Rye IPA Puzzling Numbers

Brewed up my 5th AG batch Saturday. Up till now I've been hitting 70-72% mash eff. Not so this time, my grain bill is below:
10# Am. 2 Row Rahr
1# Victory
1# Crystal 60
1# Flaked Rye
.5# Malted Rye
.25# Flaked Wheat

That's right I put 13.75 lbs of grain into a 5 gallon cooler, it's a Makita cooler and actually holds about 5.5 gallons with the lid on. I thought my mash was thick, but have run the #'s and I actually had a 1.4qt per pound ratio. I thought I had doughed in thick and let my mash rest an additional 20 mins beyond my standard 60 mins. My mash temp was 154. Using my 71% efficiency my OG for 5.5 gallons should have been about 1.066-1.067. My OG for 5.33 gallons turned out to be 1.060... So what might my problem be?

Schlante,
Phillip

I am only a few batches ahead of you, so take any advice with a grain of salt.

Efficiency problems can come from a number of factors including crush, temps, timing. Look at your process, and see if you changed anything.

If all else is equal, I might suspect that your deep grain bed (full cooler) may have had a negative impact for some reason. I remember reading something maybe in Palmers book about deep grain bed being less than ideal but I can not remember, and a couple quick searches of the book online have not turned it up.

The first time I used Rye in a mash, I had a very slow sparge, and actually had quite a bit of trouble. If you did not get all of your sparge water out of the tun, you might have missed your numbers for that reason.

My last 2 batches were 79% and 67% respectively. Not sure what I did on the last one, I usually get upper 70s of 80. The biggest difference on that batch was the 2 Row (I have always used Rahr, this batch was "2Row" no name from morebeer).

I would be interested in some discussion helping me be more consistent. Maybe after tomorrow we can pull some of the more experienced brewers out of the debate threads.

Oh bother... the debate threads... it's simple... Bob Barr!

Seriously though my runoff was just fine, it was just a little bit slower, but not much, maybe 15% slower. But I did have a deep grain bed, my water/wort was to about 1.25" from the top of cooler. I'm curious what my actual eff. was? Haven't looked at it yet. But this could be a useful discussion!

Schlante,
Phillip

Beersmith calculates your efficiency at 64.75%. You didn't say how much water you used for sparging, this could be another factor since you used almost 5 gallons for mashing. What was your preboil amount?

You goofed on the recipe. If you added 13.75lbs of grain and 4.5 gallons of water (1.31QTS water/LBS grain) it gives you a total mash volume of 5.6 gallons. If you are using a 5.5 gallon cooler you would have some mash on the floor.

King of Cascade said:

You goofed on the recipe. If you added 13.75lbs of grain and 4.5 gallons of water (1.31QTS water/LBS grain) it gives you a total mash volume of 5.6 gallons. If you are using a 5.5 gallon cooler you would have some mash on the floor.

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That's a fair point and gave me pause. But the cooler holds more than 5.5 gallons, it's 5.5 when closed. Also I put 4.5 gals of strike water in my pot. Evaporation would take care of a fair amount, maybe 10 percent which would put my dough in quantity right at 4 gals. This would all fit in my seemingly larger than normal (I know this as I've looked at the igloo coolers) mash tun. FWIW I've put 11 pounds of grain in dry and it comes up between the 2 and 3 gallon mark. Thanks for making me think about this. I took another look at my #'s and this wouldn't seem to be the problem.

I do think my problem is quite possibly in the sparge. My sparge temp was dead on 170. But I didn't sparge a full 2 qts per lb of grain which would have been close to 7 gallons of sparge water. My sparge was closer to 5 Gals. This could easily account for a reduction of approx. 5 percent.

I'd ask this. Examine my process. Here's how I Brew:
Mash in with 1.25 qts water per lb of grain at 173 degrees strike water into a conditioned cooler type mash tun.
Standard procedure is to mash for 60-70 mins.
Batch sparge with close to 2 qts water per lb. of grain at 170 degrees.
My sparge process is as follows. Once mash is complete, stir the mash and drain immediately. Fill tun with 1/2 of sparge water, or fill it back to original level. Stir, let rest 10 mins. and drain. Repeat.

Sound like a solid process?

I have done the "mini" fly sparge method with slowing my drain and ladeling water on to the top of the grain bed, but my eff. hasn't seen a real difference between the 2 methods.

Schlante,
Phillip

MN_Jay said:

Beersmith calculates your efficiency at 64.75%. You didn't say how much water you used for sparging, this could be another factor since you used almost 5 gallons for mashing. What was your preboil amount?

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I actually forgot to answer your questions. I sparged with just over 5 gallons. My dough in amount was just over 4 gallons when taking into acct. evaporation. I didn't measure my boil volume, but it wasn't more than 7.5 Gals. I think I left a bit of sparge in the tun as I was 1 in a hurry and 2 not wanting to extract tannins. I didn't Also I got 65% efficiency also, thanks. The more I think about this the more I'm coming to the conclusion that I had a sloppy sparge. But I would really like to be able to hit 70+% eff. without having to sparge 2 qts water per lb of grain... that's alot of wort to boil down!

Schlante,
Phillip