Help me figure out where i went wrong with my belgium...

ok so I have a 10 gallon cooler for a mash tun with a false bottom... I brewed the following recipe:

12.75 lb Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM) Grain
0.38 lb Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain
0.38 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain
0.25 lb Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM) Grain
0.13 lb Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain
90 min 1.00 oz Magnum [7.50 %] (90 min) Hops
90 min 1.50 lb Candi Sugar, Dark (275.0 SRM) Sugar
15 min 0.25 oz Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] (15 min) Hops
15 min 1.00 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
5 min 0.25 oz Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] (5 min)

Mashed in at 149... held for an hour and 15 mins... fly sparged... came out with just at 7 gallons... boiled, cooled, and measured my gravity. Heres where I'm pissed... 1.074... which is 63% efficency. at 75% which is where i normally am, it would have came to 1.086. this is the second "high gravity" brew I've done and the second time I came in short. Any ideas on where I could have gone wrong?

Also, I live in ohio, my LHBS is Grape and Granery... I buy my grain and they crush it. could this be it?

 

I feel your pain. I usually get terrible efficiencies as my grain bill gets larger. easily drops 10 points on beers over 1.070. I've heard a bunch of explanations including 1) poor crush 2) incomplete conversion 3) thermometer off (and although you intended to mash at 149 you were actually lower than that and therefore see #2 4) incomplete sparge and/or channeling through the grainbed.

frankly, I've stopped really looking for a culprit and just accept ~65% efficiency for big beers and calculate that into the recipe. Maybe I'm lazy, but adding ~1# of grain to make up for the inefficiency is the easiest fix (IMHO). alright forum...flame away!

 

Screw flaming ya... You know your system and that's what I would think is important. Question... Do you just up the base grain???

 

I brewed a belgian triple earler in the year and had poor efficiency...the og put the batch in the Belgian Blond category. I thought perhaps using a 5 gal round cooler for a mash tun was the culprit. I too seem to be having a lower efficiency with the larger grain bills and will be planning on a 65% efficiency instead of 75 when targeting an OG of 1.08+

 

bigger the batch, lower the efficiency.

Fact of life.

account for it next time.

The more grain in the tun, the lower your efficiency will be. I don't really know why, just know it's true from experience.

 

I did my first big all grain beer today today and found myself sitting at a very pathetic 65% eff. Hit all my temperatures right on and was very surprised to see my efficiency reading.

I had no idea until reading this thread that the more grain the less efficiency you may get. Good to know for the next batch for sure!

 

The more grain, the bigger the mash addition, the bigger the mash addition, the smaller the sparge, the smaller the sparge the fewer additional sugars are rinsed from the mash(extracted), the fewer the additional sugars extracted, the lower the efficiency. Perhaps someone with more savvy than I can elaborate on what ratio of sparge gallons to grain pounds this phenomenon takes place since I've done 1.070 without running into it. Either sparge larger and boil longer or bump the grain bill. To brew true to recipe you'd have to increase every grain by X% to maintain the ratios. Something tells me that most of us don't do this though.

 

I use Beersmith. If I'm using someone elses's recipe I enter it as-is, then adjust it by entering my efficiency...it scales all of the grains, and not just the base grain. That makes it super simple to adapt for my system. It is also easy to adjust batch size using beersmith.