Brewing this weekend, need to improve my efficiency, got any suggestions?

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humann_brewing

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I will be brewing the Mack and Jacks african amber recipe from BYO this weekend and will be my 4th AG brew.


So far, my efficiency has slowly gone down since my first brew and not sure why at this point. I have gone from about 80% on my first brew with a 15LB grain bill, to about 70% on my second with a 11lb grain bill, to 62% with a 13.5lb grain bill, 92% 2 row. Here is what I am doing to help keep the number up.

  • I have a 10G rubbermaid cooler with a stainless sleel false bottom
  • I am batch sparging at this point
  • I hit my mash temps just right (I will check the thermometer for accuracy tonight though)
  • I use the PH 5.2 product
  • I use a 1.25Q to LB of grain when mashing
  • I raise the temp of the grain bed when sparging

What is different about the 1st batch was that the last 2 came from B3 and their grain mills, the first was from the LHBS and I can tell that the B3 crush is not as fine. This may contribute to a large portion of efficiency loss.

These are the only things I can think of where I am loosing efficiency along with the dead space in the mash/tun.

Any suggestions to help this weekend? The recipe is based on 65%, but only for 5 gallons too. I like to have a little over 5G to test with.
 
You sound like you've identified your problem, so I'd focus on improving the crush if you can. Maybe not for this brew, but for future ones... ask your store to crush finer or double crush for you.

As far as improving today's brew, you could mash longer to make sure it all gets converted (not sure how much this would help, if you stir well it should be converted in an hour easily even w/ bad crush). The easiest thing to do would be sparge a bit more. You'd have to boil off more but it would eek up efficiency.
 
I picked up about 6-7 points when I started using a simple bucket with holes in it to fly sparge instead of batch sparing.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-3WNUXtA64]YouTube - Fly Sparge Bucket[/ame]
 
I was thinking about trying to fly sparge, not sure if I will do so on this run.

I am hoping to get my own grain mill for Christmas, but we will see. That will take care of that problem.

At this point, I am just guessing that the starch has been converted into sugar. I have seen the iodine on chalk test on some videos, but what am I looking for with this test?

I have some of that iodine cleaner stuff that I think i could use, just need to get a stick of chalk from the store.
 
I was able to increase my efficiency by increasing my sparge water temperature. My first couple batches I used 175F water to sparge, which did the job but really didn't raise the temp of the wort coming out very much. I typically was hitting 68-72% efficiency using this temperature. After reading a few posts on here, I tried sparging with 185F water under the assumption that the less viscous your wort is and more sugar would get rinsed off the grains. I'm not sure if that's the correct explanation for what happened, but I've done 4-5 brews since then and have hit 74-77% on each one. Not a HUGE improvement, but every little bit helps and saves some cash on grain.
 
I was able to increase my efficiency by increasing my sparge water temperature. My first couple batches I used 175F water to sparge, which did the job but really didn't raise the temp of the wort coming out very much. I typically was hitting 68-72% efficiency using this temperature. After reading a few posts on here, I tried sparging with 185F water under the assumption that the less viscous your wort is and more sugar would get rinsed off the grains. I'm not sure if that's the correct explanation for what happened, but I've done 4-5 brews since then and have hit 74-77% on each one. Not a HUGE improvement, but every little bit helps and saves some cash on grain.

Yeah, that is one point I haven't been able to nail down. I get the sparge water up to about 180 and when I get it mixed in, I seem to hover around 160 in the mash/tun.

I will try the sparge water at 185-190 this time and check my thermometer for accuracy too.

Also on my last one a couple of nights ago. I sparged with a total of 5.5G, and collected 4.9G of it back. I Mashed with 17Q (4.25G) and collected 2.6G.
The thing is on my last sparge, I put too much water, I really only needed to put in another 1.5G, but did 2.5G and so I had 1G of sparge water still in the TUN after getting my boil amount.

Does this effect anything? I was curious and took a gravity reading of that last gallon that was thrown away and it was like 1.022.

Anyways, I think I need to handle the water amount better, meaning that if I got 2.6G off my first run and needed 7.5G to boil, I should split the remaining 4.9G in half and add a little extra for the grain soaking. Maybe like to 2.6G sparges or something.
 
I always have aimed for equal amounts for mashing in and sparging. Typically on a 5.5 gallon batch of beer with a target OG of 1.055 this would be 4.3g (both for mash in and for sparge). This would give me somewhere around 6.25g in the boil kettle. You CAN of course collect more runnings, which I've done on accident a couple times. This will definitely increase your overall efficiency, but will require you to boil for a longer period of time to hit your desired volume.

