2qt./LB Mash...

[The Pol]

Thanks Kaiser... I am going to keep trying this, but this was a HUGE jump for me... 15%. And the system has been dialed in for 70% for a long while.

 

[Kaiser]

Pol, you may want to check the first wort gravity. Should come close to what is listed in this table:

It if is there is not much more to get in terms of efficiency unless you start lautering more efficiently. But that can have quality impacts.

Kai

 

[The Pol]

Just an update... on my last brew I got 85% eff. up from 70%, the only thing I changed was my mash thickness. I wanted to report that I got 72% attenuation as well... so there was no apparent increase in attenuation with this batch at all.

 

[Kaiser]

Just an update... on my last brew I got 85% eff. up from 70%, the only thing I changed was my mash thickness. I wanted to report that I got 72% attenuation as well... so there was no apparent increase in attenuation with this batch at all.

Glad to hear that your experiences confirm my findings.

BTW, I have been searching on-line for other brewer's experiences with thin mashes and it is amazing how many brewers are simply afraid to deviate from the 1.25 qt/lb "standard". And many of them cite common home brewing books to say that thinner mashes won't work as well b/c the enzymes are more quickly denatured. This 1.25 qt/lb rule for mash thickness has very deep roots.

Kai

 

[mummasan]

I usually have my grain milled at my LHBS - it is set at .40 and my typical efficiency into the kettle is in the 60s. My normal mash thickness is 1 or 1.25 qts per pound and I do a mash out plus sparge.

Kai suggested to me in another thread to try a thinner mash. I did just that for my last brew.

With a .40 crush and 2 qt/lb mash I got 74.5% efficiency into the kettle. Plus I skipped the mash out and just sparged once. Not only am I happy with my efficiency, I skipped the mash out (I saved time).

I appreciate the suggestion Kai! My brew day is quicker and easier plus my efficiency is finally good enough where I don't have to tinker with recipes to get the target gravity.

From now on, my standard brewing procedure will be to mash at 2 qt/lb.

Matt

 

[Bobby_M]

I'm not going to throw this idea out for my own process just yet but I stepped from my typical 1.3qt/lb up to 1.75 and lost 5%. I'll try 2qt/lb next time. Granted, I do acknowledge that efficiency isn't what is important. 80% is a solid place to be.

 

[Kaiser]

I'm not going to throw this idea out for my own process just yet but I stepped from my typical 1.3qt/lb up to 1.75 and lost 5%. I'll try 2qt/lb next time. Granted, I do acknowledge that efficiency isn't what is important. 80% is a solid place to be.

Bobby, interesting numbers to have in this case would be the first wort gravity of the 1.3 qt/lb and 1.75 qt/lb mashes. They can be used to calculate the conversion efficiency (efficiency before lauter losses). If these efficiencies are close then the thinner mash will cause you to loose efficiency into the kettle. In the cases where brewers report an increase in efficiency into the kettle when going to a thin mash the rise of the conversion efficiency (amount of starches converted) outweighed the increased loss of extract in the lauter.

As a result I'm not saying that a thinner mash will always increase efficiency. The better your efficiency already is, the less likely the chance that a thin mash is going to increase it.

Kai

 

[The Pol]

I am going to continue to explore this with my future brews... I am recording my findings and I will be creating an article for BrewersFriend.com regarding this experiment.

Thanks Kaiser for the input, I will be using your chart there for my future brews as well.

85% eff. is pretty darn good for me, it will be sad when I run the control brews and go back to a seemingly lower eff.

 

[Bobby_M]

Bobby, interesting numbers to have in this case would be the first wort gravity of the 1.3 qt/lb and 1.75 qt/lb mashes. They can be used to calculate the conversion efficiency (efficiency before lauter losses). If these efficiencies are close then the thinner mash will cause you to loose efficiency into the kettle. In the cases where brewers report an increase in efficiency into the kettle when going to a thin mash the rise of the conversion efficiency (amount of starches converted) outweighed the increased loss of extract in the lauter.

