High gravity beers and brewhouse efficiency

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jgourd

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I will brew a barleywine shortly (OG=1.105 SG). My brewhouse efficiency is 73%. Should I assume the same when brewing this high or do most people lower the efficiency a bit?
 
I've only been able to hit around 63% for my two high gravity brews. RIS O.G.= 1.091(supposed to be 1.100) and Imperial Pumpkin O.G.=1.085 (supposed to be 1.095). Every systems differnet though. Oh yeah I batch sparge.
 
It depends on how long you want to boil, what your grain bill is and how you sparge. Getting to 1.105 without a loooong boil is gonna really drive down your efficiency.
 
For a beer in the 1.100 range I really prefer to do a partigyle. It just goes against my grain to leave all that sugar in the mash tun. That big I would do a 5 gallon beer ~1.100 & a 10 gallon beer ~1.040. Cheers!!!
 
I generally get 70-75% eff on regular strength batches. When I brew batches of 14 lbs or more, that drops by 5%. When I brew 20 lb batches, it drops by 10%. There just isn't enough water in a 5 gallon batch (even with a 2 hour boil) to get all the sugars out of 20 lbs.
 
OK so let me specify a bit more. I batch sparge (60 qt tun). I generally boil for 90 mins. I do full boils in my 15.5 gal keggle. I usually make 5.5 gal batches (although sometimes double for 11). For this I'd like to make a 5.5 gal first runnings 1.105 barleywine and a 5.5 gal second runnings weaker beer like an IPA or APA. So I plan on doing a parti-gyle. I thought about estimating 65% efficiency for the grain bill and then appropriately mixing first and second runnings if I get better efficiency.

A quick note about efficiency. My preboil (extraction) efficiency is typically about 85%. What most people call efficiency (after the boil and into the fermenter) for me is 73%.

Last weekend I brewed an 11 gal nut brown ale (23 lbs grain). I estimated 73% efficiency. I mashed with 7.75 gals strike water, mashed-out with 4 gals, collected, and sparged with 6.25 gals. I hit my efficiency (well, 75% actually). I hit 1.058 SG (1.057 SG estimated). So I don't have problems extracting the sugars out of 20+ lbs grain with a 90 min boil. But that's just my system.
 
jgourd said:
Last weekend I brewed an 11 gal nut brown ale (23 lbs grain). I estimated 73% efficiency. I mashed with 7.75 gals strike water, mashed-out with 4 gals, collected, and sparged with 6.25 gals. I hit my efficiency (well, 75% actually). I hit 1.058 SG (1.057 SG estimated). So I don't have problems extracting the sugars out of 20+ lbs grain with a 90 min boil. But that's just my system.
Click to expand...

This is really useful information. It says that if you were using ~23lbs of grain for this barleywine & APA, you'd get a total of 73% efficiency into the fermenters since when using water to get 11 gal of beer w/ 23 lbs of grain this is what you got before. My guess is that most of this would go into the barleywine, probably 53% efficiency, and the other 20% or so would go into the APA. But this says your total (with that much grain) would be 73%. If you add more grain with roughly the same amount of water, it will only go down. I hope that makes sense.

The other thing you should do is keep a few lbs of DME around so you can adjust, just in case you come in low.
 
Not sure if it'll help you, but I recently did my first big beer. First, my average for smaller beers is around 82% brewhouse efficiency as long as the crush is good. So the big beer was a barley wine and I got 73% pre-boil extract efficiency, 63% brewhouse efficiency (into fermenter). I was shooting for OG 1.100 but got 1.087. Still haven't figured out exactly why it was so low... I'll definitely do a partigyle next time I go that big just to make sure I have options (like mixing the two sets of runnings a bit to adjust when I'm done sparging as you mentioned).
 
I think for this first parti-gyle that I'll estimate 63% efficiency. Also, I'll estimate that 60% of the extract will go into the first runnings and 40% into the second runnings for a 50/50 split on the collections. I'll make my calculations with that. Does anyone know if the calculations for parti-gyle assume typical (postboil) gravity or preboil?
 
