Fuming - About Ready to Hang it Up

[LLBeanJ]

Are you trying to hit 1.100+ with a 60 min boil? If I were brewing anything that high, I'd go with 2 hours min in order to bolster the efficiency hit you'd see by using that much grain. Longer boil = bigger sparge = more sugars in the BK = higher OG after boil-off.

I've found I can hit 80% efficiency with a 60 min boil if I'm brewing around 1.060 or less, but anything above that usually gets a 90 min boil to keep my efficiency somewhat the same. Quads and imperial anything gets 2 hours and I usually come in around 70%. I've never attempted to brew anything over 1.090-ish.

 

[user 125772]

Honestly, if I had a big bag like that , and no false bottom, id be inclined to do full volume BIAB method...and forego the sparging operation. That would rule out a large percentage of the possibilities.

 

[doug293cz]

Rather than using the iodine test to check for mash completion, I recommend using the method here, that actually allows you to calculate the percent conversion (conversion efficiency), and can't get fooled by starch hidden in the cores of grits.

I agree with your plan to try mashing thinner (as many have already recommended.) And also agree that with your equipment, you should go back to batch sparging. The photo of the inside of your MLT convinced me that you likely have severe channeling issues.

And lastly, 45 min is too short a mash when doing a big beer. You really want to make sure you give sufficient time to get close to 100% conversion, since you can't avoid losing significant lauter efficiency due to the large grain bill. The method linked above will let you know when the mash is actually done.

Brew on

 

[Kharnynb]

That's one thick mash, I tend to hit 4 liter/kg, so about 2 quarts per lb.....

 

[SpeedYellow]

Your grist ratio is pretty thick... Have you tried a thinner mash? I really like 1.6qt/# but I have a different system. I have an eHERMS and I fly sparge...

His efficiency would likely drop even further with a thinner mash since he wouldn't be able to sparge at all. 1.17 qt/lb is more than enough water.

Are you trying to hit 1.100+ with a 60 min boil? If I were brewing anything that high, I'd go with 2 hours min in order to bolster the efficiency hit you'd see by using that much grain. Longer boil = bigger sparge = more sugars in the BK = higher OG after boil-off.

I've found I can hit 80% efficiency with a 60 min boil if I'm brewing around 1.060 or less, but anything above that usually gets a 90 min boil to keep my efficiency somewhat the same. Quads and imperial anything gets 2 hours and I usually come in around 70%. I've never attempted to brew anything over 1.090-ish.

^^ This. I do 90 min boils on 1.100+ beers too, in order to sparge more.

 

[Tarpon87]

Try a full volume mash with a super fine crush.

 

[bbohanon]

His efficiency would likely drop even further with a thinner mash since he wouldn't be able to sparge at all. 1.17 qt/lb is more than enough water.

1.17qt per lb is enough water? That would be one hella thick mash.
The OP posted he goes with 1.25qt/lb which is standard practice for most brewers so I was surprised to see someone recommend a even thicker mash for this.

I always mash right at 1.49qt/lb and never have efficiency issues or sparging issues. If anything it gets better on both efficiency and sparging/recircing.

I would absolutely NOT recommend going too thin on the mash but upping it to 1.5 would not be the end of the world and may actually help with it being a bigger beer/larger grain bill with his efficiency.

Worth a try for an exBEERiment!
:fro:

 

[whovous]

I use a single kettle, continuously recirculating mash, no sparge set-up, so I cannot offer any advice on process. I can commiserate, however, because I've missed my numbers many times whilst climbing the learning curve.

My advice is that if you cannot beat your efficiency problem, then join it! If you are getting 43% efficiency, then feed your current recipe to BeerSmith (or whatever you use), and tell it to convert from the assumed efficiency (typically 70%) to 43% efficiency. You will need to use a lot more grain, but you will get the points you are targeting.

If, by chance, you target 43% and hit 70% anyway, you can always water it down to where it belongs.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Go back to batch sparge. Run your mash thickness so that you get equal volumes from the first and second runnings. I use Brew365.com to do my volume and temp calcs for brewing and I've had excellent results.

When you add the sparge water, stir the crap out of it...like 10 minutes of vigorous stirring.

As noted, big beers really benefit from a longer boil.

