Efficiency... Ugh

[Homergah]

I don't know if this has been covered, but.... It's certainly not the vigor of your boil causing efficiency problems. If you are boiling too much your gravity would be HIGHER than expected. You're not boiling off sugar, which means you are concentrating it. I have found the absolute best way to know where you are at and where you are going to be, is to use gravity units, not just gravity. 4.25 gallons of wort @ 1.060 is not the same as 5.5 gallons of wort @ 1.060. 4.25 x 60=255 units. 5.5 x 60=330 units. Read Designing Great Beers for detailed explanation.

 

[tennesseean_87]

I have gotten slightly better numbers from doing a pourover sparge. I also recommend having a gallon of distilled water on hand to top up after the boil if you need to (until you get your numbers figured out). You may not want to do this is your efficiency is already low, however. You can also add some DME post-boil if your gravity is low (boil first).

OP, what efficiency are you getting? I believe BS will calculate for you if you put your info in. What efficiency is BS defaulting to which you aren't hitting?

I need to configure BS myself. For years I've used Brewtarget and did some of my own volume calcs and always aimed to end up a little low on volume. If I was under gravity a few points, I'd leave it. If I was over gravity I'd dilute to hit desired gravity (usually just a quart or two). You could do something similar until you get your equipment fine-tuned.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

FWIW I use Brewers friend recipe calculator forever. Its always been dead on with my numbers...and simple. Add your grain...your ferementer volume and yeast and the expected gravity reading pops up....if your numbers are different slide the efficiency scale till it hits your numbers and thats your efficiency....really simple layout that works

 

[SEndorf]

These are all excellent ideas to increase efficiency, but back to the OP, until you do a few brew sessions and carefully record your volumes, losses, determine your BE percentage, and dial in your profile, you're really chasing the dogs tail. Beersmith told you you're 9 points shy of your target. At this point, question and modify your calculated target. THEN incorporate all of these great suggestions.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

When you sparge the SG of the collected wort is lower than that of the original "first runnings" but you still are collecting sugar, just in a more dilute liquid. Then you boil off the excess water and that concentrates that sugary wort to give you a higher volume of wort at the anticipated OG. The "first runnings" should be higher than the expected OG because it is already a bit concentrated unless you are already mashing full volume, no sparge.

Ah ha...OK. I've only ever done full volume..so my test I posted wont do me much good. I've read where people recommend squeezing the bag and sparging to up the efficiency and it never made sense to me and that was with full volume mashes. Which is why I said on an earlier post your only adding volume and the grain has given up all its going to give up....now I get it. So if anything sparging with full volume mash would actually lower the SG because your adding more liquid with less sugar than the first runnings bringing down the total sugar to liquid ratio...correct?

 

[Homergah]

So if anything sparging with full volume mash would actually lower the SG because your adding more liquid with less sugar than the first runnings bringing down the total sugar to liquid ratio...correct?

Correct, you are bringing the sg down, but as long as their is sugar in the runoff you are adding gravity to the kettle.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

Correct, you are bringing the sg down, but as long as their is sugar in the runoff you are adding gravity to the kettle.

Right assuming your your boiling down to grains of sugar and making molasses ....otherwise your diluting the mix by adding a more water less sugar mix to a more "potent" mix

 

[doug293cz]

Ah ha...OK. I've only ever done full volume..so my test I posted wont do me much good. I've read where people recommend squeezing the bag and sparging to up the efficiency and it never made sense to me and that was with full volume mashes. Which is why I said on an earlier post your only adding volume and the grain has given up all its going to give up....now I get it. So if anything sparging with full volume mash would actually lower the SG because your adding more liquid with less sugar than the first runnings bringing down the total sugar to liquid ratio...correct?

If you do full volume mash, by definition there is no sparging. If you sparge, you aren't doing a full volume mash. Yes the sparged wort has lower SG than the first runnings wort, but the combined wort has a higher SG than if you had done a full volume mash with the same grain bill and pre-boil volume.

