BK Efficiency vs Brewhouse

[triangulum33]

When efficiency is assumed or referred to in recipies and conversation, is it typically brewhouse efficiency or efficiency into the kettle?
I understand the calculations, but am not sure how/when they are used.

My last batches of Haus PA and winter warmer were 75% into the kettle and 67 brewhouse.



For reference:

Calculating Efficiency:
(measured points) / (potential points) = efficiency
(54 or 1.054) / (72 or 1.072) = 75%

Calculating Brew house Efficiency:
(Measured Points * Actual volume) / (Potential Points * Target Volume) = Brew house Efficiency
((54) * (4.5 gallons)) / ((72) * (5.0 gallons)) = 67.5%

 

[AiredAle]

It is efficiency from mash tun into the boil kettle, since an assumption of this efficiency is the basis of most grain bills. There are too many other individual variables to use brewhouse efficiency for the basis of grain bills.

 

[stux]

It is efficiency from mash tun into the boil kettle, since an assumption of this efficiency is the basis of most grain bills. There are too many other individual variables to use brewhouse efficiency for the basis of grain bills.

The problem is that's not true. For example BeerSmith 2 uses brewhouse efficiency and when people post a recipe from BeerSmith 2 they invariably use brewhouse efficiency.

I wish every recipe was based on mash/kettle efficiency, as that's what really matters

 

[AiredAle]

In 30 years of brewing and talking about it, I don't recall anyone in "recipes or conversation" as the OP mentions, talk about brewhouse efficiency when dealing with how much grain to use to hit an OG target.

I don't use BeerSmith or any commercial software, so I can't say what they are based on, but if you can customize it to your own brewery, then brewhouse efficiency makes complete sense.

When discussing a recipe with another brewer, or writing one for publication brewhouse efficiency would be totally misleading since it varies so much from brewery to brewery.

 

[Bobby_M]

Brewhouse efficiency is "into the fermenter" and it accounts for lautering and boil kettle trub and system losses. I suppose there's seldom discussed efficiency number that would take racking loss, fermenter trub loss, and spillage into the serving vessel losses into account but now we're getting ridiculous.

 

[Brewerforlife]

Us pro brewers are most interested in mash/sparge efficency. I want to know what my mash/sparge process is doing on a consistent basis. what goes into kettle pre-boil. That tells you what your getting out of your mash-tun, brewhouse efficency has so many variables, i.e hot & cold break,shrinkage,amount of hops,filtered or not,etc. I still want to know brewhouse eff. to see my BBL yield, with that said you want to know if you run X amount of water through X grain and get 1.xxx gravity into kettle. This is what will accurately tell you what your getting out of your induvidual mash tun, and is what i punch into beersmith. If i rely on what goes into ferm./bright tank isn't going to tell me what i'm getting out of mash tun consistently, there's to many variables after pre-boil. This is assuming full volume boils of course. Cheers!!!

 

[ajf]

If I want to hit a particular OG, I need to know what my brewhouse efficiency is.
If I want to adjust the wort during the boil to achieve a particular OG, then I need to measure my mash/lauter efficiency, and also know the correlation between the mash/lauter and brewhouse efficiencies.
If I want to boast about my great efficiency, then I need my extraction efficiency.

-a.