I've been battling the same thing, but my problem was the crush. Switched to Bag in a cooler batch sparge with .025 crush (cereal killer) and my efficiency went from 61% to 71% (brewhouse efficiency calc'd by brewer's friend).

I've been trying to get my efficiency up so that I could brew a big beer. With the inherent drop in eff. with big beers, I wanted to be over 70% for middle of the road beers before I stepped up. I wouldn't try another high gravity brew until you get the eff. worked out. If you're mid-60's or lower for a 1.060 beer, you'll have a hell of a time hitting your numbers for a high gravity beer.

 

[schematix]

I use a single kettle, continuously recirculating mash, no sparge set-up, so I cannot offer any advice on process. I can commiserate, however, because I've missed my numbers many times whilst climbing the learning curve.

My advice is that if you cannot beat your efficiency problem, then join it! If you are getting 43% efficiency, then feed your current recipe to BeerSmith (or whatever you use), and tell it to convert from the assumed efficiency (typically 70%) to 43% efficiency. You will need to use a lot more grain, but you will get the points you are targeting.

If, by chance, you target 43% and hit 70% anyway, you can always water it down to where it belongs.

I would argue this is bad advice. 43% is really, really low efficiency and leaves a lot of room for a big oops in the opposite direction. He's likely not far away from being able to consistently get 70% or better. Just need to hone in on the exact issue or issues leading to this.

Band-aid fixes don't fix the underlying issue and just lead to more problems.

 

[sgwink]

This may be a dumb suggestion, but it has happened to me. When I was taking mash temperatures I was taking temperature of the liquid surrounding my bag (BIAB). I thought I was in the perfect temp range. I was always was confused about why my temps would fluctuate so much more than other peoples experiences and why my efficiency was in the 60's. Turns out the actual mash was 10-15 degrees lower than the outside water. My 2 cents is to make sure strike water is hot enough and that you stir for a good 5 to 10 minutes to make sure your mash is all the same temperature AND to take the temperature of the grains and NOT the water.

 

[doug293cz]

Go back to batch sparge. Run your mash thickness so that you get equal volumes from the first and second runnings. I use Brew365.com to do my volume and temp calcs for brewing and I've had excellent results.

...

This is sound advice for a normal gravity beer, but turns out to be difficult to do with really big beers. The problem is that the mash gets too thick if you try to do equal run-off volumes.

I ran a simulation using 25 lbs of grain, 5.5 gal post-boil volume target, 90 min boil with 1.5 gal total boil-off, and 95% conversion efficiency. In order to maintain a 1.25 qt/lb max mash thickness, the strike volume was 7.81 gal, sparge volume 2.31 gal. First runnings volume was 4.69 gal and sparge runnings were 2.31 gal. Pre-boil SG was 1.0805, and OG came in at 1.1025. To get equal run-off volumes, the mash thickness went up to 1.06 qt/lb (6.63 gal strike, 3.5 gal sparge.) OG only went up 1 pt to 1.1035.

Brew on

 

[whovous]

I would argue this is bad advice. 43% is really, really low efficiency and leaves a lot of room for a big oops in the opposite direction. He's likely not far away from being able to consistently get 70% or better. Just need to hone in on the exact issue or issues leading to this.

Band-aid fixes don't fix the underlying issue and just lead to more problems.

Of course you want to solve the problem. The question is what to do in the meantime. Do you target a 6% beer and settle for a 3% beer?

There is no risk of a big oops in the opposite direction. If your target is 1.060 and you hit 1.090, you just add water and, viola, you hit 1.060.

I admit this idea may not work with a really big beer.

 

[schematix]

Of course you want to solve the problem. The question is what to do in the meantime. Do you target a 6% beer and settle for a 3% beer?

There is no risk of a big oops in the opposite direction. If your target is 1.060 and you hit 1.090, you just add water and, viola, you hit 1.060.

I admit this idea may not work with a really big beer.

No you take all of the advice offered here, fix the issue, target 70% and try again.

Nearly all of of us have figured this out and the OP should be able to repeat it as well.

 

[Brewjangle]

I haven't seen anyone ask or mention it yet, but...
You are allowing your wort to cool before recording your OG, right? Hot and even warm wort will read much lower than once it's cooled to below 90.
You may very well being doing this, just wanting to rule that out.