As a result I'm not saying that a thinner mash will always increase efficiency. The better your efficiency already is, the less likely the chance that a thin mash is going to increase it.

Kai

Kai, agreed. I just wanted to pose a lone dissenting voice so that everyone doesn't think it's a fix-all. I'm pretty sure my crush is so fine that the enzymes have an orgy at minute #1.

 

[menschmaschine]

I need to reconfirm, but I've been playing with water:grain ratios and lost about 5% (brewhouse) as well (93 to 88). On my latest brew, I went back with 1.25 qts and was back up at 93%. Obviously other factors could have been in play and I did do a 90 min. mash, but I didn't change anything else.

I may be brewing again this weekend (if my package arrives in time), so I'll go with 1.75qts and see what happens.

 

[Kaiser]

I need to reconfirm, but I've been playing with water:grain ratios and lost about 5% (brewhouse) as well (93 to 88)

This is basically what I was explaining to Bobby. The bump you are getting from conversion efficiency is much less than the reduction in lauter efficiency that you get from not having as much sparge water. As a result your efficiency suffers. Only brewers with low efficiencies should see decent efficiency benefits from going to a thin mash.

Bobby, even though it may not come through as that I always greatly appreciate when brewers report experiences that don’t match other brewer’s experiences. It makes me think about what I’m saying and a sound theory should be able to cover all these experiences. For all who want to go really deep into this subject of figuring out where efficiency is lost, have a look at this: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Troubleshooting_Brewhouse_Efficiency#Example:_Making_sense_of_the_numbers . It’s an example on how to dissect your efficiency into the kettle (or even into the fermenter if you measure the volume of trub left in the kettle). If you do that for a thick vs. thin mash experiment you may see the changes in conversion and lauter efficiency and how they are affected by the mash thickness.

Thin mashing is as little a fix-all as crushing finer or mashing longer is.

OPINION: I think that a certain amount of efficiency needs to be lost during the lauter for good beer sake. Sparging always produces less quality wort than the first wort and I want to minimize the amount of wort gained from sparging as much as reasonable. As a result I actually prefer using more strike water than sparge water in most cases. I feel that a reasonable amount of sacrifice is 10-15% when batch sparging, which is what you get when you use 1 sparge for beers between 11 and 15P and 2 sparges for beers above 16P. Note that this is lauter efficiency and it not necessarily translates into 10-15% loss of efficiency into the kettle. No experiments have been done by myself to demonstrate that reducing the lauter losses below 10% will actually yield an inferior beer.

Kai

 

[SpanishCastleAle]

Kaiser,
I had a question on that example in your Troubleshooting Efficiency page so I'll ask it here:

In the beginning you say that there are unconverted starches in the spent grain and say; “these 5% are still in the spent grain” …but then towards the end you say that “11% remained in the spent grain”. So I’m a bit confused. Is this 11% purely in the liquid that is still absorbed by the spent grain?

So is there 5% (which is starch) that "never got out of the individual grains" and then another 11% (which is sugar) that “never got out of the grain bed”?

Another question I had was about the addition of cold water to the spent grain to determine what was left behind. Did you use cold water specifically to keep those two numbers above separate? That is, you wanted to ONLY remove any residual sugars left in the grain bed but NOT convert any of that 5% of unconverted starch?

I think I may have answered my own question here…but I’ll ask anyway just in case I’m wrong.

 

[Kaiser]

So is there 5% (which is starch) that "never got out of the individual grains" and then another 11% (which is sugar) that “never got out of the grain bed”?

Yes, that’s what I mean and I’ll be more clearly in the article.

Another question I had was about the addition of cold water to the spent grain to determine what was left behind. Did you use cold water specifically to keep those two numbers above separate? That is, you wanted to ONLY remove any residual sugars left in the grain bed but NOT convert any of that 5% of unconverted starch?

The water can be any temperature. Cold water is easier b/c that’s what comes out of the tap. But thinking of it, you are correct that there is a benefit in not counting the unconverted starch as it was included in an earlier measurement and should not be included in a subsequent measurement.