One time I tried doing a "double batch sparge" at the suggestion of some of the members here. Instead of doing 4.3 gallons for a single sparge, I split this up into two equal sparges of 2.2 gallons. Maybe it's just me, but it didn't seem to increase my efficiency any. I'm sure this is very un-scientific and I should probably give it a another few tries just to compare. However, I'm hovering right around the 75% mark and that works for me. My next big change to try and improve my effieincy is to crush my own grains, instead of relying on the LHBS crush. Not sure if it will make a difference, but many people on here have said that using the default setting on the Barley Crusher increased their efficiency from 75% -> 85%. My barley crusher will be here on Monday...so I'll be testing it out sometime over the christmas break.
 
I always have aimed for equal amounts for mashing in and sparging. Typically on a 5.5 gallon batch of beer with a target OG of 1.055 this would be 4.3g (both for mash in and for sparge). This would give me somewhere around 6.25g in the boil kettle. You CAN of course collect more runnings, which I've done on accident a couple times. This will definitely increase your overall efficiency, but will require you to boil for a longer period of time to hit your desired volume.

One time I tried doing a "double batch sparge" at the suggestion of some of the members here. Instead of doing 4.3 gallons for a single sparge, I split this up into two equal sparges of 2.2 gallons. Maybe it's just me, but it didn't seem to increase my efficiency any. I'm sure this is very un-scientific and I should probably give it a another few tries just to compare. However, I'm hovering right around the 75% mark and that works for me. My next big change to try and improve my effieincy is to crush my own grains, instead of relying on the LHBS crush. Not sure if it will make a difference, but many people on here have said that using the default setting on the Barley Crusher increased their efficiency from 75% -> 85%. My barley crusher will be here on Monday...so I'll be testing it out sometime over the christmas break.

Oh, I have been double batch sparging every time. I did read a article from a link in Flyguys posthttps://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/maximizing-efficiency-when-batch-sparging-77125/#post926310

and the gain from moving from 1 sparge to 2 is about 7-8%, but but 2 to 3 drops to like 2% and goes lower after that.
 
The dropping off is expected. Just do the double sparge; i.e., drain the original mash, add 1/2 of your sparge water, stir, drain, add the other half, repeat. You're actually draining 3 times. Just make sure your water is still 170-180, and you can be sure you're batch sparging effectively.

I'd invest in a mill after that as has been mentioned. Using the above method with a cooler/fb gets me 85% consistently.
 
Throw in an extra pound of grains, efficiency is overrated! :)

Seriously though, you dont need to improve efficiency, unless you truly cant afford another $1.50 or whatever for more base malt.
 
Throw in an extra pound of grains, efficiency is overrated! :)

Seriously though, you dont need to improve efficiency, unless you truly cant afford another $1.50 or whatever for more base malt.

This is a good easy solution, but I already have the grain for this weekends brew. Oh well maybe I will just drink more homebrew while I brew more, that is sure to improve my efficiency :drunk:
 
I am still trying to figure out the whole efficiency math and went through John Palmers math and I get 76% with the:

Gallons of Wort Collected (7.5G) x SG (Pre-Boil Gravity) 44 / Grain # ( 11.62) / 37

I just don't know why 37 is a constant.

I have a feeling I should have boiled more off. I may have close to 6G of a lower OG beer.
 
Well the brew this weekend turned out a lot better than the previous.

I brewed up the Mac and Jack's clone from BYO. I had a SG of 1.051 into the boiler with about 2Q more volume as I felt confident I was over the 65% efficiency that BYO recipes go off and wanted a little more than 5G to ferment with for testing.

The OG was 1.067 too, the recipe had 1.060 and I think I have just over 5G, maybe 5.2G. I plugged the numbers into beersmiths brewhouse efficiency calculator and it came up with 75%. I am happy with these results and feel I will improve more when I get my own crusher as these grains were not cracked very well.

The brew is happily bubbling away in a water bath with my Stone IPA clone
 
Did you do anything different than normal?

Well I calibrated my thermometer with the a lot of ice is a cup of water and found that is reads 1-2 degrees high. This was a high mash at 155, I don't know if that came into play or not.

I stirred like a mad man putting in the grain and several times during the mash.

The recipe asked for 16Q of water, but I had to raise the temp a little so I put another quart of hot water in to heat it up. I had a 8Q cooking pot so I could measure how much I gathered every time I sparged. I think I got 11Q on the first run and the Recipe call for 6.5G to boil with or 26Q. So I knew I needed 15Q more. So I sparged with 9 on my first sparge and brought the temp up to 162.

Sparged and got all 9Q back. I only needed 6Q more, but I put in 8 because I wanted more at the end. I made the 2nd sparge even more and was hovering right around that 170 mark, so I kept the lid off and stirred like crazy until it went down a couple of degrees. Sparged and got all 8Q back and was at 1.051 into the boiler with 7G. This was off of 10.75 lbs of Maris Otter and 2 lbs of specialty grain.

I also used the ph5.2 stuff again

Another mishap that happened was that I ran out of gas and I was trying to get up to a boil. A 10 minute delay as I ran to the corner gas station and refilled.

I think the biggest contributers to the improvement would probably be the stirring of the grains and raising the temp when batch sparging.
 
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