Let's look at some numbers:

Case 1: Full volume mash, 10 lb grain bill, 6.5 gal pre-boil volume, grain absorption rate of 0.1 gal/lb (typical for good BIAB drain w/o squeezing), and 100% conversion efficiency in the mash.

Strike Volume: 7.5 gal
First Runnings SG: 1.044
First Runnings Volume: 6.5 gal
First Runnings Extract Weight: 6.19 lb

Lauter Efficiency: 80.4%
Wort Volume in BK: 6.5 gal
Wort SG in BK: 1.044
Weight of Extract in BK: 6.19 lb
Weight of Extract retained in Mash: 1.51 lb
​

Case 2: Single batch sparge - strike and sparge volumes adjusted for equal runnings volumes, 10 lb grain bill, 6.5 gal pre-boil volume, grain absorption rate of 0.1 gal/lb, and 100% conversion efficiency in the mash.

Strike Volume: 4.25 gal
First Runnings SG: 1.073
First Runnings Volume: 3.25 gal
First Runnings Extract Weight: 5.17 lb

Sparge Volume: 3.25 gal
Sparge Runnings SG: 1.024
Sparge Runnings Volume: 3.25 gal
Sparge Runnings Extract Weight: 1.70 lb

Lauter Efficiency: 89.3%
Wort Volume in BK: 6.5 gal
Wort SG in BK: 1.049
Weight of Extract in BK: 6.87 lb
Weight of Extract retained in Mash: 0.82 lb
​

Sparging leaves less of the available extract (mostly sugar) in the mash after lautering than no-sparge, all else being equal. Thus the lauter efficiency and mash efficiency (which equals conversion efficiency times lauter efficiency) go up when sparging.

Calculations done with my mash/lauter simulator which you can find here.

Brew on

 

[RM-MN]

So if anything sparging with full volume mash would actually lower the SG because your adding more liquid with less sugar than the first runnings bringing down the total sugar to liquid ratio...correct?

Yes, then you boil off the excess liquid to concentrate the sugars you captured. I've done a no-sparge batch, then tried again using a little less water for the mash and sparged up to the pre-boil volume, then boiled like normal. This extra sugar I captured that way raised my brewhouse efficiency by 5% or so. It isn't a big amount which is why a lot of BIAB brewers just do a full volume, no-sparge batch as it saves time and mess. My pot is just a little small so I do a smaller mash and then sparge to get the volume I need.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

If you do full volume mash, by definition there is no sparging. If you sparge, you aren't doing a full volume mash. Yes the sparged wort has lower SG than the first runnings wort, but the combined wort has a higher SG than if you had done a full volume mash with the same grain bill and pre-boil volume.

I need to wrap my head around the fact that even though your adding more sugar to a given volume your also adding much more water diluting the mix as a whole....yet raising the SG...I'm not computing that for some reason.

This is how I'm seeing it:

Add one teaspoon of salt to a gallon of water
Add one teaspoon of salt to 3 gallons of water, mix them together

Is the salinity greater now that you added them together...no

 

[bleme]

I need to wrap my head around the fact that even though your adding more sugar to a given volume your also adding much more water diluting the mix as a whole....yet raising the SG...I'm not computing that for some reason.

This is how I'm seeing it:

Add one teaspoon of salt to a gallon of water
Add one teaspoon of salt to 3 gallons of water, mix them together

Is the salinity greater now that you added them together...no

The difference is that you don't end up with more water. You are using the same amount of water, just splitting it into 2 batches. If you mash in 7 gallons, you might get 1.050 but if you mash in 5, you get 1.070 and the other 2 gets 1.030. Mixed together that is 1.0585.

 

[Homergah]

@JONNYROTTEN That book I quoted by Ray Daniels is a really good read. Chapter 6 alone was worth the price of the book to me. Such a commem sense approach to wort gravity. Even if you never use it, given the full volume mash of biab, it's still awesome to be equipped with such a basic, yet intricate tool.

