always lower than it should be. I just bought a mill that should be here tomorrow so we will see how that goes.

h22lude said:

If he is using a mash calculator it most likely isn't the amount of water. The calculator will usually tell you what your gravity will be throughout the process. Beersmith will tell me how much water I need based on my set up and how much grain I am using. It will then tell me what my preboil and original gravity should be based on that info.

I think crush is a big part of it. I have been having the same issue. I do everything to the T but my OG is always lower than it should be. I just bought a mill that should be here tomorrow so we will see how that goes.

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Have you considered that your issue may be too much water?:cross:

I'm suspect of his mash calculator because I ran his recipe through BeerSmith and got way different strike and sparge volumes. I'm not saying that crush isn't a contributing factor, but too much water = low OG.

ajf said:

I think that is one reason for low efficiency.

Upping the sparge water temp to 185 - 190 could help a little bit, but just giving the sparge water a quick stir is totally inadequate. You need to stir very thoroughly as with batch sparging, it is the stirring that extracts the sugars from the grain. I'll bet that that one change will increase your efficiency substantially.

-a.

Click to expand...

"A little bit" indeed. Only a very very small efficiency benefit to mashing-out according to this experiment by Kai:
http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2009/05/12/cold-water-sparging/

It sounds like it's a combo of too much water and not-so-great eff.

According to the OP's post he's using 9 gallons total of water and only collecting 6 gallons preboil. I'd expect to collect more like 7.25-7.5 gallons from that. Sounds like he's leaving around 20% of his wort in the tun (though probably <20% of his sugars since the wort after batch sparging wouldn't be as concentrated as first runnings but still, prob more than 10% of his sugars).

That would still give him pretty poor eff, mid 50's-ish.
I'd agree to check your crush and temperature but also check your mash ph and calcium content of your water-those can make a huge difference, too.

Early in my brewing the two things I did that helped my eff the most were changing crush (about 10% eff improvement) and adding calcium to the mash in the form of CaCl and/or CaSO4 (about 7% improvement-our water here is very soft).

ilikeguns said:

Have you considered that your issue may be too much water?:cross:

I'm suspect of his mash calculator because I ran his recipe through BeerSmith and got way different strike and sparge volumes. I'm not saying that crush isn't a contributing factor, but too much water = low OG.

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I definitely agree with you. If you use too much water than your preboil and OG will be low. And if you use too little water your preboil and OG will be higher.

What I was trying to say was if a brewing software was used, I highly doubt the low efficiency was because of too much water. The brewing software will calculate how much water based on grain and equipment (boil off and tun dead space).

As long as the recipe OG and brewing software OG match then the user should get the estimated preboil. Now if the user entered something in wrong and the brewing software OG was lower than the recipe OG, that would cause a problem.

Ok guys this all makes sense. Maybe my mash calculator is not configured correctly. I am using Brew 365 Mash calculator. What I put for my last batch is the following.

Batch Size: 5 Gallons
Grain Bill: 12.75 Lbs
Boil Time: 1 hr
Trub Loss (Gal): .5
Equipment Loss (Gal): 1
Mash Thickness (qts/lb.) 1.33
Grain Temperature: 70F
Target Mash Temperature: 152

Constants:
Work Shrinkage: 4%
Grain Absorption: 0.13 Gallons/Pounds
Boiloff Rate: 10% per hour


At those values I get a Mash at 4.24 Gallons 164.33F
and Sparge 4.78 Gallons
Total water needed 9.02 Gallons

Pre Boil Wort Produced 6.37 Gallons


Let me know if I should use a different calculator of if I am putting the wrong information in.

Thanks guys.

Let's see what your pre-boil is on your next brew. None of the numbers seem that out of line, but it could be a matter of tightening up those numbers. Did you measure your equipment loss or are you using estimates?

I am using estimates

thats good, fill up your mash tun with water and let it drain in the same way you would with a mash.. then measure the water that is left. My 10 gallon igloo holds on to about a half gallon.

Ok will do, thanks for the pointer.

GotPushrods said:

"A little bit" indeed. Only a very very small efficiency benefit to mashing-out according to this experiment by Kai:
http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2009/05/12/cold-water-sparging/

Click to expand...

Thanks for that link. My efficiency improved when I went hotter, but there could certainly have been other variables at play. My notes aren't that good. But Kai could tell me the earth is flat, and I would be inclined to believe him...

+1 to ilikeguns's suggestion of measuring your equipment loss. 1 gal seems a bit high.

OP, are you measuring the volume of wort going into the fermenter? If it truly is a problem of too much water, then you should end up with correspondingly more than 5 gallons.

I have a relatively small brew pot and when I collect the wort after the sparge, I cut off what I collect at 6.5 gallons. I know I could get more of whats left in there, so there is definitely a problem with how much water I am using.

jaylakejr said:

Ok guys this all makes sense. Maybe my mash calculator is not configured correctly. I am using Brew 365 Mash calculator. What I put for my last batch is the following.

Batch Size: 5 Gallons
Grain Bill: 12.75 Lbs
Boil Time: 1 hr
Trub Loss (Gal): .5
Equipment Loss (Gal): 1
Mash Thickness (qts/lb.) 1.33
Grain Temperature: 70F
Target Mash Temperature: 152

Constants:
Work Shrinkage: 4%
Grain Absorption: 0.13 Gallons/Pounds
Boiloff Rate: 10% per hour


At those values I get a Mash at 4.24 Gallons 164.33F
and Sparge 4.78 Gallons
Total water needed 9.02 Gallons

Pre Boil Wort Produced 6.37 Gallons


Let me know if I should use a different calculator of if I am putting the wrong information in.

Thanks guys.

Click to expand...

First of all, I'm not sure how your calculator uses the term "batch size", but to me, that's a 5.5 gallon batch, not 5 gallon.

Pre-boil of 6.37 - 10% over 60 minutes = 5.733 gallons - 4% cooling shrinkage = 5.5 gallons right on the nose.

Yes there will be trub loss left in the kettle, but your gravity and recipe should be calculated on what you have after the boil. That is the volume the sugars will be dissolved into. You might only get 5 gallons of it, but there is sugar left in the trub in the kettle.

I don't know you're starting gravity on that batch, but you have 12.75*36 = 459 points available. In 5.5 gallons:

1.083 = 100%
1.075 = 90%
1.067 = 80%
1.063 = 75%
1.058 = 70%
1.054 = 65%
1.050 = 60%

If you're developing this as a 5 gallons recipe, it's not surprising that it will come up short.

Also, your sparge does seem a little large.

I get the same mash number: 1.33 qts * 12.75 lbs = 4.24 gallons.

0.11 gal/lb grain absorption, and say .25 gallons mash-tun loss. First runnings = 2.59 gallons.

The quarter-gallon loss is probably more reasonable, since a LOT of the dead-space is taken up by grain... and that absorption is already taken into account. It might be even less.

To get 6.37 pre-boil, you'll sparge with 3.78 gallons. Any more and you'll have to stop your second runnings with wort left in the mash.