Efficiencies Question

I have done about 10 AG batches now and my efficiencies are all over the place... sort of, all of my pales, IPA's and even hefs have been in the 75-78% range and all my stouts, browns and porters have been from 82-87% any ideas why these two groupings of numbers? Are stouts easier than pales to high efficiencies?

I use bottles of water (the 5 gal ones from culligan) and have been adding some salts (gypsum, chalk, etc when appropriate by style), and just recently added some 5.2 stabilizer also, my numbers went up 1-2% from these tweaks but I still have these groups and large gap between pales and darks?

Thoughts?

Thanks

Have you kept track of your conversion and lauter eff. at all?

It would be easier to pick this apart if you knew what part of the process was contributing to the difference. Hard to tell when you use the end #, which is simply a compostite of the eff. of a couple processes.

Umm no I just do a calculation based on the max ppg to get my extract efficiencies, I dont even know how to get those other ones you are talking about

pirate252 said:

Umm no I just do a calculation based on the max ppg to get my extract efficiencies, I dont even know how to get those other ones you are talking about

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I personally would recommend getting the conversion and lauter eff. figured out, then you have a better idea of what you are doing IN the process, instead of what you are getting in the end.

ww.braukaiser.com

That is a good place to start.

Sounds like you might be having a pH issue in the mash being that your efficiencies are changing based on the color of your beer. Check out Palmer's charts. This is just one potential cause though with advice coming from a brewing newbie. Have you still had large repeatable differences (multiple batches) with efficiency after the use of 5.2?

Is it possible that your bottled water is spring water, and that by mineralizing your water you are hardening it more than expected (i.e. making it very alkaline)?

FlyGuy said:

Is it possible that your bottled water is spring water, and that by mineralizing your water you are hardening it more than expected (i.e. making it very alkaline)?

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This seem like the logical explanation to me. Most bottled water has salts and minerals in it. You would need to use distilled water or RO to have water that is free or almost free of impurities.
Try a batch or two with distilled water and salt additions and see what happens.

They 'claim' that it goes through an RO process and they add minerals back for taste, but as far as I can tell from their website the only thing they add is calcium... Not sure

Will look into those other eff calculators, thanks for the replys

shimbii said:

Sounds like you might be having a pH issue in the mash being that your efficiencies are changing based on the color of your beer. Check out Palmer's charts. This is just one potential cause though with advice coming from a brewing newbie. Have you still had large repeatable differences (multiple batches) with efficiency after the use of 5.2?

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I have only used 5.2 three times now, so no not really.... I guess this next time I will either start with distilled water and add salts or just leave the culligun water alone... or maybe cut the amounts that I add wayyy down, maybe just a sprinkling?