5th all grain, process help.

I've done 4 all grain batches (Stout, winter warmer, pale ale, and an Irish Red). They have all produced outstanding beer, but my efficiency was terrible (50-60%) and I always end up with 4-4.5 gallons. I'm doing my 5th all grain tomorrow, and I would like some help looking over my process to to give myself the best shot at getting the results I expect. It's not good enough for me just to have good beer. I've got a scientific mind, and need to figure out why I'm getting the results that I am.

Recipe is Yooper's Dogfish head 60 minute clone.
14 lbs 2 row
.4 lbs marris otter
(I added an extra pound of 2 row and an extra half ounce or so of maris otter, just in case efficiency is a problem again.)

.75 oz warrior 60 minutes
.5 oz amarillo 35 minutes
.5 oz simcoe 30 minutes

After 14 days, dry hop .5 ounce simcoe and 1 ounce amarillo for another 7 days, then bottle. (I'm not going to do secondary).

Yooper's notes say "Hops were added as continous- first warrior only for the first 25 minutes just a few pellets at a time, then remainder all mixed together and continuosly added, starting at 35 minutes."

us-05 dry yeast

Grain and Mash Tun are at room temparature.

At 1.25 quarts/pound, add 18 quarts of 175 degree water to Mash Tun (converted cooler with SS braid)

Let sit for about 10 minutes to preheat tun. Once it gets down to 169 degrees, dough in.

Stir big time until I reach 152 or 153 degrees. Let it do it's thing for 90 minutes (I'm not screwing around with the starches not converting. I'm thinking about a good long Mash).

Meanwhile, heat 5 gallons of sparge water.

After 90 minutes, stir vigorously for 2-3 minutes, vorlauf, and drain into kettle.

(Up to this point I am usually right on with my temperatures. The sparge is where I have issues).

Add 2.5 gallons of 190 degree sparge water. Stir until it gets down to a/b 169, or add some boiling water to bring it up. Let sit for about 10 minutes, stir vigorously, vorlauf, drain.

Add another 2.5 gallons of water, this time at 168. Let sit about 10 minutes, stir vigorously, vorlauf, drain.

This should get me about 7 gallons into the boil kettle (my boil off rate is pretty steep, especially since I do it on a stove top and it takes it awhile to get all that wort to boiling.

Once the water is boiling, start adding hops. (Need some recipe specific help for those who have done this one.)

Just Warrior to start, continuosly. At 35 minutes left, mix ALL remaining hops together and continue hopping throughout the boil.

The rest of the process should be a breeze.

I'd appreciate any help you all could give me. Any tweaking of my process, especially in relation to the sparge, would help tremendously.

I did use beersmith, but I'm still getting the hang of it. I also looked at Bobby_m's directions and several other websites/calculators, but I really want this to go well. My biggest concern is with the sparge temperatures. The grains came crushed from Austin Home Brew. Hopefully their crush is good.

Okay, have at it.

If you're ending up short on volume, then you're boiling off more than you're accounting for, so try to increase your sparge water volume to compensate.

I would change your initial sparge to 170 degree water, since your grains are already hot. 190 is too high. I don't think that's affecting your efficiency, though. Are you making sure you break up clumps while stirring after dough in? Even vigorous stirring sometimes just moves the clumps around. Feel around carefully with the paddle to make sure you've gotten them all broken up. Try to avoid smashing your braid.

I don't really see anything wrong with your process, though. I don't know about pre-crushed grains, but you'd think they should be fine.

190F sparge might be a slight bit too hot but 180-185 is what I'd consider safe. You'll want to stir it in reasonably quickly, but the grainbed will only get up to about 167F with a 185F addition. Of course, software will help you obtain any temp you want.

If the Mash is at 153 and I add 170 degree sparge water, wont that leave me closer to 160ish than 168? I thought 168 is ideal for getting remaining sugars into suspension while halting starch conversion as well.

Bobby_M said:

190F sparge might be a slight bit too hot but 180-185 is what I'd consider safe. You'll want to stir it in reasonably quickly, but the grainbed will only get up to about 167F with a 185F addition. Of course, software will help you obtain any temp you want.