 

[creekcaster]

Thanks for all the replies... Y'all have certainly given me plenty of things to think about!

I have some bad info entered in my equipment profile, i.e. kettle volume, trub loss etc., Which I think has impacted the calculated boil volume which is on the low side. So from the beginning it looks like I was mashed with1 gal less than I should. Also trub loss was set at .05 instead of .50.

Still my efficiency is low but when I adjusted my profile (created a new one!) It did improve.
I assume mashing a gallon short of water effected that too.
I'm gonna try the gift card trick... I really think I get a pretty good grind but gonna check still.

I'm gonna do the dry run as suggested as well. I really don't know how much I boil off, how much I lose with cooling... I've just always gone with the default and as I screwed around with numbers in BS... I see that it really does make an impact.

Thanks again for all the tips... I'll be tweaking and dialing

 

[RM-MN]

Thanks for all the replies... Y'all have certainly given me plenty of things to think about!

I have some bad info entered in my equipment profile, i.e. kettle volume, trub loss etc., Which I think has impacted the calculated boil volume which is on the low side. So from the beginning it looks like I was mashed with1 gal less than I should. Also trub loss was set at .05 instead of .50.

Still my efficiency is low but when I adjusted my profile (created a new one!) It did improve.
I assume mashing a gallon short of water effected that too.
I'm gonna try the gift card trick... I really think I get a pretty good grind but gonna check still.

I'm gonna do the dry run as suggested as well. I really don't know how much I boil off, how much I lose with cooling... I've just always gone with the default and as I screwed around with numbers in BS... I see that it really does make an impact.

Thanks again for all the tips... I'll be tweaking and dialing

At this point I wouldn't do a dry run. I'd brew a batch of beer and measure carefully the pre and post boil I got. When I finished I would know what the boil off was and I'd have a batch of beer too.

 

[balrog]

Agree. Brew a batch but make lots of good measurements. Iteratively you will approach settings for boil off, & grain absorption to use in your beersmith profile (tools options advanced is where absorption is I think)

 

[Oginme]

Agree. Brew a batch but make lots of good measurements. Iteratively you will approach settings for boil off, & grain absorption to use in your beersmith profile (tools options advanced is where absorption is I think)

Thirded, and be sure to capture as accurate volume readings on your starting water and trub loss to fine tune your grain absorption and loss to trub to round out the equipment profile.

 

[Soulshine2]

So I lurk a lot here and try to pick up on nuggets here and there. I've been home brewing regularly for about a year now... All grain BIAB.
I can't get decent efficiency, I always come up short on volume...am I boiling too long, is it my hydrometer, refractometer, do I just suck at conversion??!
Tonight I mashed 15lbs of grain, mashed in about 7.8 gal for about 1hr 20min. Boiled for about 1hr20min.
Pale malts with a pound of flaked rye... Getting an OG of 1.059... was looking for 1.068ish..... and I only get about 4.25 gal into the primary.
WTH am I doing wrong?!

you're not accounting for the losses of volume during your brew session.
I'm assuming youre brewing 5 gallon batches (just a default batch size for me) which is my norm as well. I have my strike and sparge water going in an 8 gallon kettle at capacity. As it heats , a small amount will evaporate. I KNOW I have 1 gallon of that is dead space ( under the spigot) so that leaves me with 7 gallons usable without tipping it . I keep a couple gallons of jugged water handy . Once I've run my mash with the heated strike water I add these 2 jugs back in to keep volume and heat while I mash/rest. That brings my water volume up to 9 gallons usable.
Now ,in the mash tun, the grist will absorb a set amount of water ,right? Keep that in mind. Now while you're mashing , besides what gets absorbed by grain ,more evaporates if you dont keep a closed lid. after you've mashed it goes to the kettle. you lose some due to evaporation again and if you use hoses and pumps , you'll see a small loss there too. Once in the boil kettle , more evaporation loss. You will experience a sort of loss of volume of a ballpark 1/2 gallon when you chill it , just simple expansion /contraction due to temperature . When you run that to the fermenter , you'll have the trub dead space loss, this time around a half gallon . After fermentation is done and you're racking to the bottling bucket you'll lose the trub,yeast cake volume once again. Whatever is left is what it is.
By the time I've run my brew day and all gravity numbers spot on or close , of the 9 gallons of water I've started with , usually I only have maybe a 1/2 gallon leftover at the end to end up with 5 or 6 gallons in the carboy.

