Biab

Been brewin for a while now and I do biab all grain on my stove. What can I do to increase mash efficiency. Also, is there anything I can do to determine sparge quantity? Seems my batches always fluctuate and I use the same ratio for all of my beers

To increase efficiency, make sure you get a fine crush on your grain, ask the LHBS to run it through twice if that is where you get it. I've never done it on the stove and sparged before, but do you do a mash out step? Raise the temp at the end of the mash to about 170F and hold it there for about 10 min. Then rinse with 170F water and squeeze the crap out of your bag. Since I'm not a stove top guy, not very keen on how to calculate your sparge water.

I have been doing mash out as of late. After reading around it looks like i have a couple of options. 1. Get a better crush on the grains (run them through the mill 2x) 2. skip sparging all together and mash with my pre-boil volume

Other suggestions are welcome as well

Mash longer? I usually mash 70 to 75 min stirring every 20 min or so. I mill twice and mash at full volume.

Dunk the bag, squeeze the bag, do a mash out, definitely get a really fine crush, there should be some powder in your grain bag.

You can also try dunk sparging in a separate pot.

Do you think you're maintaining your temperatures?

If you go from sparging to mash with full volume you will see decreased efficiency, not increased.

How are you sparging?
Ideally you would have your grain out of the wort and suspended.
Then you would sparge slowly with clean water. You should be pretty much trickling the water onto the grain, over as much of the surface as possible.
If you've mashed out, it doesn't really matter if the sparge water's hot or not (from an efficiency standpoint).

This plus a finer crush on your grain are about all you can do to maximize efficiency short of fly sparging.

What effeciencies are you getting now? 75-80% seems to be pretty much the expectation for home brewers. Personally, just calculate my total sugar and figure out how much light DME i need to add to the boil to get my target OG, but of course I'm less of a perfectionist than a lot of people 'round here.

For sparging i have been using my desired final amount in a separate pot heated to about 170-175. I usually use the "tea-bag" method for about 10-15 minutes. I also open the bag and stir the grains.

Stir, stir, stir. Squeeze, Squeeze, Squeeze. I average 75-80% I stir a ton at the mash in. Then every 15 minutes after that. Don't worry about loosing temperature you can always turn on the heat.

Sqeeze into a colander with heat oven gloves to get out the real good stuff.