Click to expand...

How do I get brewsmith to calculate sparge water temp. It does the mash just fine, but all it tells me with regards to the sparge is to add 168 degree water, which would leave my sparge a little too cool.

It looks like your process is good. I have made 25 gal using this recipe so far and love it. One thing I can tell you about the hops..... I added all the Amarillo at 35 min and the Simcoe at 30 min and it is a dead ringer for the real thing. When I tried continuous hopping starting at 35 minutes, everyone agreed that it tasted more like the 90-min IPA than the 60. I also subbed Galena for Warrior the first batch because that is all I had at the time. I was so pleased with the results, I have stuck with the Galena. Not that it really matters that much since it is for bittering more than the flavor.

bull8042 said:

It looks like your process is good. I have made 25 gal using this recipe so far and love it. One thing I can tell you about the hops..... I added all the Amarillo at 35 min and the Simcoe at 30 min and it is a dead ringer for the real thing. When I tried continuous hopping starting at 35 minutes, everyone agreed that it tasted more like the 90-min IPA than the 60. I also subbed Galena for Warrior the first batch because that is all I had at the time. I was so pleased with the results, I have stuck with the Galena. Not that it really matters that much since it is for bittering more than the flavor.

Click to expand...

So you added the bittering hops continuously until 35 minutes, then just dumped in the other two hop additions? Did you continue to hop with the bittering hops all the way through the boil, or were they gone by 35 minutes?

BugleBrew said:

If the Mash is at 153 and I add 170 degree sparge water, wont that leave me closer to 160ish than 168? I thought 168 is ideal for getting remaining sugars into suspension while halting starch conversion as well.

Click to expand...

You're right, you want your grain bed to be at 168F after your H2O has been added. My H2O has to be at 190F+/- in order to achieve that temp.( depends on your system, how much your grain bed cools, how long your lauter takes, etc.).
- As far as your efficiency goes, I would check your grind, a finer grind (not flour) can/will definatly increase your efficiency.
- If you are starting to boil with 7gal and ending up with 4-4.5gal , the only things I can think of are that you must have a raging boil going on, or you are leaving some wort behind with the trub after transferring to your fermenter. In any case, until you have it figured out you can have a "B" Plan ready, like having some DME on hand, or doing an addition batch sparge of 1-1.5 gal and adding it to your fermenter.(boil the addition sparge in a seperate pot, and make sure that the SG is high enough to justify using)

For your effeciency question....I'll just bring up the most obvious suspect: how fine is your crush? These days I'm just crushing finely since I've noticed I don't get stuck sparges with a false bottom/fly sparge. With my experience, that's the #1 factor for efficiency.

You mention trying to do a mash for longer periods of time.....actually, on Basic Brewing, I heard of an experiment where they found effeciency went up a little when you add more water then the 1.25 qt/lb recommendation. I do step infusions, but I don't get the mash that soupy....so I still say that crush is the main way to get your efficiency up.

I do a split batch sparge and the first one needs to be dang near 200f to get me to 168. Use this rest calculator http://www.krotchrott.com/calc.html, it will only give you a fixed water amount at boiling but with some tweaking it will get you very close to 168-170f.

In order to know where you're losing efficiency, you first need to eliminate the obvious.

How confident are you in your measurements?

In order to get a good read on your hydrometer, you need to know that it's properly calibrated to read 1.000 in room temp distilled water. Get a small bottle of this from the grocery and test it to confirm. If it's off, you have to factor that into your reads.

You also need to know that your thermometer is reading properly, 32F in ice water and 212F in boiling. You could be missing your target temps for mash in and that could be affecting your extract efficiency.

Finally, you need to be confident in your volume measurements. It could be possible you're collecting less wort than you think and this is why your final volume is less than expected. It will also cause a hit to your efficiency. Take the time to carefully calibrate a container or dipstick so that you know you're collecting what you think you're collecting. 1/2 a gallon of water weighs 4lbs, so you can use a digital bathroom scale to get a fairly good calibration of a bucket using 4lb increments of water.

Until you're totally confident in your measurements, there's little point addressing your efficiency problems as there may not be a problem, just a measurement issue.

