Adjusting recipes with Barley Crusher

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Bearcat Brewmeister

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Other than proportionately reducing grains due to better efficiency with the BC compared to a store crush, is anyone making any other adjustments to their recipes? I ask because the last two beers I made were darker beers (Porter and Brown ale). Both were a bit more astringent than I expected (although on the brown, I had sparge issues as well). I am thinking that since the crush is better, I am exposing more husk to the sparge, which isn't an issue with lighter grains, but possibly is with darker ones. Is anyone dialing back their proportion of darker grains a bit in their recipes once they switch to using their own grain mill?
 
If you get more efficiency then the beer will have more alcohol and flavor. If you want to cut this back just add boiled/cooled water in the proper quantity. Use your brewing program to learn how much to add to get to the SG you intended. Otherwise enjoy the stronger beer. Going over 180F when sparging is OK if it is only for a short period of time and then mixed in. I have used 180 F water many times without any astringency problem. You can poke a stem type thermometer in the mash to learn what temperatures are at lower levels while sparging. This helps you decide weather to raise or lower the temperature of the sparge water. You may be tasting the darker grains and assume that it is astringency but then it could very well also be astringency. I find that darker grains tend to mellow over time and mimic astringency if it has been a short time so far, and that with time it will be better. Usually 6 to 8 weeks of aging will help a lot. My mill is set to .035 inch and that is a very fine crush and I do not ever get any astringency with light or dark beer (schwarzbier). I hope this helps you. :)
 
You may have missed the point of my post - possibly I worded it poorly. I already know I get better efficiency and I have taken that into account and took my recipes down in proportion by the increase in my efficiency. My question is should I take down the darker grains a bit more than proportional because of the potential for increased husk surface area compared to what I had before? The key here is recipes tried before and after. If you had a poor crush in the past, it is possible that you would formulate recipes with higher proportion of dark grain in them for them to taste right compared to someone with a better crush. My theory is that with a good crush, that extra proportion of darker grain means more dark husks exposed and possibly more tannins, not just more extract efficiency.

Just looking for someone who has a tried and true recipe for a dark beer that was made several times with a poor crush (say 70% efficiency) and then you switched to a BC and got better efficiency (say 80% +). Did you have to do anything other than taking all of the grains down proportionately?
 
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