Efficiency Praise and a Question

[fuzzyglasses]

I've been lurking and read what I can on here. It's been a great resource and I must have learned something good because I'm producing some delicious beer lately.

I've been reviewing all the numbers for my All-Grain recipes with software and it appears I've been running around 80-85% efficiency for awhile now. I've known it's been up there since I use 5 (or 5.5) gallon recipes but create about 6gallons post-boil and still always hit the OG number. I'm aware most of the recipes base the OG upon 75% efficiency.

Is there anything I should know before continuing doing this? Is this too good to be true? I boil for 60 minutes minimum. Could I be low on my mash temperatures causing this? I check the thermometer along with others and it's within a degree or two. Should I increase the hops a small amount? Obviously i know and use more yeast upon having more wort. 10 gallon rectangle cooler with surescreen, took 5 minutes to make.

One other question on a Beamish Clone. My BYO recipe calls for collection of only 4gallons of wort from the mash&sparge and then add 2.5 of water to the kettle. I assume i can just add those last 2.5 gallons of water to the mashtun to further rinse the grains or am i just wasting time?

Thanks, Scott

 

[fuzzyglasses]

Batch sparge. Usually mash at 149-152 with 1.25qt. water per pound of grain for one hour. Typical. Sparge with enough 185 water to make about 7.25 gallons pre-boil.

I stopped trying to "mash out" i couldn't seem to get my Mash temperatures up to 170 even with several gallons of boiling water. Then I couldn't use nearly as much sparge water so I stopped doing this after my first few AG sessions.

 

[RandomBeerGuy]

I have to say that I finally hit 86%. Ive done a handful of AG batches and never hit this sadly one of my brews I hit 66% eff. When I hit 86% I did a long slow sparge process. My OG hit right on the highest OG for the style I was shooting for. I was proud. Good job on hitting in the 80-85+.

For your last question, It sounds like it wants to have you skip the sparge process. Maybe its thinking you should have pulled enough sugars out to simply skip the sparge process altogether? Kinda like an extract batch of making a concentrated wort then adding water.

 

[fuzzyglasses]

Recipe calls to mash with 9.5 quarts (2.4 gallons). mash for 60 minutes. Collect 4 gallons wort. (I suppose I'll either sparge or just mash out with enough to make it to 4g, directions don't indicate) Add 2.5 gallons water. Begin boil.

I'll stick with these unless someone thinks I should just thin out the mash even more with the 2.5g extra or do an additional sparge with the 2.5.

 

[emetcalf]

How much grain does the recipe use? If it's using a really small amount of grain, then over sparging could be a potential problem. But for a normal recipe I would just use the last 2.5 gallons as more sparge water.