Everyone knows I'm a batch sparge advocate and I get pretty good efficiency. That's not in question today.
I'll start by saying this is my first batch where I went sub 80% brewhouse. I will chalk up some of that to a rather large leaf hop bill and the continued loss of wort in my CFC, March pump, and 1/2" hoses. However, I still only hit 82% extract efficiency out of the MLT while I had it set to 88% in BTP. Yeah, I missed my OG.
There are two things at play here and I'm pissed that they both happened on the same batch.
Higher intended OG = Lower efficiency:
I think most of us agree that as your intended OG goes up, your efficiency goes down. It's a direct result of the reduced grain to sparge water ratio. I was shooting for 1.068 while most of my 88-92% efficiencies were scored on 1.050ish beers. Ok, got me there.
Lower sparge water temp = Lower efficiency:
It was the coldest my garage has ever been during brewing.. 45F. I had the door cracked open to avoid asphyxiation too. I heated the sparge up to 185F but by the time I infused, the mash settled to 159F. DOH! Then in order to get moving on the boil, I put my second batch of sparge water into a bucket. It had really dropped in temp by the time I mixed it in. This time the mash temp equilized all the way down at 154F, nowhere near the optimum 169F.
So, now I really have no idea which factored in the most to the lowered efficiency. I guess I'll have to plan another bigger beer just to test it out. Even at 1.061, it's the biggest beer I've made. I just have to wonder where the point of diminishing returns is. Throwing in a pound or two of DME might be cheaper than 10lbs of 2-row.
Afterthought.. One way to avoid leaving wort in the chiller, pump and tubing is to have a gallon of water in a sanitized container and just as the last wort is leaving the kettle, dump the water in. It will help the pump maintain prime while it pushes the last of the wort into the fermenter. Stop pumping just as the water reaches the end of the line. (see how posting helps the thought process?)
I'll start by saying this is my first batch where I went sub 80% brewhouse. I will chalk up some of that to a rather large leaf hop bill and the continued loss of wort in my CFC, March pump, and 1/2" hoses. However, I still only hit 82% extract efficiency out of the MLT while I had it set to 88% in BTP. Yeah, I missed my OG.
There are two things at play here and I'm pissed that they both happened on the same batch.
Higher intended OG = Lower efficiency:
I think most of us agree that as your intended OG goes up, your efficiency goes down. It's a direct result of the reduced grain to sparge water ratio. I was shooting for 1.068 while most of my 88-92% efficiencies were scored on 1.050ish beers. Ok, got me there.
Lower sparge water temp = Lower efficiency:
It was the coldest my garage has ever been during brewing.. 45F. I had the door cracked open to avoid asphyxiation too. I heated the sparge up to 185F but by the time I infused, the mash settled to 159F. DOH! Then in order to get moving on the boil, I put my second batch of sparge water into a bucket. It had really dropped in temp by the time I mixed it in. This time the mash temp equilized all the way down at 154F, nowhere near the optimum 169F.
So, now I really have no idea which factored in the most to the lowered efficiency. I guess I'll have to plan another bigger beer just to test it out. Even at 1.061, it's the biggest beer I've made. I just have to wonder where the point of diminishing returns is. Throwing in a pound or two of DME might be cheaper than 10lbs of 2-row.
Afterthought.. One way to avoid leaving wort in the chiller, pump and tubing is to have a gallon of water in a sanitized container and just as the last wort is leaving the kettle, dump the water in. It will help the pump maintain prime while it pushes the last of the wort into the fermenter. Stop pumping just as the water reaches the end of the line. (see how posting helps the thought process?)