Habitually low BHE with EHERMS system?

[USMChueston0311]

I have a 3 20 gallon blichmann kettle w boil coils, high gravity EBC-330 controller, and all 8 of my brews on the new system seems to only yield a loss of 6-8 gravity points. My boil isn't very vigorous, bot a roller, and my boil off is around 1.5 gallons in an hour. Im tired of missing my OG and having 60-65% BHE on a 6-7K system when I was getting WAY better numbers in my cooler and gas burner.

My elevation is around 7500ft.

Should I increase my boil times to 90 minutes to see if this helps?

 

[jcav]

You didn't mention this and you may have already done this, but are sure you are starting off with the true pre boil volume? Sometimes sight glass tubes have incorrect gallon levels marked on them. I made a calibration stick to check mine. I put in a gallon of water by weight 8.35 pounds, and I make a calibrated stick and make a mark on the stick with the gallon number next to it for every gallon added to the kettle. I do this all the way up the stick. Then you can mark your sight glass tube with the correct true gallon marks. You can also just put the stick in the kettle as you near the volume you need and when the wort reaches the correct mark you can shut off the flow. Now you know you are starting with the correct boil volume so you can see what your boil off rate is after that to make any corrections. Something to think about......

John

 

[USMChueston0311]

You didn't mention this and you may have already done this, but are sure you are starting off with the true pre boil volume? Sometimes sight glass tubes have incorrect gallon levels marked on them. I made a calibration stick to check mine. I put in a gallon of water by weight 8.35 pounds, and I make a calibrated stick and make a mark on the stick with the gallon number next to it for every gallon added to the kettle. I do this all the way up the stick. Then you can mark your sight glass tube with the correct true gallon marks. You can also just put the stick in the kettle as you near the volume you need and when the wort reaches the correct mark you can shut off the flow. Now you know you are starting with the correct boil volume so you can see what your boil off rate is after that to make any corrections. Something to think about......

John

I had this system in place when I was using the coolers. I havent even thought about doing this with my new system. But the hydrometer is still showing 6-7 PT reduction from pre/post. Which is ridiculous.

 

[day_trippr]

Not sure I'm seeing a problem here, but it does depend on the actual gravities involved.

eg: I do ten gallon batches with a typical boil off rate of 1.5 gallons per hour. I just did a batch of kolsch today where my pre-boil volume was 13 gallons at 1.041 SG, post-boil/pre-chilled volume was 11.5 gallons, and chilled volume to the fermentors was 11 gallons at 1.048 SG. So a 7 point increase with a 1.5 gallon decrease. All of those volumes and gravities were predicted by BS3 and I totally nailed them all.

Now, if you were doing, say, an 80 point brew, that could indicate there's a calibration problem somewhere...

Cheers!

[edit/ps] I doubt it matters but I run three 20 gallon Blichmann G1 kettles...

 

[doug293cz]

Is it possible that you haven't accounted for the extra volume in the plumbing?

To diagnose your low efficiency you need to determine which of component efficiencies are lower than expected. You also have to have accurate volume (temp corrected), grain bill weight, and SG measurements. The efficiency calculations can't be any better than the measurements taken. The component efficiencies you need to measure:

Conversion efficiency: this is the amount of extract actually created in the mash divided by the max potential extract from the grain bill. Conversion efficiency should be above 90%. 95% is pretty good, but 100% is achievable. Determine conversion efficiency using the method here.

Lauter efficiency: the amount of extract collected in your BK divided by the amount of extract created in the mash. Calculated as mash efficiency / conversion efficiency. If you are fly sparging, you should be able to get at least high as the highest solid line on the chart below:

Transfer efficiency: Volume in fermenter divided by post-boil volume. This is totally controlled by the amount of wort you leave behind in the BK and plumbing. Only you can determine what is reasonable for your system.

The three efficiencies above combine to give you your brewhouse efficiency: brewhouse efficiency = conversion efficiency * lauter efficiency * transfer efficiency.

Once you know which of the efficiencies is below where you want it, you know what part of your process you need to improve.

Brew on

 

[kevin58]

I have a three vessel HERMs using the EBC-330. My initial estimated BHE was 75% (low estimate on my part) and my actual was 85%. I have no issues whatsoever with achieving a vigorous boil. Once the boil starts I can drop the power to 50% and still have a nice rolling boil. However --- my elevation is only 584'. If you are a member of the American Homebrewers Association check out the recent article by Martin Brungard on Advances in Wort Boiling.

 

[USMChueston0311]

I have a three vessel HERMs using the EBC-330. My initial estimated BHE was 75% (low estimate on my part) and my actual was 85%. I have no issues whatsoever with achieving a vigorous boil. Once the boil starts I can drop the power to 50% and still have a nice rolling boil. However --- my elevation is only 584'. If you are a member of the American Homebrewers Association check out the recent article by Martin Brungard on Advances in Wort Boiling.