Hope this helps

My first 3 AG's came crushed from Northern Brewer. I 4th I got at LHBS and they crushed it for me. This one I got crushed from Austin Home Brew. AHS looks a little finer than the others that I've had, so hopefully that will be a difference maker. Don't have the room or the cash to buy a barley crusher right now.

Thanks for the replies so far.

Maybe I'll do a mash out before the double batch sparge. Only 7 quarts of boiling water to get to my temp, then less guessing for the sparge, and a little less water required, as my sparge heating pot is only 20 quarts, and I'd need every inch of it.

Thoughts?

How's your water? Have you measured mash pH? If your mash pH falls outside about 5.2 to 5.6, conversion can suffer. Have you done an iodine test before to make sure you have full conversion?

Although Denver water (where I live) is pretty good, I still use pH 5.2 buffer in the mash. Just FYI, my efficiency with grains crushed by Austin Homebrew Supply, no mashout, double batch sparging in a cooler with a braid has been running about 75-78%, so I think the crush is OK.

With a batch sparge, I don't think mashout is important....that isn't a culprit IMO. Actually....Joe Camel's post makes me think of something else. Are you sure you're getting the right temps? I'm always checking my mash temps with 2 or 3 thermometers and averaging between them. I know my efficiency went down that one time I only had one thermometer and later learned that it was off way too much.

BugleBrew said:

So you added the bittering hops continuously until 35 minutes, then just dumped in the other two hop additions? Did you continue to hop with the bittering hops all the way through the boil, or were they gone by 35 minutes?

Click to expand...

No, I dumped all the bittering at 60, then all the Amarillo at 35, then the Simcoe at 30. That was for me the best replication of the DFH 60 flavor.

My measurements are solid. I regularly test my equipment because I'm paranoid about these things.

Again, thanks for the tips. I'll consider everything and post my results tomorrow.

Thanks bull8042. You just saved me a PITA hopping process.

I have another question. Are you hitting your target gravities? Do you measure the gravities of each running and the pooled wort in the boiler? Are you hitting your gravity coming out of the boil into the fermenter?

You mentioned poor efficiency. What is your OG for this recipe? Your dough in temp seems a bit low. Go with 174 F instead of 169 F. Your mash should start about 158 F. This will give you better OG, starch convertion. This works for me. Let me know about your results.

I measure my pre-boil gravity and my OG, but not the gravity of each running. Too much of a PITA for me to collect, cool, and hydrometerize. I'll be sure to take careful notes tomorrow.

158 for a mash? That seems very high. I've never heard of mashing at 158. The esimated OG for this one should be about 1.070.

how big is yer tun?
sorry if you already answered....

anyway, when i mash more than 10 lbs in my 5 gallon tun, i get much lower efficiency the higher i go...
i mashed 13.5lbs, i got 62%. i mashed 11.5lbs, i got 68%. i mashed 10lbs, i got 71% (my best ever)
every time, my tun is nearly overflowing with water. the thinner the mash, the better MY efficiency. thanks kaiser!. i now use less malt, and get the higher og i was using more malt to get. a catch 22....use more grain to hit the og cuz my efficiency sucks, and end up low cuz i used too much grain!!! arrgg!

anyway, thank goodness for experience.

I've been through your volumes, and ignoring dead space, you should have over 8g pre-boil in the kettle. Again ignoring dead space, this should be plenty to give you 5.5g in the fermenter.
If you end up with short volumes in the fermenter with the stated recipe, and your measurements are accurate, then you seem to have a serious dead space problem. With your grain bill and water volumes, I would end up with about 2 gallons more than you do in the fermenter. Dead space in the MLT is not too bad, as anything you leave there at the end of the sparge should be of very low gravity. Dead space in the kettle is different. If you collect 4g in the fermenter, but leave 1g in the kettle, you will have lost 20% in efficiency. Is there any way that you can get more out of the kettle?
The next observation is that if you are collecting 1 - 1.5g less than you need, then you need to increase the amount of sparge water by the amount of the shortage. This will increase your efficiency
Next, you are trying to make up for low efficiency by using more grains. Unfortunately, this is counter-productive when batch sparging as batch sparging efficiency decreases as the gravity increases. If you reduced the amount of grain, you would probably get better efficiency. It may be worth while reducing the amount of grain, and then making up the gravity shortage by adding some DME to the boil.
Finally, your technique. You said:
"Add 2.5 gallons of water, Let sit about 10 minutes, stir vigorously, vorlauf, drain."
You want to do the stirring as you add the water, and then let is settle for a few minutes before vorlaufing and draining.