I'm not sure how much of the extract will go into the big beer vs. the small beer, but here goes... Here's my thought process (with some assumptions):

vol into fermenter = 5.5 gal
0.5 gal lost to kettle trub
Postboil volume = 6 gal
1.5 gal/hr lost during the boil
Boil time 1 hr
Preboil volume 7.5 gal

First beer:
So, for an OG of 1.105, that's 105 GU/gal (postboil)
105 GU/gal x 6 gal = 630 total GU for the bigger beer
630 GU divided by 7.5 gal (preboil) = 84 GU/gal.
Your preboil gravity for the big beer needs to be 1.084 and volume 7.5 gallons.

Second beer:
(Not sure what the OG of the second beer will be, but this should be close to your 40% of the extract going into the smaller beer:)
So, for an OG of 1.045, that's 45 GU/gal (postboil)
45 GU/gal x 6 gal = 270 total GU for the smaller beer
270 GU divided by 7.5 gal (preboil) = 36 GU/gal.
Your preboil gravity for the small beer needs to be 1.036 and volume 7.5 gallons.

The total GU then that you'll need out of the grain for both beers = 630 GU + 270 GU = 900 GU

lbs of grain at 100% efficiency = 900 GU divided by average of 36 GU/lb of grain = 25 lbs of grain.

lbs of grain at 63% efficiency = 25 lbs divided by 0.63 = 39 lbs of grain

Strike water needed = 39 lbs of grain x 1 qt/lb of grain = 39 qts = 9.75 gallons


Does that sound about right? It's probably sorta close, then you can mix the runnings a little if you overshoot the 63% efficiency target.
 
So to keep going with that thought process:

Grain absorption = 39 lbs x .1 gal/lb = 3.9 gal
0.5 gal lost to dead space in MLT
First runnings from MLT = 9.75 (assuming 1 qt/lb) - 0.5 - 3.9 gal = 5.35 gal
That's 2.15 gallons less than you'll need pre-boil, so you could strike with that additional, so instead of 9.75 strike with 11.90 gallons (MLT big enough for that?). Your mash ratio would then be 1.22 qts/lb of grain.

So doing that, all of the first runnings would be 7.5 gallons, and you'd sparge with another 7.5 gallons to get your second beer volume.
 
That'll be pushing the limits on my mash tun. We'll see. My first runnings on a recent beer with 24 lbs grain, 7.75 gals strike water and 4.25 gals mashout water (for 8.5 gals collected in the first runnings) was 1.080 (87% extract efficiency). I sparged with 5.75 gals and collected second runnings of 1.040. Of course I mixed these for an 11 gal batch for that beer.

For my system, I need a preboil volume of 8.25 gals to end up with 5.5 gals in the fermenter and to account for trub loss and evaporation during the 90 min boil. So I think I'll just keep with 73% efficiency and slightly increase the grain bill to get 1.084 preboil in the first runnings. I'll take whatever I can get with the second runnings (larger this time for an 8.25 gal collection). We'll see. It will be an exciting day!
 
You might want to skip the mashout to maximize the gravity of your first runnings. And if you're going to have 7.75 (EDIT 8.25) gallons preboil the gravity should be 1.081 (EDIT 1.076) instead of 1.084, (assuming you also end up with 6 gallons postboil, for an OG of 1.105).

EDIT: That should be 8.25 gallons preboil, at 1.076.
 
Frodo said:
I'm not sure how much of the extract will go into the big beer vs. the small beer, but here goes... Here's my thought process (with some assumptions):

vol into fermenter = 5.5 gal
0.5 gal lost to kettle trub
Postboil volume = 6 gal
1.5 gal/hr lost during the boil
Boil time 1 hr
Preboil volume 7.5 gal

First beer:
So, for an OG of 1.105, that's 105 GU/gal (postboil)
105 GU/gal x 6 gal = 630 total GU for the bigger beer
630 GU divided by 7.5 gal (preboil) = 84 GU/gal.
Your preboil gravity for the big beer needs to be 1.084 and volume 7.5 gallons.

Second beer:
(Not sure what the OG of the second beer will be, but this should be close to your 40% of the extract going into the smaller beer:)
So, for an OG of 1.045, that's 45 GU/gal (postboil)
45 GU/gal x 6 gal = 270 total GU for the smaller beer
270 GU divided by 7.5 gal (preboil) = 36 GU/gal.
Your preboil gravity for the small beer needs to be 1.036 and volume 7.5 gallons.