Another test that I read about actually boils a sample of the spent grain to gelatinize all the starch and then adds a-amylase after cooling it down. This way you can also test how much unconverted starch was left in the grain. This is a little more robust than my method of measuring the FW gravity b/c it eliminates the effect of the actual extract potential of the grain but it is much more involved and we don’t need the accuracy that would be gained with this test.

Kai

 

[humann_brewing]

I plan on using 2qt/LB of grain on my first Lager attempt tonight but that is because I am doing a single decoction and will be taking a 1/3 out to boil.

Hope it goes well.

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

This is quite the interesting topic considering I am quite efficiency minded (I always look for ways to make everything better.... its a downfall in some cases and a blessing in other situations.)

Either way, I would have thought there would have been some crazy calculations listed out in this thread about absolute potential of extracted sugars of "x"lbs of grain vs. actual amount of extracted sugars. Or some sort of volumetric efficiency degradation on a linear scale or chart. etc.

One of the things about AG brewing that I do not comprehend is why is it stated and accepted in many circles that a 75% efficiency rate is a really good target and there is really no need to try to get any higher (Jamil), but then there are all of you guys shooting for 90's and while there are some dissenters in the bunch and others bickering about this that or the other thing, you'd think that after over 2000 years of doing this, we would have figured out what is best by now.

But then I have to remind myself that there isn't always a "best" and that there is a grey area in many things. I would think that this method would help ME in MY brewing because I usually undershoot my OG with my setup. Not by miles, but by like a half a point. Then again, on my last brew, cramming 13.5qts of water and 12lbs 4oz of grain in a 5gal SS pot (stovetop AG method), there was about 1/4" of room before the top of the pot was reached with my mash. I calculated about 67% brewhouse eff on this one. It looked like I was making enough oatmeal to feed a batallion, and I couldn't help but thinking that at just north of 1qt/lb of grain, it was very "dry" in there. I would like to contribute to this notion, and once I get a larger pot or a cooler for a MLT (finally) I will try to go to 2qt/lb and see what happens.

Thanks Pol

 

[Bobby_M]

I think trying to qualify a realistic threshold between wort quality and efficiency is almost impossible to do unless you were insanely motivated to do so. It would involve brewing several otherwise identical batches and deriving the wort from mashes of varying efficiency. Of course, the OG would have to remain the same along with every thing else, but the lauter efficency (likely by differing sparge volumes) would have to change. After an identical fermentation, you'd have to blind taste the samples and rate them in order.

I don't have any problem with Kai's assertions because they make sense. I have been concerned with pulling 92% Mash/Lauter efficiency. I have been only using a single bulk sparge on OG targets of 1.045 or less and assuming 80% efficiency instead. I don't know for sure if my wort quality has improved but it's only a dollar more worth of grain to try it out for a while.

 

[Kaiser]

would have thought there would have been some crazy calculations listed out in this thread about absolute potential of extracted sugars of "x"lbs of grain vs. actual amount of extracted sugars. Or some sort of volumetric efficiency degradation on a linear scale or chart. etc.

If you want we can generate crazy data as well

One of the things about AG brewing that I do not comprehend is why is it stated and accepted in many circles that a 75% efficiency rate is a really good target and there is really no need to try to get any higher (Jamil), but then there are all of you guys shooting for 90's and while there are some dissenters in the bunch and others bickering about this that or the other thing, you'd think that after over 2000 years of doing this, we would have figured out what is best by now.

That’s the thing with brewing. Everyone has his/her own opinion and their own process which is influenced by their experiences and what they have heard. Jamil is one voice (although a quite large and well respected one) but he is not very strong on the technical side of brewing. 75% is a good efficiency if it comes from a high conversion efficiency and a low lauter efficiency. The latter means that sparging was kept to a minium. I may say that 80-85% is better as you use your grains better and have higher bar for what your conversion efficiency should be. But you’ll have to crush more finely which may mean slower run-off.