 

[madscientist451]

A puzzling situation, for sure.
A few thoughts: Some of the responses here mention BIAB, but the OP is just using a brew in a bag BAG in a mash tun, so its not the BIAB method at all, the bag is just replacing a false bottom in the tun and I don't see why that would have any impact on efficiency.
I also use a BIAB in a cooler mash tun and it works fine.
I'm wondering if your mash temp is really staying stable for the whole time.
Using a 15 gallon keggle for a mash with 3.5 gallons of water plus the grain leaves a lot of head space that could be dropping your temp pretty quick. Are you pre-heating the tun with hot tap water?
Not sure any of these could be the culprit, just tying to think of everything.
As others have suggested, I shoot for at least 1.25 qts/lb mash thickness. I'd aslo switch to a batch sparge and use a pitcher to do a manual re circulation for about 5 minutes at the end of the mash and sparge.
I had some trouble hitting , my numbers until I took the time to recirculate a little.
Having two pitchers to work with makes this go a bit smoother. I just use my mash paddle as a diverter to pour the wort from the pitcher back into the tun to prevent channeling issues.
Before you start your boil, pull a gravity sample, chill it down and check your gravity.
If its too low, I'd dump it back in to the mash tun (you have plenty of volume) and let it sit in there a while.
Recirculate again and see if you get any improvement.
You also have enough volume in that keggle to do a full volume mash, maybe try that?

 

[Gytaryst]

Your grist ratio is pretty thick... Have you tried a thinner mash?

No, I've always tried to stay around 1.25. I'm definitely going to try thinner next brew. Some of my problem is that I haven't wanted to change too many things from one brew to the next because then I have no way of knowing for sure where the problems might have been. So I've been trying to keep my water to grain ratio around 1:1.25. I'm going to bump it up to 1:1.5 next time.

... I have an eHERMS and I fly sparge.

I was considering getting a pump and a stainless coil and going that route, but lately I'm more interested in simplifying things rather than adding more stuff and making it more complicated. I would love to be able to do step mashes just to try it, but I'm thinking not enough to get into pumps and recirculating systems or heating elements . . . I'm actually considering getting rid of this stuff and going back to 2.5 gallon BIAB batches on the kitchen stove.

... You've also touched on crush a bit.. Do you have a picture of your crushed grain? Might get some pointers there as well or help to rule that out.

Rather than using the iodine test to check for mash completion, I recommend using the method here, that actually allows you to calculate the percent conversion (conversion efficiency), and can't get fooled by starch hidden in the cores of grits.

I saw that on this forum a while ago but didn't write it down so I could never find it again... Thanks for reposting it.

... I agree with your plan to try mashing thinner (as many have already recommended.) And also agree that with your equipment, you should go back to batch sparging. The photo of the inside of your MLT convinced me that you likely have severe channeling issues.

That's pretty much the conclusions I've come to as well.

... And lastly, 45 min is too short a mash when doing a big beer. You really want to make sure you give sufficient time to get close to 100% conversion, since you can't avoid losing significant lauter efficiency due to the large grain bill. The method linked above will let you know when the mash is actually done.

Brew on

Great advice and much appreciated.

... I would absolutely NOT recommend going too thin on the mash but upping it to 1.5 would not be the end of the world and may actually help with it being a bigger beer/larger grain bill with his efficiency.

Whatever or whenever my next brew is, I'm going to up the ratio to 1:1.5 and switch to batch sparging. It's tempting to try a full volume BIAB just for convenience sake, but from what I've read it seems like that would present a whole host of different problems.

I brewed a chocolate raspberry stout a few months ago and it came out a lot drier than I wanted. It's very good, in fact when I sampled one after being bottled for only 3 weeks, the chocolate and raspberry flavors hadn't developed that much, it was a little boozy and very dry, and tasted a lot more like a Guinness than a chocolate stout. It smelled almost like a cup of coffee and I didn't add any coffee. Now that it's sat a few months it's developed very nice. When I started planning this most recent stout I was almost tempted to do another chocolate raspberry brew - but I decided to go the mocha route instead.

Thanks for all the responses and advice guys. I truly appreciate all the help.

 

[sandyeggoxj]

Crush looks fine to me. But I would have kept that flour that's on the garage floor in the grain!

