Help with efficiency

I have done 2 BIAB batches and hit 86 % doing this: heat water to 165, add grains let sit 30 mins , reheat to 165 while stirring, sit 30mins , remove bag and dunk and swirl in another pot with 170 water for 10 mins. Poured all water back thru grain bag to filter. These were 3 gallon batches . Bought a igloo mash tun and have done 2 batches and did a pre heat inside cooler to help with temp accuracy, added grains @ 167 water , sat 30 mins stirred, sat 30 then drained wort, added 212 water and let sit 10 mins then drained and fly sparked to fill brew pot. Checked pre boil gravity and was at 1.030og was supposed to be 1.057 for a 5 gallon batch. Last batch recipe was : 6 #2 row, 2#pilsner 2# minute rice dust added rice to mlt did not re hydrate. Please help

 

I am guessing that mashing you grains at 165F-167F is your issue. At that temperature you are effectively stopping the conversion of starches to sugars. You should be mashing between 149 and 156.

That would be my guess.

 

I dough in at 167 which droops the temp to 150 that's where I'm mashing

 

You could try this.
Stick to the temps you used.
Use 10 lbs. 2-row for simplicity (for now).
Mash with 1.25 qts. per lb. of grain.
Stir well-rest 30 min.-stir well-rest 30 min.
Stir well-vorlauf-drain.
Add 2.5 gallons 170-175*F water (2 qts. per lb.)
Stir VERY WELL-vorlauf-drain.
Add another 2.5 gallons 170-175*F water (2 qts. per lb.)
Stir VERY WELL-vorlauf-drain.
Boil
This METHOD will give you pretty good efficiency and consistency.
Good luck

 

How thick was your mash? Water/Grist ratio? You put in two pounds of minute rice dust (I assume this means you ground minute rice to dust) without hydrating. Having never used this, I would assume that it would soak up a great deal of water, leaving your mash possibly without enough liquid for proper enzymatic action.

Also, I am quite surprised your BIAB mash worked out well because in the post you describe heating the mash up high enough to denature enzymes without first allowing enough time for conversion. It says you used 165 water and this would pull down when grains are added into upper sac range. However, it says that only thirty minutes into the conversion you heated the whole thing up to 165, which would denature your enzymes. I assume you lucked out because that size batch would likely only take 45 minutes to convert (BrewSmith calculation) and it probably took you that much time from mash in until you got the heat up high enough to denature. Why did you raise the mash up at this point to that temp?

 

What is your crush like? Do you use your own mill, one at the LHBS or from a supplier like NB or AHS?

Could just be a bad crush. I always remill anything from MoreBeer, NB or any other mail order supplier. They tend to enjoy shipping me bags of grain that are only about 20% crushed, even if you pay for or denote crushed.

 

Thanks mbtb I will try adjusting my temps down and using that method next time .

 

Are you taking a gravity reading of your wort when the wort is still 150F? If so that is part of your problem.

If you have a homebrew shop mill your grain it is probably not milled fine enough.

When I used to have the shop mill my grain my efficiency was 60%! Now that I mill my own it's 80% all else equal.

 

Are you sure you have your numbers right? 10lbs of fermentables is going to be in the neighborhood of 360 points or only 1.051 @7 gallons preboil and 100% efficiency.

Also, do you have a false bottom for that mash tun?

 

Water ratio was 1.25 , which was 3.6 gal . I just mixed in minute rice right out of the box as I had read on various forums that should work .
BIAB : I read in "brewing classic styles " about doing a stovetop partial mash . This was how it was done: heat water to 167 add grains stir and let sit 30 mins, reheat water and grains to 165 let fit another 30 ( heating I think took me 20 mins or so) then remove bag and place in 2.5 gals water that was @ 170 for ten mins. Then drain bag and combine pots and start boil . I used 1.25 ratio in this as well .

I thought mlt would be better since it would hold constant temp , but since I have done 2 batches in it (the first had no rice ) I haven't even come close to target gravity. 1st mash was 64% eff. Thought I could do better on the 2nd by mirroring the stovetop schedule

 

Was milled a lhbs and I had him run it 2 x for all batches. I read with BIAB you get better results with a finer crush

 

I cool it down to 80-90 degrees first

 

This is fine if you want a light body beer. If you want more body, raise the strike temp. 2-3 degrees.

 

Sorry the recipe had more in it , 6# two row, 2# pilsner, 2.4 rice , 7 oz carapils and yes I have a false bottom

 

Also do you check the temp throughout the mash? if you hit 150 at the start there is a chance it could dip dangerously low by the end of the hour and you would lose a lot of possible conversion.

 

Yeah it was constant the whole time

 

Did you defile the grave site of Ninkasi?

Maybe you have just angered the gods of brewing and need to make an offering to get into their good graces again, maybe a blood (orange) hefeweizen? haha.

 

Lol maybe!!! This sucks because I did a lot of research onto what you should do to get good effeciency. I thought I was doing it right!

 

Well, presumably you have the "mash" part down since you've done BIAB before, so I suspect you've got some issues with the sparging process.

You can confirm that by taking a gravity readings straight from the mash tun at the end of your conversion rest.

How exactly are you sparging? Temps, rate, time etc. It's easier to muck up a fly sparge than a batch sparge.

 

Yeah, I would vote you move to batch sparging, easier and if done right there is no difference in efficiency from a proper fly sparge.

You could be getting channeling during your fly sparge. That would lead to pretty much water being fed into your first runnings rather than washed sugars. That would kill your efficiency.

 

Last batch I batch sparged by draining tun completely , added 3.5 gals of 212 water to mash out at 170. Held that temp for 10 mins and made sure to stir water and grains when I first added water . Then I began to drain into boil pot and poured another gallon or so on top of grains thru a colander . Maintaining 1-2 inches of water

 

Tasted wort theu the whole process and took ph readings

 

"Last batch I batch sparged by draining tun completely , added 3.5 gals of 212 water to mash out at 170. Held that temp for 10 mins and made sure to stir water and grains when I first added water . Then I began to drain into boil pot and poured another gallon or so on top of grains thru a colander . Maintaining 1-2 inches of water"

Not sure what you did here exactly but that isn't really batch sparging. Did you drain the tun and then add boiling water then drain again? Then fly sparged over that?

How much wort did you collect from the first runnings. what was its gravity? How much from second runnings? What was the gravity? How much water did you mash with originally?

 

This is totally off topic but I am new to this forum and for some reason cannot start a new thread. It says invalid thread when I try to post. Anyone know why?