In the end you need to see the whole picture and then it all will become clear to you and you may find that shooting for efficiency in the 90s is not worth it. But a lot of brewers have a higher is better attitude towards efficiency and I want to curb that a little bit in raising awareness for what contributes to efficiency and that 75% for one brewer is not 75% for another brewer.

Kai

 

[Piotr]

From my experience: I usualy stick to 70% efficiency. I crush fine, mash long (1h), but fly-sparge with limited amount of water 7-9 Ltr (~7 quarts).

Last batch I did with thin mash (1kg:4Ltr) and efficiency jumped up almost to 80%. If it keeps going on like that, I will be able to back-off on sparge water even further.

 

[SpanishCastleAle]

Either way, I would have thought there would have been some crazy calculations listed out in this thread about absolute potential of extracted sugars of "x"lbs of grain vs. actual amount of extracted sugars. Or some sort of volumetric efficiency degradation on a linear scale or chart. etc.

One of the things about AG brewing that I do not comprehend is why is it stated and accepted in many circles that a 75% efficiency rate is a really good target and there is really no need to try to get any higher (Jamil), but then there are all of you guys shooting for 90's and while there are some dissenters in the bunch and others bickering about this that or the other thing, you'd think that after over 2000 years of doing this, we would have figured out what is best by now.

2000 years? I thought it was closer to 5000. We haven't figured out the 'best' music either after all these years.

Sometimes I wonder what numbers we all use for points/pound/gallon. I just use whatever published numbers I find but even they don't always agree.

For the longest time I specifically AVOIDED trying to go higher than 80% (into the fermenter) and tried to stay at around 75%. But that was with LHBS crushed grain. Now that I have a barley crusher the exact same brewing process yields ~83%-84% (into the fermenter) and that's with only a .040" crush. So I consider that a 'good' increase (just intuitively...no proof) because my 'losses' were mostly due to a poor crush (my sparge:mash water ratio is usually ~3:2 so I don't think I'm over-sparging).

 

[balto charlie]

I did my first double decoction thin mash(2qt/lb) last weekend and saw my efficiency jump from the low 70's to mid 80's. I was surprised by the increase. There's something to this. I was making a Vienna lager w/ Vienna malt.

Is a thin mash still considered a good method for ales w/ 2 row? Or is this better used with German lagers and their different grains(Vienna, Munich, Pils)

 

[Kaiser]

Is a thin mash still considered a good method for ales w/ 2 row? Or is this better used with German lagers and their different grains(Vienna, Munich, Pils)

I think it works regardless of the type of malt.

But I like to point out that traditional English mashes are thick (1-1.25 qt/lb) mashes and that you may want to keep mashing thick if your are making English style beers. For German beers it's the other way around. thin mashes are traditional. I'm saying that b/c the mash thicknes has the potential to effect the character of the beer.

Kai

 

[wildwest450]

Kind of off topic, but I want to try this. How do you change your mash ratio in beersmith? Im having a hell of a time finding it. I believe the default setting is 1.25 qt/lb.

 

[The Pol]

Kind of off topic, but I want to try this. How do you change your mash ratio in beersmith? Im having a hell of a time finding it. I believe the default setting is 1.25 qt/lb.

Just change it where you choose your type of mash. It allows you to choose the qt/lb when you create your mash schedule.

 

[Medo]

Yo,
Wildwest, this is off the top of my head, but when your in the section where your building the recipe, at the bottom, after you pick a type of mash profile, and it shows up in the white window telling you how much water and what temp to shoot at, if you double click your mash profile in the white window, you will get the details of that setup, and you can manually change the amount from 1.25 to 2qt per lb. I will say though that I havent ever found a way to control the amount of sparge water, its figured from the settings above. And I think it comes up a bit short. When i do 15lbs of grain, i need 30 qts of water at such and such temp for so many minutes. Usually the sparge water will be like 1.5 gallons. From experience I have found that doesnt get me the 7 gallons i want to have at start of boil, but, about 6 or so, so i add a gallon to whatever the sparge is supposed to be. This is only when i use 2qts per lb. But thats all the time now, its worked great for me.
A great day to you all.