Do you underlet or add the grain to the water? Did you talk about your water? Municipal or RO?

I like going back to basics. Batch sparge, double check temps, make sure your mashing for long enough, and that sort of thing is my best guess for you right now.

If we are truly troubleshooting here then once you think you've found the problem you can reinstate said problem and see if the behavior matches and you go back to where you start. But that means risking another not-as-good batch. On the other hand that is what you are used to so it will just be normal?

 

[Gytaryst]

... Do you underlet or add the grain to the water? Did you talk about your water? Municipal or RO?

R/O water.
Ca - 56
Mg - 8
Na - 26
SO4 - 54
Cl - 46
HCO3 - 129

I added the water to the mash tun at a little over 170* and let it come down to 164* My grain was at 80* I stirred it at least 5 minutes and the temp was dead on 153*. Closed it up and let it sit 45 min. I've always done either a 60, 75 or 90 minute mash. I have no idea why I decided to check it at 45 minutes. I did the iodine test and it appeared to be fully converted. The temp was around 150* at 45 minutes. When I've done 6 gallon batches in the past I only lost 1 degree in 60 minutes with this keggle MLT. There was a lot of dead space for this mash so I'm guessing that is why the temp dropped so much. I still wasn't too upset at 150* tho.

... I like going back to basics. Batch sparge, double check temps, make sure your mashing for long enough, and that sort of thing is my best guess for you right now.

If we are truly troubleshooting here then once you think you've found the problem you can reinstate said problem and see if the behavior matches and you go back to where you start. But that means risking another not-as-good batch. On the other hand that is what you are used to so it will just be normal?

Ha ha ha. Yup. The good thing about brewing so many mediocre beers is that there's no where to go but up. (I probably shouldn't have said that)

I was using cooler mash tuns; I had a 48 qt rectangular ice chest, then I had a 5 gallon Igloo water cooler for a while, then a 10 gallon Igloo. I was okay with the results but I kept reading stuff about how the plastic in these coolers isn't rated for or intended for these kinds of high temps, and there's a chance there might be some chemical leeching... maybe - maybe not. Maybe it was enough to taint the beer - maybe not. There didn't seem to be a definitive answer one way or the other on it so to err on the side of caution I decided to switch to the stainless keggle.

But like I said earlier - I'm probably going to lose this set up and scale back to 10 gallon pots. I had a 10 gallon Bayou Classic stainless pot I just sold when I changed over to keggles. Wishing now I'd have kept that and got rid of the keggle. Keggles seem to be more hassle than they're worth imho. I'm definitely not liking this bottom drain MLT (AT ALL)

One of these days I'll get it figured out

Cheers - and thanks again

 

[sandyeggoxj]

Sounds like you have a good attitude about it all! I've made my share of mistakes but it is still fun. I love drinking my own beer, making what I WANT to drink and sharing with friends. It is a labor of love and learning.

Cheers!

 

[FatDragon]

Ha ha ha. Yup. The good thing about brewing so many mediocre beers is that there's no where to go but up.

I've told myself this for so long that I'm having a hard time believing it anymore

Actually, there's a pretty distinct cycle for me: 3-4 good beers, then I get cocky and stop doing my due diligence with every brewday and I end up with 2-4 mediocre/crappy beers before I get it together again. You'd think I'd figure it out after a while and start doing every brewday right, but I'm kinda stupid like that.

 

[Bobby_M]

This is an interesting case so I wanted to participate. There are a few factors I believe are killing efficiency in a fly sparge here. First, with a 16" diameter mash and only a 10" diameter drain cavity, your sparge is channeling at LEAST to the 10" disc. So, out of potentially 200 square inches you're only using 80 to drain. The area of the bag resting on keg material is not draining. To fix this, you can put in a 15" diameter rack. The other problem is that the mash itself was likely wider than it was tall so it made the channeling worse. There's also a limit to how fine you can crush when you're doing a fly sparge. Sure, the bag itself will filter out smaller particles but your overall grain bed was likely very compacted since there are no fluffy components to keep things flowing well throughout. Since you have your own mill, I highly recommend trying to precondition your grain by hand mixing in about 5 ounces of water 10 minutes before milling. Leave the gap the same as you just had it.

You didn't mention it, I don't think, but did you establish at least an inch of sparge water over the grain before you started draining?

