Efficiency help, wisdom, words of encouragement

Well, I've gotten into all grain brewing. Here the explanation of my process.

Equipment:10 gallon brew kettle with falsebottom
52 quart Coleman cooler for mashtun
25 foot copper wort chiller
Sp10 bayou burner

Here's my last brew session. It is an IPA. The pre boil was 1.50 but was supposed to be 1.059
The OG was supposed to be 1.072 at 5.25 gallons but turned out being 1.061 at 5 gallons.

Step 1: I heated my 4 gallons water to 168. I put it in the mash tun, closed the lid and let it sit for 3 minutes. The. I opened it and added the grains(70ish degrees) and ph stabilizer. I started to stir it up real good for maybe 3 minutes and checked my temp. It was already at 150. Which I thought was weird. usually it's a lot hotter and I have to bring it down to temp before I close the lid. Since I was already at 150 F, I closed the lid and let it sit for 1 hour.

Step 2: I added a gallon of 180 degrees water to bring up the temp. Stirred it up and it actually only brought the temp up a little. I think it was 148 and raised to 154. I then began to vorlauf. When it started to come out clear I let it drain into my boil kettle. It took an hour. I then added my first hop addition to the wort. Then I added another 3.5 gallons of 180 F water to the mash tun (which I think I should have done more), vorlaufed again and drained for another 45 minutes.

Step 3: I brought my wort to a boil. It was a little windy so when the wind blew it stop my rolling boil but when it stopped it began to give it a rolling boil again. I couldnt really keep a consistent boil this time due to wind.I waited 45 minutes and added my 15 minute addition. Then added my 5 minute addition.

Step 4: I chilled my wort which took me about 15 minutes.

Step 5: I drained my wort into my carboy. I had about 3 gallons in there and it stopped draining. There was still wort in there but nothing was coming out. I notice a thick layer of something on my false bottom. So I rubbed my finger across it and it opened a hole. The wort started draining again. Well, until it it to the bottom. I guess there was so much hops that the hops clogged up the spigot. So I slowly (I mean very slowly) was able to get the rest in the carboy. But I only had 5 gallons. Which kinda sucks because when all is said and done ill have even less then that.

. If I match the pre boil and OG in my brew calculator then it says I got 63% efficiency. That's sucks considering I wanted 75%. Also because my efficiency was lower my ibu's went up. It was supposed to be 61 ibu's but changed to 68ibus when I changed the efficiency in the program.

Any thoughts?

Hang in there!!

Either hang up the hydrometer or be patient.

It will get better!

Why did it take you an hour to drain your first runnings and then another 45 minutes to drain the sparge addition? Did you do that on purpose? It's probably because you read something about fly sparging. You're batch sparging.

When you added the sparge water, did you stir the heck out of it?

Did you stir the grist after adding each sparge addition? Also, 1hr. and 45 mins seems like an awful long time to drain each set of runnings...After you vorlaufed clear, did you open it wide up?

Edit: HAHAHA posted same time as Bobby ^

Sounds fine. Mash efficiency is only half the battle, you can make up for off numbers through different levels of attenuation. Looks like you wanted a big IPA at 1.072 but only got to 1.061, so, to match your desired ABV just get great attenuation and dry the beer out more than expected.

Othar than missing a few numbers the beer sounds fine so far.

I use a converted Coleman cooler too, I usually hover around the 65 to 70% range. After a couple brews you will have to adjust settings for your system. Not all brewing systems are equal. It will get better and the beer will still be good.

RJS said:

Sounds fine. Mash efficiency is only half the battle, you can make up for off numbers through different levels of attenuation. Looks like you wanted a big IPA at 1.072 but only got to 1.061, so, to match your desired ABV just get great attenuation and dry the beer out more than expected.

Othar than missing a few numbers the beer sounds fine so far.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I figure I can still hit close to where I want to.


To the others. Yes it was a long time. I wanted to just let it trickle out. I was hoping it would increase my effieciecy but it really just kept it the same. and yes I stirred the hell out of it.

Well since your pre boil gravity was lower than expected, naturally your original gravity will be lower. I have never found that letting the work trickle out of the mash tun has affected my efficiency.
I would guess the reason for your mash temperature being so low is because after you added your strike water and to let it sit, if the cooler was cold, it will reduce the temperature of your strike water, so it might not have been the right temperature start with. I generally heat some water or take hot water out of the faucet and put it in there while I'm heating my strike water. Then I drain it before I had my strike water.
Also, keep in mind that when you make it big beer like that, your efficiency will drop a little bit, I don't remember the science behind it but I've noticed that when I do a beer bigger than 1.075, my efficiency drops

i was in your boat (until just recently) for a while, too. i was getting efficiencies in the 60s and occasionally the low 70s. here are some improvements that i credit my new found efficiency (90% ) to.

1. BierMuncher's Hybrid Sparge technique

-https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/hybrid-fly-sparge-technique-75454/
-extremely easy to follow through with and works like a charm. i use a simple sauce pan to dump my sparge water.

2. Stirring

-i recently started stirring my mash a lot more. i'll heat my strike water usually 1-2 degrees hotter than it should be in order that i'll be able to stir for 5 or so minutes without going below my desired mash temperature.
-i'll also stir again 30 minutes into the mash. usually at this point, starch conversion is mostly over, so temperature isn't as important.
-i'll mash out at the end of my 60 minute mash and stir vigorously before sparging.

