How much does your Mash Efficiency matter?

[code3kid]

I have spent a lot of time trying to increase mash efficiency. I guess just out of a desire to squeeze every bit of sugar out of the grain I was using because more is better, right? But does it matter? Is there a such thing as too high of a mash efficiency? Is there a negative effect on flavor as mash efficiency climbs higher and higher. If you end up with the same OG and FG, does it matter how much fermentables it took to get there?

Stated another way, if you could create mash A with 10 lbs of malt to obtain an OG: 1.056 which imputes a 75% mash efficiency in a 5 gal batch and a mash B with only 7.5 lbs of the same malt to obtain the exact same OG: 1.056 which imputes a 100% mash efficiency in a 5 gal batch, do you think that they would taste the same? Do you think that there would be a perceptible difference? Does using more malt in the lower efficiency wort create more flavor? If it does, then would there be more flavor by dropping the mash efficiency down to say 50%?

 

[AlexKay]

That’s a really interesting question. My shoot-from-the-hip idea would be that flavor compounds extract from grain faster than starch converts to sugar, and so you would indeed get more flavor out of the low-efficiency, large-grain-bill batch. This probably isn’t too noticeable until you get to the 50%-vs.-75% range, or so.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

This may be a related topic: Intentional Extreme Low Efficiency Brewing

 

[Dland]

There is more than one way of achieving lower efficiency.

Flavor wise, if one mashes at higher temp, lower alcohol efficiency is achieved due to less fermentable sugars, and taste is enhanced, or at least changed, for better or worse, for instance.

If some part of brewing process (eg sparging) is less efficient, and one leaves sugars and flavor elements behind in grist, lower efficiency can be achieved w/o addition to taste.

In real life, for most of us home brewers, answer may lie in the middle....

Anyway, to answer basic question, mash efficency does not matter that much to me, as long as it is in range I expect, (which it almost always its). I use mostly the same scale of ratios of grains, water and hops for most of my brews. Good beer is more important, efficiancy is good too, but not at expense of worrying about it too much.

Hope that is understandable answer,, but it is friday evening...

 

[code3kid]

That’s a really interesting question. My shoot-from-the-hip idea would be that flavor compounds extract from grain faster than starch converts to sugar, and so you would indeed get more flavor out of the low-efficiency, large-grain-bill batch. This probably isn’t too noticeable until you get to the 50%-vs.-75% range, or so.

I think I feel the similar way about it. Maybe the other side of it, though. For me, it was a batch of a Hazy Pale that I ran into a problem with. I mashed higher looking for more Dextrines. I get great mash efficiency on my smaller stove top system. Less grain, same OG. Once the beer fermented out, I got the expected FG, but it is different from the same recipe that I made on a larger system getting only 75% mash efficiency. The flavor is flatter. Its making me think that for lighter or lower gravity styles maybe a higher mash efficiency is a good thing, but for more flavorful or bigger beers, maybe a lower mash efficiency is better.

 

[jtratcliff]

I would say that on the homebrew scale it's more important to know what your efficiency is and how to reliably achieve it than to hit a specific efficiency number...

 

[CascadesBrewer]

First off, it likely matters on what is driving your high or low efficiency. If you have a very low efficiency just because you leave behind 2 gallons of wort in dead space in your mash tun, I don't see that impacting the final character. On the other hand, efficiency driven by factors like grain crush, mash pH, time, temperature, or aggressive squeezing of the grain bed likely do drive differences in quality. I hear of professional brewers that get very high mash efficiency using a mash filter to squeeze out more sugars. That leads me to believe that higher efficiency or extraction is not necessarily a bad thing.

I often wonder if there is more impact on the use of specialty malts. It could be that 60% vs 80% is caused just by issues with conversion of your base malts, but it could be that both mashes are getting the same amount of colors and flavors out of the Crystal and Roasted Malts in the mash. It could be that when adjusting recipes to account for efficiency differences, one should take this into account.