Hope this makes sense,

-a.

Yes, thanks so much for the help.

Its a 10 gallon cooler, so plenty of room for a thinner mash, though I thought a thinner mash left less room for sparge water, which can lead to a lower efficiency.

You shouldn't stir before vorlauf and drain to get the sugars back into suspension? Oh wait, if I stir as I'm adding the water, it puts the sugars into suspension... they are not going to fall out. Answered my own question.

So many people, so many recipes, so many different ways of brewing. I guess the general answer here is to keep brewing, take really clear notes, and figure out what works best for me and my set-up.

Again, I'll post this evening about how it went and what my final process was.

davesrose said:

With a batch sparge, I don't think mashout is important....that isn't a culprit IMO. Actually....Joe Camel's post makes me think of something else. Are you sure you're getting the right temps? I'm always checking my mash temps with 2 or 3 thermometers and averaging between them. I know my efficiency went down that one time I only had one thermometer and later learned that it was off way too much.

Click to expand...

I misread your question. My measurements are solid, but the sparge is where I get into trouble. Typically when I do a double batch sparge my first batch sparge only gets the grain bed up to about 163 or so, but I get it up high enough for the second batch sparge. This is my biggest goal today, to hit my sparge temps right on.

I'm actually thinking about doing a mash out and single batch sparge, but we'll see.

OK, if you're confident in your measurements, you're halfway home. Don't blame your batch sparge yet and don't change too many variables, there are two separate efficiencies at work here and you still don't know which is affecting your overall recovery.

Read this section on Kaiser's website and focus on conversion and lauter efficiency. This highlights the importance of taking the first runnings gravity as you could have very good sparging practice that is masked by poor conversion, and vice versa. If you're doughing in at 1.25qt per lb, unless you're using a lot of specialty grains, your first wort gravity should be around 1.098-1.099, if you're getting full conversion. If you're seeing this value and still having poor efficiency, then address your sparge technique. If you're not getting close to this, then the issue is with your mash/conversion.

A lot of the people who complain of poor efficiency seem to have their grain crushed by the store as the gap is not set very tight to avoid complaints about stuck sparges. A lot of those people also see an improvement by having the grains crushed a second time by the store.

Joe Camel said:

A lot of the people who complain of poor efficiency seem to have their grain crushed by the store as the gap is not set very tight to avoid complaints about stuck sparges. A lot of those people also see an improvement by having the grains crushed a second time by the store.

Click to expand...

This was EXACTLY my issue. Nothing worked until I stopped crushing the grains at the LHBS and bought my own little Victoria mill to make the grind fairly fine. I also bought some pH 5.2 buffer just in case. Efficiency went INSTANTLY from 50% to 80%. There are pictures on the wiki about what your crushed grain is supposed to look like.

BugleBrew said:

I measure my pre-boil gravity and my OG, but not the gravity of each running. Too much of a PITA for me to collect, cool, and hydrometerize. I'll be sure to take careful notes tomorrow.

158 for a mash? That seems very high. I've never heard of mashing at 158. The esimated OG for this one should be about 1.070.

Click to expand...

I looked at your grain bill. If you hit 1.070 which looks very possible, you are definately doing something right. Don't be upset if you fall a bit short. You stated that you were only getting about four gallons of beer. Use enough sparge water to get the volume you want. Sparge water volume = wort volume. I mentioned starting your mash at 158 F. This is not that unusual. Enzymes work well at this temperature. I have noticed that higher mash temps resulted in higher OG's for me. I use an uninsulated half barrel as my mash tun. I start my mash at 158 F. After a one hour mash my temp drops to 145 F. You can see why I start a bit on the high end. Good luck and keep us posted

Ok, the verdict is 60.28% efficiency, and an OG of 1.063. Shucks.

