Grain Crush Question

Besides reduced efficiency, in what other ways does a ****ty crush impact the final beer?

All I can say (I had one batch with a horrible OG) is due to poor efficiency the beer was well thin and tasted on the sweeter side. You could tell something was different and just not right. I would also assume without a full conversion you could have stuck fermentation problems.

jtupper said:

All I can say (I had one batch with a horrible OG) is due to poor efficiency the beer was well thin and tasted on the sweeter side. You could tell something was different and just not right. I would also assume without a full conversion you could have stuck fermentation problems.

Click to expand...

Well, I'd been buying grain from my dirty LHBS and my last 2 efficiencies were in the high 50% range, most likely due to a very course crush. So I'll be milling my own from now on. I'm just very curious to see if the beers actually taste different or not. I wish Santa would come early

BrightSpotBrewing said:

Besides reduced efficiency, in what other ways does a ****ty crush impact the final beer?

Click to expand...

Poor efficiency is pretty much it. As long as you adjust the amount of grain to compensate for the poor crush the beer will be fine.

If you have pulverized husks, you could get more tannins in the wort. You could also have more problems with a stuck mash or stuck sparge. A good crush will have fairly intact (not shredded) husks, but the kernels of the grain will be visible.

Yooper said:

If you have pulverized husks, you could get more tannins in the wort. You could also have more problems with a stuck mash or stuck sparge. A good crush will have fairly intact (not shredded) husks, but the kernels of the grain will be visible.

Click to expand...

I've found one way to accomplish this is to use the lower torque setting on my cordless drill (advice picked up here!), also seemed to boost my efficiency a few points.

-d

From my experience, you really have to pulverize your grain to have any issues as long as you control everything else (Temp, ph). I'm a subscriber to the Denny theory of crush 'til you're scared.

I've been thinking about this today and this is an idea I can't seem to kick:

If efficiency is low, leaving OG less than what is expected, that would indicate less maltose (sugar) would actually make it to the wort. If less maltose makes it to the wort to start, there will be less in the end (I'm speaking of fermentables here), as the yeast will have had less to chew through from the beginning. In a bigger beer, the yeast might stop fermenting before all (or most) of the fermentables have been consumed, thus leaving more tasty maltose in the beer. With significantly low efficiency, I would assume since less residual maltose is left in the final beer, it would tend not to taste has malty.

I just confused myself. Am I way off here? If so, can someone please help me understand this?

Cheers!