I have to leave mine at 100% power the entire boil, and get a rolling boil. Not even close to a boil over.

I will try and plug in my actual numbers into the session tab of Beersmith after brewing tomorrow.

 

[USMChueston0311]

Not sure I'm seeing a problem here, but it does depend on the actual gravities involved.

eg: I do ten gallon batches with a typical boil off rate of 1.5 gallons per hour. I just did a batch of kolsch today where my pre-boil volume was 13 gallons at 1.041 SG, post-boil/pre-chilled volume was 11.5 gallons, and chilled volume to the fermentors was 11 gallons at 1.048 SG. So a 7 point increase with a 1.5 gallon decrease. All of those volumes and gravities were predicted by BS3 and I totally nailed them all.

Now, if you were doing, say, an 80 point brew, that could indicate there's a calibration problem somewhere...

Cheers!

[edit/ps] I doubt it matters but I run three 20 gallon Blichmann G1 kettles...

My beersmith w my profile entered in pretty accurately as far as volumes etc is predicting an pre boil of 1062 and a post of 1082, losing 2 gallons... I NEVER had issues w beersmith missing the marks before this EHERMS. And that’s w BHE AT 65%.

I’m just gonna roll w this brew and enter my numbers in at end of session and see if I can pin the issue down.

 

[kevin58]

My beersmith w my profile entered in pretty accurately as far as volumes etc is predicting an pre boil of 1062 and a post of 1082, losing 2 gallons... I NEVER had issues w beersmith missing the marks before this EHERMS. And that’s w BHE AT 65%.

I’m just gonna roll w this brew and enter my numbers in at end of session and see if I can pin the issue down.

If you are using an all new system you need to make an all new equipment profile. I just started using my eHERMS this past March. I followed the video tutorial posted by Short Circuited Brewers and measured every drop from every hose, pump head etc. and the Beersmith estimates matched my real world actuals pretty much from the very start.

 

[Smellyglove]

If you have bigger losses in the new system than the old one you can see lower BHE. However, you might have a higher ME (Mashe efficiency) in the new one if you had close to 0 losses in the other setup. Brewhouse efficiency isn't very interesting, imo. It doesn't say anything about the actual mash efficiency, which is interesting, (again, imo). If you have bigger losses, just brew more wort. (BHE). But if you have higher ME still make more wort to compensate for the losses, but with less grains.

 

[USMChueston0311]

If you are using an all new system you need to make an all new equipment profile. I just started using my eHERMS this past March. I followed the video tutorial posted by Short Circuited Brewers and measured every drop from every hose, pump head etc. and the Beersmith estimates matched my real world actuals pretty much from the very start.

Ive watched this in the past, and Im pretty dialed into beersmith. I was missing the fact that my 2 lbs of lactose was what pushed me up into the high 8s. Brew went well today, hit my numbers, except OG which was about 6 points higher than beersmith predicted. My first time using my new MM3, set at .045, and it crushed pretty fine, with alot of flour, and caused my first stuck mash on my 53rd brew! Was able to correct it right away, but Im definitely gonna need to bump up to .050 - .055 and or grain condition depending on the resultant crush/es of the other gaps. We shall see.

 

[doug293cz]

Ive watched this in the past, and Im pretty dialed into beersmith. I was missing the fact that my 2 lbs of lactose was what pushed me up into the high 8s. Brew went well today, hit my numbers, except OG which was about 6 points higher than beersmith predicted. My first time using my new MM3, set at .045, and it crushed pretty fine, with alot of flour, and caused my first stuck mash on my 53rd brew! Was able to correct it right away, but Im definitely gonna need to bump up to .050 - .055 and or grain condition depending on the resultant crush/es of the other gaps. We shall see.

Did you measure the roller gap using feeler gauges, or just trust the numbers stamped/etched on the mill end plates? You shouldn't get much flour at a 0.045" setting.

Brew on

 

[Smellyglove]

It also depends on the RPM of the rollers. The quicker the more flour. Some people are not aware that speed is also as important as gap. When people mention only gap size it tells me very little, as half of the information about the milling is left out. It's like saying "I ran a stretch in ten seconds" Well, how far was the stretch?

Often when people see to much flour, they mill coarser, thus not crushing the grain optimally, when they could just mill slower. Slow is key unless you do biab. Less flour, good crush of the starches, and more intact husks.

Also if one has a mill with fixed speed and baffles which controls the rate of grains dropped down onto the rollers, not opening the baffle all the way and let lots of grains onto the rollers at a high rate is the equivalent of running slower RPM, since if you have "this" much space between the rollers, and you dump lots of grains onto them you can get two grains in the same space and they will be crushed against rollers, and the other grain(s), basically halving the mill gap, making more flour, instead of having the mill gap all to themselves. This last paragraph is a theory. I've experimented lots with milling when I was working at a LHBS with this kind of mills.

I get really really excited when I see my crush is exactly what I'm looking for. It takes some good amount of kilos to understand a mill.