 

[Soulshine2]

I use Beer Smith. Basically I put in the ingredients to get to the profile I want. I'm guessing my equipment profile is jacked up somewhere.

1-I mill my grain and I think I get a pretty good crush... 2 roller mill set to the finest crush
2-I mash in a bag, no sparge but i hang the bag and squeeze and let it drain. Mashed about 80 minutes
3- I boil pretty vigorously.. as mentioned I did for about 80 minutes. No boil over
4- I chill with an immersion chiller... Chilled to about 70F
5- I do compensate for temperatures when reading gravity.
6- probably 1/2 gallon left behind to avoid trub

I'm definitely going to reverse engineer and see if I can come up with the culprit(s).
I'm certain it's some input errors on my equipment profile.

I'm probably boiling too hard for too long losing too much volume... But it seems my SG would be higher if that were the case. The search continues...

Thx for the feedback y'all

I added numbers to your points so I can try helping you better.
1-what is the gap on your mill... put a feeler gauge in it and see what exactly it is. mine is at 0.030 . I started with 0.035 but I closed it up a little and see no issues , no stuck sparges. (Note- I also use a bazooka tube in my mash tun. gravity, no pumps,no chill plates, no hoses until I'm transferring to the fermenter)
2-I do not BIAB but your mash time looks ok if you're step mashing but the boil time looks long. 60 mins is plenty.
3-depending on your pre-boil gravity and your target OG is what should make you want to gently boil or vigorously boil. Lid or no lid would be a better option to combat for loss by evaporation.
4-so do i, how quickly can you get from boiling to 100*F? I can do mine in 15 minutes, and 30 minutes to 70*F ,using the garden hose and seasonal ground water temps.
5-good! so you're correctly reading your hydrometer. Is it calibrated? How often do you inspect it for cracks?
6- 1/2 gallon left behind...where? kettle or fermenter?

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I need to wrap my head around the fact that even though your adding more sugar to a given volume your also adding much more water diluting the mix as a whole....yet raising the SG...I'm not computing that for some reason.

This is how I'm seeing it:

Add one teaspoon of salt to a gallon of water
Add one teaspoon of salt to 3 gallons of water, mix them together

Is the salinity greater now that you added them together...no

You're analogy isn't correct. If full-volume BIAB is adding 1 teaspoon of salt to one gallon, doing a batch sparge is like adding 3/4 of a teaspoon to half a gallon, then adding 3/8 of a teaspoon to half a gallon and blending them. With the first you have 1 tsp in a gallon, with the second, you have 1 1/8 tsp in a gallon. You're missing the fact that you don't use full volume in the initial mash.

Alternately, you could do what you're saying and mash full volume, then sparge with, say a gallon, then boil an extra hour (assuming a 1G/hour boil off) and you end up with the same volume of wort at a higher gravity.

 

[bracconiere]

I need to wrap my head around the fact that even though your adding more sugar to a given volume your also adding much more water diluting the mix as a whole....yet raising the SG...I'm not computing that for some reason.

This is how I'm seeing it:

Add one teaspoon of salt to a gallon of water
Add one teaspoon of salt to 3 gallons of water, mix them together

Is the salinity greater now that you added them together...no

if you boil it for an hour down to a half gallon it would be....

like sugar, salt has a higher boiling point then water, so it's distilling in reverse...