Are you sure you have at least 50ppm calcium? Don't forget you can test your conversion by taking a gravity of the mash wort and comparing it against the available sugars at the mash's current dilution.

 

[Gytaryst]

This is an interesting case so I wanted to participate. There are a few factors I believe are killing efficiency in a fly sparge here. First, with a 16" diameter mash and only a 10" diameter drain cavity, your sparge is channeling at LEAST to the 10" disc. So, out of potentially 200 square inches you're only using 80 to drain. The area of the bag resting on keg material is not draining. To fix this, you can put in a 15" diameter rack. The other problem is that the mash itself was likely wider than it was tall so it made the channeling worse.

That makes perfect sense now that I see it. When I was considering how to do the drain I was only concerned with not having too much space under the grain bed. I read some other posts where guys had issues with too much liquid underneath and they had to adjust volumes to keep the grain bed properly soaked. I read something about using a smaller diameter FB that would sit lower and at the time THAT made sense too. What you're saying makes a lot of sense - I just never even thought about it from that angle. Thanks.

There's also a limit to how fine you can crush when you're doing a fly sparge. Sure, the bag itself will filter out smaller particles but your overall grain bed was likely very compacted since there are no fluffy components to keep things flowing well throughout. Since you have your own mill, I highly recommend trying to precondition your grain by hand mixing in about 5 ounces of water 10 minutes before milling. Leave the gap the same as you just had it.

Yes. One mistake I made. This is the first brew where I added oats since I started milling my own grain and without thinking I threw the flaked oats in with everything else.

It's going to be awhile before I try fly sparging again. This is the third brew in a row I've tried it, (hoping to raise efficiency). Instead it's added time to my brew day, been more trouble than it's worth, and my efficiency has gone down. I'm sure if all the planets were aligned just right, it was the proper phase of the moon, the barometric pressure and temperature were optimal and I mashed at precisely the correct hour of the day . . . a fly sparge might increase my efficiency a point or two. But for now I'm going to go back to batch sparging and focus on other things for a while. Maybe later I'll feel up to trying the fly sparge thing again.

You didn't mention it, I don't think, but did you establish at least an inch of sparge water over the grain before you started draining?

Yes. I vorlauffed quite a bit while I had the sparge water dripping in. I have a sparge arm I used once but didn't like it. So I just set the silicone tube on top of the grain bed the way the Sabco Brew Magic system instructions say to do it. When the liquid level was high enough I started the slow drain into the BK. It was only a 3.4 gallon batch so there was just over 4 gallons of water in the mash and only 2.8 gallons for sparge. I had the drip to the BK set so it took about 45 minutes for everything to drain out, but I'm pretty sure the water draining from the HLT to the mash tun stopped way before that 45 minutes. I didn't check that too closely so I don't know how long that inch above lasted.

Are you sure you have at least 50ppm calcium? Don't forget you can test your conversion by taking a gravity of the mash wort and comparing it against the available sugars at the mash's current dilution.

According to Bru N Water I should have had 56ppm calcium. Because this was a smaller batch than I usually brew in a 15.5 gallon keggle I was more concerned temperature. I decided to check it at 45 minutes rather than an hour just to be safe. It was down from 153* to 150* so I did a (very quick) iodine test. I felt rushed because I didn't want the temp to drop anymore so in retrospect it's possible I just called the iodine test "close enough" and rushed into the sparging.

I might brew one more beer this year - but more than likely I'll just wait until after the holidays and make sure I got all my ducks in a row. Everything i have was acquired with the idea of doing 5 to 10 gallon batches. But now I'm looking into downsizing everything and scaling back to 2.5 to 3 gallon batches. I'm the only one who ever drinks my beer and 5 gallons is too much. Even if it's decent beer - I get bored with it. Thinking I'd rather scale back the volume and brew more often.

Thanks for the input. Your youtube videos were invaluable when I got started and I still go back and reference them.

Cheers

 

[passedpawn]

I've told myself this for so long that I'm having a hard time believing it anymore

Actually, there's a pretty distinct cycle for me: 3-4 good beers, then I get cocky and stop doing my due diligence with every brewday and I end up with 2-4 mediocre/crappy beers before I get it together again. You'd think I'd figure it out after a while and start doing every brewday right, but I'm kinda stupid like that.

haha, right. When I was making 5g batches with a turkey cooker I made some fine beer. Now, I can brew with one eye closed / one had behind back, and I have a lot of mediocrity. I think I tried a LOT harder back then. (but man, my equipment is much shinier now!)

