In my first all grain batch I was aiming for a gravity of 1.080

And I actually only hit 1.060. I mashed at 150* for an hr and batch sparged at 170* fairly quickly w 3 gal of water until it was basically clear. Anyone have any ideas how I missed my Target OG?

What kind of set-up are you using and did you calculate your efficiency?

I think everyone will need a bit more information to help troubleshoot this:

What was the recipe? How much water did you mash in? What was your final volume? Did you mill the grain yourself?

I had a similar problem w my first one. I had an efficiency of about 65% so I read up on it. I ground my grains better and slowed down my sparge. Then I tested my equipment and found out my thermometer was ten degrees high. I'm fairly sire that was the main culprit. Either way last batch was at 90% efficiency.

@bbl. I'm using a homemade cooler mash tun and I'm a little embarrassed to say I don't know how to calculate efficiency.
@brad I was going for an imperial saison w a grain base of 12 lbs American 2 row, 1 carapils, and 1 Munich malt. The grain was milled at the Homebrew store. I mashed in w 3 1/2 gallons of water that was 155* but quickly dropped to about 148* so I heated one more gallon to 160* and that brought it up to 150* which held perfectly for an hour. I spraged w 172* water that was about 3 gallons bringing my yield on the boiling kettle to right at 6 gallons.
Thanks for you help guys!

Sounds like you had a very low effficiency. Just out of curiosity, what temp was the wort when you took the gravity reading and how much cooled wort did you end up with? As for calculating efficiency, there are tables out there that give the max yield for the grain you are using. I use a table out of Palmers book. Your max yield for this batch was about 523 points per pound per gallon. I assume you have ~ 5 gallons of cooled wort, so your actual yeild was 60 x 5 = 300 ppg. Your efficiency was 300/523 = ~ 57%. That's very low. I use a rectangular cooler with a SS hose braid and I typically get efficiencies around 69-71% doing a batch sparge. To reach your target OG for this batch you would have needed an efficiency around 77% This will likely be hard to achieve doing a batch sparge. A couple things that will help your efficency. Try and get equal runoffs from the lauter and sparge. You had to use some of your sparge water to achieve your mash temp. Also, drain the mash tun rather slowly. Shoot for collecting wort at about 1 qt per minute or less. After you add the sparge water, stir really well and then let it sit for another 15 minutes or so before you drain. IMO, you really didn't have enough grain to reach your target OG with this set-up. Next time use more grain.

Hope this helps

It could also be that the home brew store was crushing for about 65% efficiency, in which case, you are not too off. What was the temperature of the mash after 60min?

Great info. Thank you very much. To answer a few more questions: I'm using a 48 gallon cooler w a stainless steel braid from a washing machine connector. I wound up w a little over 5 gal of cooled wort and the temp was between 75-80*. Since it was the first time I've used the equipment, I assumed there would be a little trail and error trying to get the right temp out of the mash. This turned out to be the case. I'm assuming, as I've read, that the correct mash temp for ales should be between 150-55* so I was aiming for 153 but obviously missed it by a few degrees. How important is this? And I did actually drain the lauter pretty quickly as well as the sparge. Does letting it sit and stirring help bring out more of the sugars? It makes sense that it would. I'm hoping that if the American farmale yeast does its trick it will still finish at about 6% abv but will probably be a little sweeter than a saison should. Thank you so much for all the help.

DaveWade said:

Does letting it sit and stirring help bring out more of the sugars? It makes sense that it would.

Click to expand...

Definitely. When you batch sparge like we're doing with a hose braid, the grains won't get "rinsed" very well like they would in a fly sparge. When you add the sparge water you need to mix it well and let it sit for a few to dissolve as much more sugur as you can before you drain.

I sort of agree with the BBL_Brewer, except that basically when you pour in your sparge you are doing it fairly violently and you do disturb the grain bed, which will then be reformed and will act sort of like stiring. I stir it just because I always have... but I don't know if it gets even more sugar out. It helps to stir the mash very slowly to get even heat distribution, but short of building that yourself out of the keggie mash tun, I don't think you can do this. The point of sparging really is to stop enzyme activity and get a few more of the sugars and starches and bring your beer up to boil volume.

I think I make the mistake of ignoring kettle volume and just getting every last ounce of liquid and really, you can get a lot. Take for example a 16# batch to get about 90-105GP, you have 4g of water at only 1 qt/lb to 6g at 1.5 which if you drain you get like, 3 to 5g or so, sparge that up to 6.5g and bring it to a boil.

Ok so I think I ended up using about 4.5g in my mash and aside from bringing up the temp for correction I also needed to make sure all the grain was covered. Then I used about 3-4g more for the sparge. I guess next time I will sparge more slowly and stir it up a bit better. Out of the 7-8g I did hit my mark of 6g to boil w so I was happy about that. I've actually spent an hour or so reading up on calculating efficiency so I think that'll help too. Thanks everybody. One last question though. In palmers chart, I didn't see a listing for carapils. Is this the same as another grain or close enough to another one I can substitute into the formula?

My chart lists carapils at a max yield of 32 ppg. I have a hard copy of his 3rd edition.

I have found that waiting 10-15 minutes between stirring and draining on your sparge will really help increase efficiency. A double batch sparge (just split your sparge water into 2 batches) helps even further. It looks like the potential extract for Carapils is 33.

Well I missed it again. I calculated my efficiency this time and got about 75%. I was aiming for about 1.090 and only hit 1.070. Obviously this was low again. I took all the advice (letting the sparge sit longer, draining off pretty slowly, etc.) The only real prob I had is since on not quite used to my mash tun yet, I heated my mash water to 160 but once the grain was added it dropped to 147-8*. Does this have an effect on efficiency? Heres the link to my recipe except that I used 8 oz of hops for the boil.

http://hopville.com/recipe/861712/imperial-ipa-recipes/imperial-belgian-ipa