low efficacy = better beer

Why does everyone chase efficacy?

Seriously add 5 pounds of base malt to your beer and stop sparging sooner.

My lasy big beer I stopped sparging at 1.060

You might call that wasteful, but I'm not Busweiser.

I'm here for the best beer, not the least expensive.

So waste $5, you have my permission.

 

Oh Geez, congrats for you. Enjoy your brewing efficiency and move on. Claiming beer is better with lower efficiencies is silly. I've seen this thing before with no sparge but I still think it's silly really.


Rev.

 

My efficiency is on the lower end (usually 70-72%), higher for session beers. But it's consistent. I don't care if I have low efficiency, or high efficiency, as long as my beer tastes good and I can make what I want to make consistently. Efficiency is a number I use for recipe calculation, nothing more.

 

If I get much over 80% efficiency I have problems with tannins. I could fix this by adjusting the pH of my sparge water but I'm not too worried about it. I've settled in around 75% and am happy there.

 

I only know my efficiency because Beersmith tells me. Otherwise I don't give a turkey. I am confident in my cooler mash tun with a braid; it hasn't let me down yet.

 

My efficacy is usally pretty high. My efficiency, on the other hand, varies a little.

 

#winning!

 

High efficacy = good beer.
High efficiency = stronger (still good in my case) beer.

 

I'm not chasing numbers but I also would rather use the ingredients that I have then throw away a bunch of fermentables and add $5 worth of DME. Not sure what the OP is trying to say. If you want to make your brew day easier just switch to Extract and spend the extra $$ doing that. Adding DME instead of sparging will not make you better beer though.

 

I think the chasing of efficiency is important to an extent in order to maximize your cost effectiveness. To an extent, high efficiency is a good thing. But it depends on what kind of beer you are brewing as well as your tastes and preferences.

 

On the commercial level, absolutely. But on the homebrew level, a few extra points of efficiency saves you at the most a few bucks in grain. If it's so critical to save a few bucks per batch, you should be spending your money somewhere other than brewing.

 

what he said

 

I agree with Qhrumphf (Alex). It a hobby of love and pride, not how to brew the cheapest.

 

Brewing is a hobby. Some brewers lean towards creating the perfect recipe. Some brewers like to make gadgets. Some brewers like to really crank down their process and hit "professional" efficiency levels. There is nothing wrong with someone enjoying any of those aspects.

 

High efficiency is nice, but not essential.

Consistent efficiency is, IMO, the best goal. While you can adjust to compensate for variations from batch to batch, this is going to introduce other variations in the beer you produce. Many homebrewers are happy with some variation batch-to-batch, and this is part of the charm of any homemade product. However, to consistently make the best product possible, maintaining as much control as possible over all steps of the process is essential. This way you can adjust one or a few parameters at a time and have confidence that you know what effect your adjustment had.

One of those parameters, of course, is the efficiency itself. Others have pointed out some side effects of tweaking efficiency, such as changing the rate of tannin extraction. It seems plausible to me that if you want more of the grainy character of the malt, extracting less from a larger quantity may have that effect. I know from brewing coffee that changing the amount of coffee can have unexpected effects. For example, it was a major revelation when I found that the key to avoiding harsh, sour bitterness was to INCREASE rather than decrease the coffee-to-water ratio. This is probably like the tannin effect---you lower your extraction efficiency and leave behind some of the unpleasantness. Of course for beer, the process is more complex (unless you're roasting your own coffee), so things like mash temperature will enter this equation prominently.

In general, I suspect that a high efficiency---one nearing the limit of your process---will probably be more repeatable. My reasoning is that a high efficiency means you "got everything right," while a lower efficiency may come from a number of different errors. This is just a guess, though. My own efficiency is mediocre and variable, so I don't speak with authority here.

 

I'd rather have consistency than any specific value of efficiency.

Although, if I may borrow a line from the great baron munchausen, in times of trouble I find a modicum of snuff to be most efficacious...

 

Like said, consistency is the more important. If I know my effeciency is 75%, then I do my reciepe for 75% eff, and I got exactly the beer I want.

 

The OP is saying what I have said on here - stop sparging at say 1.030 hop well and enjoy a super beer.

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

I'd like to post a retraction to my old thread. I have since got my own mill. My brewhouse efficiency has gone from a consistent 56% (LHBS crush) to a consistent 71% (with a Barley Crusher standard gap).

The quality of the beer it produces is completely unaffected.

I believed I was sparging less and therefore producing a higher quality wort. Wrong.

 

Zombie thread wants a beer.