Fisrt all grain brewing efficiency

Hey all, I just completed my first all grain brew with an efficiency much lower than expected. I used a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler with a braided stainless hose for the mash tun, added 4 gallons of 180 degree water to the cooler, allowed it to stand until the cooler warmed up and temperatures dropped to 172, added my 13lb grain bill and measured the temperature at 156-157 degrees. I stirred this for about five minutes, double checked the temperature to be 155 and then let it sit for about 90 minutes or so. I recycled and then drained the liquid out into my boil kettle and added 4 gallons of water at 170 degrees, stirred, recycled, and then drained the liquid again into my boil kettle giving me a total of 6.5 gallons of wort at around 1040 OG. I was aiming for an OG of 1067 so I decided I would boil for about 45 minutes prior to any hop additions to bring the water level down more and settle with a smaller amount of beer with a higher OG. All said and done, I got about 4.25 gallons of wort at about 1060, which beersmith calculated to be about 54% efficiency, any ideas on what went wrong?

tl;dr: my efficiency is at 54% according to beersmith, I have no idea why!

Thanks in advance!

My first thought would be to look at your crush...do you mill yourself of have it milled at your LHBS?

Did you account for the temp of the wort when you took your gravity reading?

Pretty much already covered but first make sure your readings were accurate and temp was properly accounted for.

After that the next thing I would look at is gain crush. I have always gotten coarse crushes from my LHBS. Whether it was to aid in preventing stuck sparges or a more nefarious attempt to sell more grain is up for debate but regardless buying my own gain mill fixed my issues.

The grains were ordered from morebeer already milled, I assumed this would be adequate. Also I did adjust my readings to account for temperature. Has anyone had a problem with the way morebeer crushes their grains?

fearthelight said:

The grains were ordered from morebeer already milled, I assumed this would be adequate. Also I did adjust my readings to account for temperature. Has anyone had a problem with the way morebeer crushes their grains?

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No. I accidentally either ordered or received pre-milled golden promise from them. I think it was more beer at least.

Double check the thermometer against another thermometer. I have never met a thermometer I've trusted, except for my thermapen...
What was the temp at the end of the 90 minute mash? Did you stir really well to prevent dough balls?
Last thing to consider is that your pH could be way out of whack, in addition to what others have said.
Bazooka screen should give you a much better efficiency than that. Something is def wrong.

TD

Grain crush is probably part of the problem. I was getting efficiencies in the low 60s when using pre-crushed grains from Northern Brewer.

The other half may be process. How long did you stir? I found that I have to stir a lot during the sparge to get any decent kind of efficiency. My enormously scientific method is to stir for 2 songs since I usually have music playing while I brew. Unless you're listening to classical or prog rock, that's usually about 5 or 6 minutes. For me, the difference between that and just swirling it around a couple of times is as much as 7 or 8%.

The crush is always the first place to look. One thing I noticed is that you collected only 6.5 gallons from 13 lbs. of grain. You could have collected a little more (almost 8.5 gallons) from that amount of grain. That would have improved your efficiency somewhat, but is most likely not the primary cause.

Here's something that might help:

http://beerandwinejournal.com/extract-efficiency-tradeoffs/

Chris Colby
Editor
beerandwinejournal.com

VikingChrisColby said:

The crush is always the first place to look. One thing I noticed is that you collected only 6.5 gallons from 13 lbs. of grain. You could have collected a little more (almost 8.5 gallons) from that amount of grain. That would have improved your efficiency somewhat, but is most likely not the primary cause.

Here's something that might help:

http://beerandwinejournal.com/extract-efficiency-tradeoffs/

Chris Colby
Editor
beerandwinejournal.com

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I routinely get 75-80% pulling 6.75 gallons off 15-20# batches with no issue. Ive never heard someone say to pull more water to get better efficiency, that seems counter-intuitive..pushing more water through will just get you more low gravity runnings that will dilute your overall gravity more...? Or am i missing something.

Even though the additional runnings are lower gravity, the sugar's still in there. So if you boil back down to the planned batch size, it'll bump up your efficiency a bit. However, you also run the risk of extracting tannins and other nastiness once the gravity of the runnings gets to low (or more accurately, the pH gets too high). If you're already over 70%, there's not much of a point since we're only talking about saving a dollar or so in grain.

morebeer is known for doing a very course crush. once i asked them to double crush and they got a little defensive. i'm able to get 65-70% with their crush if i double batch sparge.

fearthelight said:

tl;dr: my efficiency is at 54% according to beersmith, I have no idea why!

Thanks in advance!

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Did you read your mash efficiency or brewhouse efficiency in Beersmith? They are two different things and brewhouse efficiency will always be lower or the same as mash efficiency.

If I can remember correctly, mash efficiency isn't displayed in the "Mash" tab in Beersmith. That value is Total Efficiency, which is Brewhouse Efficiency. Your Mash Efficiency should be in the "Fermentation" tab in Beersmith.

progmac said:

morebeer is known for doing a very course crush. once i asked them to double crush and they got a little defensive. i'm able to get 65-70% with their crush if i double batch sparge.

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Didn't know this. i verified my last brew I had used some from morebeer, and I think they either gave me pre-crushed or I messed up and intentionally ordered pre crushed. This was not the entire grist however, and I believe I may have re-crushed along with my other grains.. maybe not.

Anyways, maybe the OP can post a pic of the crush if he has any leftover grains??

TD

Here are some pictures of the grains that I purchased, my temperature at the end of my 90 minute mash was read at 152. I only stirred for five minutes at the beginning of the mash and then maybe another five minutes with the sparge water, I did not see anything that looked like dough balls.
Thanks for all the replies!

fearthelight said:

Here are some pictures of the grains that I purchased, my temperature at the end of my 90 minute mash was read at 152. I only stirred for five minutes at the beginning of the mash and then maybe another five minutes with the sparge water, I did not see anything that looked like dough balls. Thanks for all the replies!

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From those pics, it doesn't look like they were milled at all!

I take it that was the grain used and is no longer available for a close up shot?

My bag of malt from MB was milled better than this, but again, hard to say for sure without a close up. For some reason they fulfilled part of my order with milled, and I milled malt in separate bags. Didn't see the word milled on the label, though it clearly had been.

I used a JSP original malt mill and it gives a better crush than what those photos show.

TD

Looks whole to me

Looking at that picture, I think it is pretty safe to assume grain crush was your problem. If I brew this weekend I will post a picture of my crush as well as my roller gap on my grain mill to give you an idea of the difference in appearance.

Especially if you are going to be ordering online, a grain mill is probably a good investment for you. Gives you way more control over the process allowing you to produce more consistent results. Next best option is buying from the LHBS where you can crush your own. Even if they won't let you adjust the gap on their mill, at the very least you can double crush if it is to coarse.