 

[menschmaschine]

I just want to state for the record that although I have high efficiency (usually 90+%), it was not something that I strove to get. I just got it. It was practically an accident and has been that way since my first batch. I just happened to build a 3-tier gravity system with keggles/false bottom and fly-sparging capabilities before ever brewing, my water just happened to be soft and with a low pH, and my LHBS just happened to have a good crush (I've a Barley Crusher now).

I've read before about wort quality and efficiency, but I've only read about it in generic terms. I'd like to know what exactly would be some of the differences in quality. Different sugars or ratio of sugars?... different proteins/levels?... other compounds? Is it more to do with tannin extraction?

 

[wildwest450]

Aha! it's the old double click on the mash profile trick. You can't fool me all the time.

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

Thanks everyone for posting your opinions and findings on this matter. I have been hovering around the 72-75% efficiency mark the entire time I've been brewing. I've gone from a 5 gallon MLT with a SS brain, to a 10 gallon with a large copper mainfold, and even from batch sparging to fly sparging. For the last 5 brews I've also used my new Barley Crusher instead of the LHBS crush. Nothing has had an effect on the efficiency numbers except for fly sparging, and that only increased efficiency by 2%. I typically mash at 1.25-1.33 qts/lb. depending on the recipe and desired body of the finished product.

Now, I may be incorrect but based on the limited set of results here's some hypotheses I see that could be made.

1. People who routinely get <80% efficiency will likely see an efficiency increase, which is mainly attributed to conversion efficiency.

2. People who routinely get >85% efficiency will not see a big efficiency gain in a thinner mash. There may even be a decrease due to a detrimental effect the thinner mash has on lautering efficiency.

Thoughts?

 

[The Pol]

Thanks everyone for posting your opinions and findings on this matter. I have been hovering around the 72-75% efficiency mark the entire time I've been brewing. I've gone from a 5 gallon MLT with a SS brain, to a 10 gallon with a large copper mainfold, and even from batch sparging to fly sparging. For the last 5 brews I've also used my new Barley Crusher instead of the LHBS crush. Nothing has had an effect on the efficiency numbers except for fly sparging, and that only increased efficiency by 2%. I typically mash at 1.25-1.33 qts/lb. depending on the recipe and desired body of the finished product.

Now, I may be incorrect but based on the limited set of results here's some hypotheses I see that could be made.

1. People who routinely get <80% efficiency will likely see an efficiency increase, which is mainly attributed to conversion efficiency.

2. People who routinely get >85% efficiency will not see a big efficiency gain in a thinner mash. There may even be a decrease due to a detrimental effect the thinner mash has on lautering efficiency.

Thoughts?

This is my understanding...

 

[luvmy40]

I caught this thread this morning and decided to try 2.0qt./lb myself.
I batch sparge in a 10gal cooler/tun w/ss braid.
I crush with a Barley Crusher set a factory default (.039?)
The grain bill for my last brew was 11 lb. I mashed in with 1.25 qt./lb @ 154 deg f mash temp.(13.75 qt. @ 165deg f). First sparge with 11 qt. @ 212 deg for 170 deg. mash. Second sparge with 11 qt. @ 170 deg.
I hit 78% brew House efficiency with this one (my best yet).

Tonight I used the same grain bill + 1lb 20L Munich for a total of 12lb.
Mash in with 24 qt. @ 161 deg. single sparge with 20 qt. @ 206 deg.
First runnings = 17qt. SG was 1.060 @ 80deg. f. Sparge = 20qt. SG was 1.018 @ 90deg. f.

If I don't lose more than 3-5% (I actually hope to gain some ground) I will continue to use this method as it made for an easier mash experience.

I will update with my post boil OG in an hour or so.

 

[The Pol]

Looking forward to your results. The thinner mash DOES help A LOT with the mash in. Soup is easier to mix than oatmeal.