All Grain Efficency - How's it calculated ?

Can anyone give me an explanation of how Efficiency is calculated with respect to mashing all grain batches ?

I believe I understand that Efficency means how high the resulting original gravity is based on the amount of grain thats used.

The reason that I'm asking is the last few batches I did, with Pro Mash set for 75% efficency I'm ending up with hydrometer measurements about .010 higher than what Pro Mash tells me to expect. How is this possible ? Does it indicate that I am doing something wrong, and if so what could it be ?

Nope, it just means you're beating the 75% efficiency that was assumed in the software. All you need to do is keep increasing that figure until the predicted matches your actual OG. That's what your efficiency was.

If a given grain has a potetial gravity per gallon (PPG) of 1.040 and you get an OGPG (original gravity per gallon) of 1.030, you've just acheived 75% efficiency. That's figured out by doing 30/40=x/100 or 300/40 = 75.

No, that means your efficiency is better than the 75% you put into Beersmith! Here's the actual math involved: http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-5.html

I'm not a math whiz, so I just use Beersmith!

Where in Beersmith do i find the efficianecy tool.

Do i just adjust the section that says brewhouse efficiency?

Deebee said:

Where in Beersmith do i find the efficianecy tool.

Do i just adjust the section that says brewhouse efficiency?

Click to expand...

Yep. You can just change the brewhouse efficiency number until the OG estimate matches what you actually ended up with, then that is your efficiency

I originally had Beersmith set to 75%. That seemed to be some happy standard, or at least very common with recipes I seen listed. I purposely brewed the same batch several times in a row to see where my equipment was ringing in at. I found myself roughly hitting 78% every time, with this recipe that I repeated and others. So, now, when I write up recipes, I change my Brewhouse Efficiency to 78%. I'll play with that number to see what would happen if I screwed up, or extracted the ever living daylights out of my grain. That actually happened one of my recent batches. My 1.067@78% IPA wound up coming in at 1.073. I change the B/E# to 85% and it matches up the OG Estimate to the actual OG. You can click the BE buton and play with the numbers to see what your efficiency would be based on different OG scenarios.

Thinking about this now, I wonder why BS has the BE field there like that. They should probably have another field called "Actual BE".

<edit>They actually do, but it's under that BE button. I guess it would be a little more clear to me if they listed it as Estimated BE and Actual BE and kept them on the same screen, so you had an idea at first glance.

Yeah, I was surprised to hit over the default 75% on my first AG brew, actually came out at 80.7%, now my beer will have a higher ABV%...Dammit!

Check out braukaiser.com for a straightforward analysis.

Boerderij_Kabouter said:

Check out braukaiser.com for a straightforward analysis.

Click to expand...

Have to strongly recommend this. Kaiser does a very thorough job explaining this in great detail. Everything you want to know is there.