Efficiency vs. diastatic power (or missing my OG by at least 10 pts)

[cmcgeehan151]

Hey all,

Some background: On about my 11th all grain batch, and 7th on my own monster mill mm3. Last 4-5 batches were great after gapping the mill, dialing in etc. My OGs were either spot on or pushed my efficiency into the low 80%s. Friday night my friend and I brewed a batch each expecting to hit our numbers etc. Mashed in, hit our temps spot on, everything was going great. ...... Until taking a preboil gravity that was 10 points (Beersmith Est. 1.068, Actual 1.058), OG that was 8 points (Est. 1.076; Actual 1.068) just alittle off for me and maybe 12-15 off for my friend (dont have numbers). We're going to brew again today. I'm going to check the gap on the mill, but I did the "mark with a sharpie" to visually check gap and it all was fine, still gonna take the mill apart, clean it, regap etc. BUT

My questions is: Could my grain bill and my lack of knowledge be the culprit? I brewed a wheat IPA, and only mashed for 60 minutes. After reading extensively on diastatic power of different grains yesterday, If I mashed for 75, 90 or even longer was maybe that the problem? Here's our grain bills:

Wheat PA: (50% 2 row; 50% wheat)

7 lbs 12 oz 2 row
6lbs wheat malt
1 lb 8 oz torrified wheat
4 oz White Wheat

And a riff on nugget nectar:

5 lbs 4 oz 2 row
5 lbs Vienna
5 lbs Munich
4 oz Crystal 120L

Both mashed single infusion at 154 for 60 minutes, then batch sparged with 190.

I did an ESB with Marris Otter which I have on tap right which I see is lower than 2 row diastatic but time got away from me and that ended up mashing for 90 minutes and I was in the 80s for efficiency.

Halp if you could

CJM

 

[RM-MN]

Was this your first wheat since you got the mill? Wheat is harder to crush and that will make you lose efficiency. The kernels have no husk, are harder than barley, and are smaller. That makes crushing them more difficult. You might want to "condition" you wheat before crushing and you also might need the gap tightened.

Conditioning is wetting the grains and letting them absorb some of the moisture to swell and soften them.

 

[Yooper]

Was this your first wheat since you got the mill? Wheat is harder to crush and that will make you lose efficiency. The kernels have no husk, are harder than barley, and are smaller. That makes crushing them more difficult. You might want to "condition" you wheat before crushing and you also might need the gap tightened.

Conditioning is wetting the grains and letting them absorb some of the moisture to swell and soften them.

Yes, this. Since I don't like to mess with my gap, for my last batch that had a lot of wheat I double crushed just the wheat. I did the wheat last, in its own bowl, and then put it through again. That really helped.

That doesn't explain why the other batch had the same efficiency, though- the second recipe certainly has enough DP to convert well and the grains should crush fine.

That makes me consider a couple of things. One, if you didn't do an iodine test it's possible that you didn't fully convert. I'd suggest grabbing some iodine or Iodophor and checking for conversion on the next batch.

But I really think the biggest factor here must be pH. Did you brew with the same exact water, and the same exact additions? Did you check the mash for pH?

 

[cmcgeehan151]

Thanks guys,

It was the second wheat, but the 1st was only 40% wheat malt and I hit the numbers on that one.

No we didnt check ph at all. Come to think of it, we usually use our tap water through a filter, we're on the same watershed as Victory brewery . So we've never really messed with Ph or water conditions. Victory is opening a 2nd brewery and they picked a site that was in the same watershed as their original, and we've heard from a few sources they run their water through a filtering process but don't really chemically treat. So we've never really worried about water quality for those reasons. This time we used bottled water, just because it was easier where we were brewing. So no didn't check Ph. But didn't even think of the water . . .

So everything was the same, except for the water..... And I did clean the mill, it seemed slightly loose.

And I think I will be investing in some iodine. We'll see we're 30 minutes into a mash . . .

THANKS guys, if you have any other ideas.

 

[InLimbo]

My understanding is that unless you have unusually alkaline water, the grains have enough buffering power in them to bring the water down to the correct pH. Remember it's the pH of the *MASH* that is crucial, not necessarily the pH of the starting water.

Is this your first 1.068 beer? A common occurrence is for efficiency to go down as gravity goes up. While 1.068 ain't exactly stratospheric, it's something to at least take into consderation. Good luck!

 

[cmcgeehan151]

Most of my gravities are in the 1070s, so not the first. We'll see in about 20-30 minutes, sparging now. Take a preboil gravity and either be happy or pissed

 

[Yooper]

My understanding is that unless you have unusually alkaline water, the grains have enough buffering power in them to bring the water down to the correct pH. Remember it's the pH of the *MASH* that is crucial, not necessarily the pH of the starting water.

That's simply not true. You can have distilled water and still not have a low enough mash pH.

Something happened here, and the only variable is the water, and I picked up on that right away without knowing it. So that tells me that it could very well be mash pH/water chemistry related.

 

[cmcgeehan151]

Ok, so my friend and I brewed the exact same grain bill today (he got ahold of 8 oz of galaxy hops and we did an experiment with late hop additions on the same exact grain bill and first 40 minutes of boil).

Back to my tap water, cleaned and tightened my mill . . .

Both of us were under on our preboil gravity. (Beersmith estimate 1.065, we both came in 1.063) so not bad. But then he hit his OG but with less wort, mine was under by 8 pts. (Beersmith estimate: 1.073) It was a 5.5 gallon batch. He ended up with 5.25 gallons at 1.074. I came in 1.067 at 5.75 gallons.. I can post the recipe and all, but . . .. ughhhh

What I'm really confused with is that when we dialed in we were hitting 75-78% efficiency (1 batch 81%), and now lucky to get back to 70% (My friend was at 69.4%, I was at 68.8%).