Here are the highlights.

Mashed with 18 quarts at 154 for 90 minutes. Did an iodine test to confirm complete starch conversion.

First running Gravity was 1.090 (temperature adjusted)

As I was drawing off the first runnings I realized that the spigot on my pot was open, and I lost a quart or two of wort to the floor. I also forgot to measure how much water I got here.

I heated my first sparge infusion (2.25 gallons) to 190 and got the grain bed to 168. Gravity of this run-off was 1.074 (temp adjusted).

Second sparge infusion, also 2.25 gallons, I undershot the temperature just a touch and got 165 in the grain bed. Gravity of this was 1.030.

I got seven gallons into the fermenter, and the pre-boil gravity was 1.055. This gave me 73.68% efficiency into the boiler.

After the boil I ended up with just a hair under five gallons according to the mark on my carboy. There was just under a gallon left in the boiler mixed up in trub and hops, so I probably boiled off just over a gallon.

I stopped putting it into the carboy once once the braid leading to the spigot on my pot clogged up. It occurs to me that I could probably just have funneled the rest in and much of it would settle out over the next few weeks.

It's interesting to me that my gravity into the boiler was 1.055, and the estimated was 1.053 (assuming 65% efficiency) according to what brewsmith told me. This tells me it has something to do with how much I'm boiling off/leaving behind to hops. This could be one factor that reduced my efficiency.

Dumping a couple quarts on the floor obviously decreased my efficiency. I also should have measured the water volume here.

Lower temp for second batch sparge might have something to do with it. The gravity was drastically lower on this than the others.

Perhaps the crush? Maybe its time I get myself a barley crusher.

Thanks again for the help, and I'd appreciate any more input on the day. You all rock.

Is anything wrong with your cooler? I was wondering if you may be loosing temp. over the long mash. It probably isn't likely.

Are you using a digital thermometer?

Looking at your numbers, you have a bit of a mixed bag...

1.090 is about 90% efficiency in your mash, even though the wort is testing ok with iodine, there is likely unconverted starch stuck deep in the grains. You could do better with a better crush.

Your lauter efficiency is about 82% (.82 * .90 = .74 into the boiler), that isn't too bad, most batch spargers will probably top out at about 88 - 90%. Could try hotter water for the second sparge, some like to drain slower, I think mixing really well is the key for me, I use a mortar mixer chucked into my cordless drill, it really turns over the grain and gets in all the corners.

The big one for you seems to be post boil. Your efficiency dropped by almost 14 points in the boiler. It will always drop here, but if you take care, the difference between in and out of the boiler should be about 5%. If you're leaving 14% of your wort behind, that's a lot of waste. If you can, just dump it in, people who use counter flow chillers brew with trub in the fermenter so it's not going to affect your brew.

If you can improve your crush to get full conversion and can manage to recover all the wort from your pot, your efficiency should jump to 80-82% without touching how you batch sparge.

Whatever happens - you will figure it out. It always helps to brew with a buddy, and try new things one at a time.

Decide if you want to mash out and just do that. Get your sparge technique settled and repeat it.

Palmer's book 'How to Brew' is a great resource as is posting on this website.

One thing that dramatically increased my efficiency was to lauter slowly. I had been opening up my ball valve all the way up without thinking twice about it. But once I started to lauter slower I finally started to get better efficiency.

FWIW, I take a gravity reading after I have collected all the wort into the kettle and then after the boil. I do a mashout then one sparge. Once the mash tun has been drained the first time (with the strike water and mash out infusion water) I measure the wort in the kettle with a dipstick. If I have collected three gallons, I know I need to sparge with 3.5 more gallons b/c I want 6.5 gallons in the kettle to start the boil. There is no substitute for experience.

Excellent tips here, thanks again. My cooler is fine. I check the temp before and after each step and it dropped maybe half a degree in the 90 minute mash. I'll lauter more slowly and try getting every ounce of boil kettle water into the fermenter. And, I'll start saving for a barley crusher.

I'll post in a couple weeks after my next batch. Thanks again. I owe you all a beer.