How is 70% efficiency for my 3rd AG brew?

I had a major failure of my thermometer during the beginning of the batch sparge. It was reading 15 degrees too low. I didn't realize the error until I had already batched about 1 gallon of sparge water.

I just happened to double check with a digital thermometer and it read much lower than my primery thermometer. I stopped the sparging, triple and quadruple checked with 2 other thermometers and it turns out my primary HLT thermometer is jacked. I had to pause for several minutes to bring it back up to temp. Other than that, the process went according to plan.

Do you think 70% is decent, considering what happened and my fairly rudimentary equipment? My MLT is one of those 40 qt Rubbermaid deals with the mesh supply hose and I sparged about 1 gallon per 10 minutes.

70% is good, if you arente milling your own grain, that is probably as good as it will get.

Ditto. LHBS crush = 70ish% efficiency...or worse. Do the math on the potential savings, and buy yourself a barley crusher regardless of the potential payback.:rockin:

Cool, I am using AHS milled. Why does crushing my own grain increase efficiency?

You can adjust the rollers and crush the grain finer then the LHBS usually does. Beware of a stuck sparge though if you crush too fine.

GT

Wables said:

Ditto. LHBS crush = 70ish% efficiency...or worse. Do the math on the potential savings, and buy yourself a barley crusher regardless of the potential payback.:rockin:

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My LHBS has a barley crusher for us to use and it works great. It works so good that I probably won't buy one. I'll just use theirs!