Efficiency

[BearsFan]

New brewer here a few extract kits and 1 recent BIAB....I'm hooked! The efficiency part confuses me; do I need to know what I am getting if I am not forming my own recipes?
I have found the calculators but still confused, would rather not mess with it at this point.

 

[deepcdan99]

Efficency has to do with the amount of fermentable sugars that have been extracted from the grains. When I first started brewing I worried more about making a drinkable beer rather than efficiency. The efficiency will hopefully come with time. Don't worry about it, ther are other things that you can focus on in the mean time.

 

[Northcalais40]

Well, I think you want to keep some records. What is your OG and how many pounds of grain did you mash? This is your efficiency. If you are follwing a recipe and your OG is low by 10 or 20 points, your not making that beer. It is a simple matter to increase the grain bill to hit the OG. Check out Braukaiser.com.

You don't need high efficiency, but it would be good to know what you have.

 

[BearsFan]

Thanks for the replys, I understand what it means, but not sure how to get there.
For example - These are estimates
For a 5GL Recipe
Started with 3 gl
After mashing added 2.5 gl (pot wouldn't hold grains and all the water).
After boil added another gallon of water to bring volume in fermenter back to 5gl mark.
Confused as to when to take the reading and does adding water to the fermenter negate the original reading?

 

[kappclark]

What brewing sw do u use ??

You can compare the FG with what the computer predicted .. at end of brewing session, crank the efficiency up or down until it shows the FG that you got - and that is the efficiency ..

But this is too geeky, because what we want is good drinkable beer..if your efficiency is consistent I wld say that is a good thing, but do not stress over that.

Try to keep a log to compare results (and also to find that 'great' recipe you developed by experimenting..