How od you calculate your brewing efficiency?

I finished up my second AG today. A nice black Porter with some extra MD and a bit of lactose.

But I digress.

How does one calculate this thing called "efficiency"? I'm curious.

Thanks...

I do it by plugging my recipe into BeerSmith and changing the efficiency assumption until it hits the OG I measured.

There's 2 types off efficiency.
Mash Efficiency and Brewery Efficiency. The Figure you'll see most and is your actual efficiency is the brewery one.
You need to know the amount of grain and the PPG. (Potential points per gallon) you adjust for your volume then work out your PPG compared to the actual possible in %

The reason I like to know Mash Efficiency is because with that you can work out where you need improve things to get the Brewery Efficiency up.

Guys, thanks so very much for explaining efficiency. I've done a search countless times and all I get are entries using the word "efficiency".

I'm real close to starting partial mashes along with extract, and I never read an explanation of how to measure and calculate.
'
Thanks again!

the_bird said:

I do it by plugging my recipe into BeerSmith and changing the efficiency assumption until it hits the OG I measured.

Click to expand...

Bird-meister, You can actually click the "Brewhouse Efficiency" button just to the left of the listed efficiency and enter your numbers. This will give you all the answers without having to plug and chug.

I thought I knew what I was talking about when it came to efficiency but now I'm a little confused. What is the difference between Mash Efficiency and Brewery Efficiency Orfy? I've been calculating mine but using the potential gravity and my actual gravity with some simple math. Usually hit 75% pretty close.

Well, once you know maximum possible gravity then the mash calculation is exactly the same calculation as brewery calculation but based on breboil rather than post boil

When it comes down to it it's the brewery efficiency that's important but the mash calc lets you know how your mashing ad sparging is performing.