 

[Gytaryst]

The estimated OG and FG for this was 1.104 and 1.023 for an abv of 10.9%.
The measured OG was 1.073 and FG was 1.010 for an abv of 8.3%. It's jet black with a strong alcohol smell and taste. Also from the sample I tasted it's quite a bit drier than I was shooting for. Going to do some serious re-calculating on how I take my mash temps. This is my hydrometer sample this morning:

It sat in primary 14 days. I started at 68* for 5 or 6 days, bumped it up to 70* for a couple days then 72* for the last week, Wyeast #1028 London Ale Yeast). I transferred it to secondary this morning and dropped the temp to 65*. I'm actually thinking about dropping it down to 50* and leaving it there for 60 days? Haven't decided.

I added 2 oz of Sumatra coffee beans to the last 10 minutes of the boil and I plan to add more coffee, (beans or cold brew), and cacao nibs to secondary for the last week.

I appreciate all the encouraging comments above. Now that 2 weeks has passed since brew day the frustration has subsided considerably.

CHEERS!

 

[hawkbox]

Sounds tasty and that's a nice setup. I batch sparge and end up consistently in the 65-70% efficiency range so I'm not sure where you would run into an issue. I use a brew bag as well in my tun as it makes cleanup a whole lot easier.

Someday I will have a nicer setup than

 

[Gytaryst]

Sounds tasty and that's a nice setup. I batch sparge and end up consistently in the 65-70% efficiency range so I'm not sure where you would run into an issue. I use a brew bag as well in my tun as it makes cleanup a whole lot easier.

That looks nice. I want to get away from keggles and switch over to something like that. 10 gallon pots are plenty big enough for my needs. I've only ever brewed 5 to 6 gallon batches and this last batch was 3 gallons. I'm thinking about scaling back and just brewing 2.5 to 3 gallon batches from now on, or brewing 5 gallon batches and splitting the wort into two fermenters. I'm also probably going to go back to the 5 or 10 gallon Igloo water coolers for mashing. I had a lot less issues when I used those. I liked the stainless steel aspect of the keg, but a 15.5 gallon mash tun is way too big for what I do. I couldn't wait to have this 3 vessel keggle system - and now that I have it and have done several brews, I'm not impressed. It would probably be great if I wanted to brew 10 or 11 gallon batches . . . but I've never been interested in that.

 

[balrog]

I see it already asked but this was my thought as well--how is your post mash pre-boil SG?

Rather than using the iodine test to check for mash completion, I recommend using the method here, that actually allows you to calculate the percent conversion (conversion efficiency)

Before you start your boil, pull a gravity sample, chill it down and check your gravity.

Don't forget you can test your conversion by taking a gravity of the mash wort and comparing it against the available sugars at the mash's current dilution.

 

[Big Monk]

Edit

 

[Smellyglove]

I can toss out my experiences about how this efficiency thing works when doing bigger grists.

Efficiency with a bigger beer will drop, if you do it "the normal way", just scale the brew up, without scaling down efficiency.

So #1 is that you have to account for the efficiency drop.

#2: I read in the opening post that the second time you used less water do get a higher density. This will also make your efficiency take a nosedive, as efficiency is a function of both the SG and the wort you're available to extract. More malt will bind more liquid to the malt. And, it's easier to extract more sugars with more water in the mash. A thinner mash.

You can try this to remedy the issue:

If you look at a brew you've done, lets say a light beer which has 50/50 mash/sparge water. If you'd scale that up, you'd be more like 70/30-ish mash/sparge water due to the higher grav beer requires more grains, if you're going for the same mash thickness.
What you can do is use more sparge water, so the 70/30 will get back to 50/50, more sparge water used than calculated in other words. This will make you have to boil it back down in the kettle though, so you're looking at several hours of boil time. But, if you do this, you'll get pretty close to your targeted efficiency without have to scale the efficiency back.

Look at the proportions of the water use at a lower OG beer, and try to target that proportion in the higher grav beer. Take it from there for the next brew after that