3. Grain Crushing

-i know there's a lot of opinions on the effects that grain crushing has on efficiency, but i am fully convinced that a finer crush significantly increases one's efficiency. my last batch i tightened my rollers up to achieve a finer crush. this allowed me to get my efficiency at 90%. i'm not sure if you own your own grain mill or not, but if you don't, request that your LHBS crushes your grain finer. this helped me a lot! also, make sure to put some rice hulls (these will add 0 sugars/flavors/aromas) to your mash in order to prevent a stuck sparge.


again, these were the three biggest advances in my mashing/sparging process that raised me up to a 90% efficiency.

good luck

The first thing is figuring out your volumes better. What does the inside of your mashtun look like? Have you done a deadspace test yet? Put about 2 gallons of water in the tun and then fully drain it. How much was left behind?

You should be ending up with about 7 gallons of preboil wort.

Do not run off your wort at a trickle pace. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to fully drain the tun. Anything more than that and you're wasting your time.

brewski08 said:

i was in your boat (until just recently) for a while, too. i was getting efficiencies in the 60s and occasionally the low 70s. here are some improvements that i credit my new found efficiency (90% ) to.

1. BierMuncher's Hybrid Sparge technique

-https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/hybrid-fly-sparge-technique-75454/
-extremely easy to follow through with and works like a charm. i use a simple sauce pan to dump my sparge water.

2. Stirring

-i recently started stirring my mash a lot more. i'll heat my strike water usually 1-2 degrees hotter than it should be in order that i'll be able to stir for 5 or so minutes without going below my desired mash temperature.
-i'll also stir again 30 minutes into the mash. usually at this point, starch conversion is mostly over, so temperature isn't as important.
-i'll mash out at the end of my 60 minute mash and stir vigorously before sparging.

3. Grain Crushing

-i know there's a lot of opinions on the effects that grain crushing has on efficiency, but i am fully convinced that a finer crush significantly increases one's efficiency. my last batch i tightened my rollers up to achieve a finer crush. this allowed me to get my efficiency at 90%. i'm not sure if you own your own grain mill or not, but if you don't, request that your LHBS crushes your grain finer. this helped me a lot! also, make sure to put some rice hulls (these will add 0 sugars/flavors/aromas) to your mash in order to prevent a stuck sparge.


again, these were the three biggest advances in my mashing/sparging process that raised me up to a 90% efficiency.

good luck

Click to expand...

90% efficiency is pretty awesome! I cant imagine being able to get there. Hopefully one day.

I will definitively try your method to a T next time i brew. The only thing i have to worry about now is getting too much efficiency.

One question for you though. I did recently buy a grain mill. It was the first time i used it. I used the factory setting which is supposed to be set to .045". I must say it definitly looked better crushed then the homebrew shop usually gives me.

What do you set your grain mill too?

THANKS AGAIN! =

Getting high efficiency is not the goal to better beer. The art of efficiency is getting what the recipe calls for. Sugar extraction from the mash and attenuation run together, and they both need to be understood.

You can get all the efficiency your heart desires but unless you know where your fermentation is going to end up you can get really get off track.

I notice you have a kettle with a spigot and a false bottom. So do I, but I use a CFC instead of an immersion chiller. The false bottom in the kettle works wonders if I use whole hops, but from your description, it sounds like you were using pellets.
Bobby_M suggested doing a dead space test with the mash tun to help nail your volumes. I would also recommend doing the same with the kettle. In my case, if the kettle is level, I have about 1 gallon of dead space, but I tip the kettle reducing the dead space to a few ounces.
If you do decide to use whole hops, be warned that they will absorb much more wort than pellet hops and you will have to take that into account. However, you should be able to drain the kettle at a reasonable rate.

-a.

Do you add all the grain at once? I've found adding about 25% at a time and stirring between helped me.

Also, knowing your system losses is huge. My typical losses are in gallons - .75 mash tun, .4 gal cooling, at least .4 gal trub, .25 fermentation, 1.3 per hr evaporation. I typically have about 6.5 gal post boil.

Beersmith was very helpful figuring all this out. To little sparge water will lower your efficiency.

Also upping my sparge water temp to 190 helped.

@brewski08 and everyone else. Thanks so much for your help. I used brewski08's method and it worked great. I'll have to tone down my grain bill a little bit now because my efficiency was so high. 91%!!! I used your method exactly how you did. Well....a little different. I bought a 12 ounce ladle ($6.75) off of eBay to help me hybrid sparge. I also sanitize a piece of tin foil and laid it on top of my wort. I poured my sparge water on top of the tin foil and it gently flowed into my mash tun. Everything came out better then I planned. Now I'll have a very strong ipa.

Again thanks!

Cheers

Sorry, I missed your question. I'm not too sure about my grain mill spacing as I don't have the proper tools to measure. I'll tell you that it's slightly tighter than factory setting (0.036) so I'm guessing it's between 0.020 and 0.030.

Congrats on the efficiency! As long as you're considtently hitting your numbers, you're on the road to brewing great and less expensive beer.

And be sure to thank BierMuncher as he was the inventor of the hybrid spare technique that we love so much.

70% here with just dumping the grains in a mesh strainer and running the wort through it 3 times, then back in a pot, add sparge, repeat (About 20 minutes total time)

Stirring got me out of the 60s as did using a 75 minute mash.