The total GU then that you'll need out of the grain for both beers = 630 GU + 270 GU = 900 GU

lbs of grain at 100% efficiency = 900 GU divided by average of 36 GU/lb of grain = 25 lbs of grain.

lbs of grain at 63% efficiency = 25 lbs divided by 0.63 = 39 lbs of grain

Strike water needed = 39 lbs of grain x 1 qt/lb of grain = 39 qts = 9.75 gallons


Does that sound about right? It's probably sorta close, then you can mix the runnings a little if you overshoot the 63% efficiency target.
Click to expand...

This whole thing is predicated on getting 63% efficiency total across both beers. However, across both beers efficiency is likely to be substantially higher. Probably close to the 73% achieved for the previous 11 gallon batch. You will definitely not need 39 lbs of grain for these two beers. That is just way overkill.
 
mkling said:
This whole thing is predicated on getting 63% efficiency total across both beers. However, across both beers efficiency is likely to be substantially higher. Probably close to the 73% achieved for the previous 11 gallon batch. You will definitely not need 39 lbs of grain for these two beers. That is just way overkill.
Click to expand...

39 lbs is a lot of grain and it sounds crazy to me too. I've never done a partigyle but was trying to help figure it out. Do you see any flaw in the calculations that you can point out?


BTW (assuming the calculations are correct), if you want to figure for a different efficiency, say 73%, you'd divide the 25 lbs by 0.73 = 34 lbs. The other way to reduce the amount of grain is reduce the gravity of the second beer; if you do that you'd have to recalculate the total GU needed for the second beer and proceed from there.

And you could still mix the runnings some if you overshot your efficiency.


EDIT: Just did a quick recalc for a second beer of 1.035 and you'd need a total of 32 lbs of grain (with 73% efficiency).
 
Frodo said:
39 lbs is a lot of grain and it sounds crazy to me too. I've never done a partigyle but was trying to help figure it out. Do you see any flaw in the calculations that you can point out?

BTW (assuming the calculations are correct), if you want to figure for a different efficiency, say 73%, you'd divide the 25 lbs by 0.73 = 34 lbs. The other way to reduce the amount of grain is reduce the gravity of the second beer; if you do that you'd have to recalculate the total GU needed for the second beer and proceed from there.

And you could still mix the runnings some if you overshot your efficiency.

EDIT: Just did a quick recalc for a second beer of 1.035 and you'd need a total of 32 lbs of grain (with 73% efficiency).
Click to expand...

The 34 lbs is about what I would have calculated. The total amount of sugar extracted across both batches ought to be around the 73% brewhouse efficiency that the OP said he usually gets. I think the biggest thing is that it will be hard to get the BW high enough. At some point the mash liquid just doesn't like to absorb any more sugar. I want to say that the max is somewhere between 1.070 & 1.080, so I think it'll be very hard to get a preboil gravity higher than these. This means if the OP is really committed to the 1.105 OG, he may want to count on using some sugar adjuncts or DME.

Every time I've brewed a beer this big, I've always used either a sugar adjunct or DME. I don't think the OP will overshoot the gravity of the BW.
 
The overall efficiency for a partigyle will definitely be higher than your typical 5 gallon batch unless the problem is with conversion.
I've gotten 5 gallons of 1.118 (first runnings only with 1pound table sugar added) and 5 gallons of 1.055 out of 28 pounds of maris.
 
Bobby_M said:
The overall efficiency for a partigyle will definitely be higher than your typical 5 gallon batch unless the problem is with conversion.
I've gotten 5 gallons of 1.118 (first runnings only with 1pound table sugar added) and 5 gallons of 1.055 out of 28 pounds of maris.
Click to expand...

This sounds much closer to what I would expect and what I have experienced. My most recent barleywine was 1.096 with bitter that was 1.040 and that was with 22 lbs of grain and 1.25 lb of sugar in the barleywine.
 
Just wanted to throw more numbers at this thread (as if the OP's head isn't spinning already). I recently did my first Barley wine/ bitter parti gyle and here's my numbers:

23.5lbs grain in a gravity fed keggle system. 1.5qt/pd strike (8.75 gal.). 9.5 gal sparge (fly). collected 7 gal preboil and put 5.25 gallons in fermentor @ 1.092. Bitter...collected remaining runnings, boiled to 5.25 in fermentor @ 1.042.

I assumed 2/3rds sugars from first wort collected (thanks to a bunch of help from HBT)...so with my avg efficiency of 77%, I estimated 52% for first runnings and 25% for second. Worked really well.....the barley wine is still in secondary...but the bitter is quite nice. Dave
 

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