Improved Mash Efficiency - Thanks!

[Hoppybeav]

I just wanted to take a moment and say thanks to all you forum gurus for the various tips and tricks posted in various stickies and other threads throughout these forums.

I've been AG brewing for several years but I only brew about 30-60 gallons a year, 5.25 at a time. Slowly adding to my equipment and processes, I had noticed that my pre-boil gravity readings were falling short of the targets by a pretty consistent 8-10%... I had done better before starting to crush my own grain (Barley Crusher) and switching from fly to batch sparging. Efficiency Calculators told me I was at about 65% going into the pot. I got lazy and just adjusted my grain bill to compensate.

But, after following advice from the forums, I've been tweaking my processes and saw some improvements. I tightened my grain crusher's roller gap, conditioned my malt, slowed my runoff, altered my sparge process to a slower hybrid batch-fly, adjusted my water chemistry, etc. The last three batches all showed improvement: an APA @ 75%, a Belgian Blond @ 78%, a wheat at 80%.

Today I'm brewing a Rye Saison recipe I found in here. It's a simple grain bill. I used all my new steps and took my time. I just measured my gravity into the pot. I hit 89%!

I am thrilled at the improvement and wanted to say thanks again for everyone who contributes in here... I have learned a TON and keep finding new information all the time.

 

[ALExanderH]

Great numbers, now all you gotta do is keep good records and try to produce the same every time

 

[Hoppybeav]

Great numbers, now all you gotta do is keep good records and try to produce the same every time

Baby steps....

 

[MaryB]

My efficiency holds around 85% pretty consistently. Comes with practice! And not rushing things.

 

[CraigKing]

Slowed your runoff.... like only opening the valve half way when draining the mash tun? That increases efficiency? I typically always just open the valve 100%.

 

[dmtaylor]

Slowed your runoff.... like only opening the valve half way when draining the mash tun? That increases efficiency? I typically always just open the valve 100%.

Probably only helps efficiency by one point or something based on it's sitting in the mash tun for a longer time! That's about all that does.

I open my valve 100% after the first 2-3 minutes once it begins running clear and saw my average efficiency climb to >90% with experience. More recently I actually OPENED the gap on my mill to make my average efficiency fall to 81-82% ON PURPOSE to improve malt flavor. I found that high numbers are NOT all they're cracked up to be, and now I am conducting experiments that should help to prove this to more masses. I just purposely brewed the same recipe twice with vastly different efficiency goals but the same OG. Two Marzens, one sparged 81% eff and OG=1.049, the other no-sparge 64% eff and OG=1.052. Malt bills were the same percentage-wise but one had more than the other to account for the planned efficiency difference. They are almost ready to lager right now so the tasting results should be available in near future (I'm going to use gelatin ala Tasty/Brulosophy to accelerate the lagering process).

Consistency is really more important than anything else. If you know exactly what to expect out of your mash every dang time, that's what's really awesome. I don't care if it's 55%, 65%, 88%, whatever. If you can get consistent, that's where it's at.

 

[kh54s10]

Slowed your runoff.... like only opening the valve half way when draining the mash tun? That increases efficiency? I typically always just open the valve 100%.

I would expect that it was to do to the other changes made. From everything I have read, it makes no difference how fast you drain a batch sparge. I have certainly never seen a difference.

 

[LarMoeCur]

I would expect that it was to do to the other changes made. From everything I have read, it makes no difference how fast you drain a batch sparge. I have certainly never seen a difference.

yes and no. It depends on what you believe the draining process is. If you rapidly drain the wort, add sparge water, and immediately rapidly drain. Your efficiency will be lower. Now if you rapidly drain, add sparge water, wait sometime (10-20 minutes) you will see higher efficiencies. They are both batch sparging but different technics of sparging.

 

[kh54s10]

yes and no. It depends on what you believe the draining process is. If you rapidly drain the wort, add sparge water, and immediately rapidly drain. Your efficiency will be lower. Now if you rapidly drain, add sparge water, wait sometime (10-20 minutes) you will see higher efficiencies. They are both batch sparging but different technics of sparging.

I have never found that waiting has made any difference in my efficiency. I add the sparge, stir very well, vorlauf with the valve only opened a little. Once it is running clear I open it all the way.

When I have waited the 10-20 minutes it made no measurable difference.

YMMV.

 

[dmtaylor]

yes and no. It depends on what you believe the draining process is. If you rapidly drain the wort, add sparge water, and immediately rapidly drain. Your efficiency will be lower. Now if you rapidly drain, add sparge water, wait sometime (10-20 minutes) you will see higher efficiencies. They are both batch sparging but different technics of sparging.

This is not true. Denny Conn himself, inventor of the batch sparging process, says he has not noticed any hit in efficiency from immediately draining and no longer waits 10-20 minutes after adding the sparge water.

 

[LarMoeCur]

I have never found that waiting has made any difference in my efficiency. I add the sparge, stir very well, vorlauf with the valve only opened a little. Once it is running clear I open it all the way.

When I have waited the 10-20 minutes it made no measurable difference.

YMMV.

How long does your vorlaufing take? 5-10 minutes? I'd bet it doesn't run clear until the grain bed resettles. Which is that 10-20 minutes mark I'm talking about. You are not really immediately draining to the kettle right after your add sparge water.

 

[kh54s10]

How long does your vorlaufing take? 5-10 minutes? I'd bet it doesn't run clear until the grain bed resettles. Which is that 10-20 minutes mark I'm talking about. You are not really immediately draining to the kettle right after your add sparge water.

5 minutes max... It goes clear in less than 2 quarts. I have the tun drained in less than 15 minutes.

As I said I have tried it both ways - no measurable difference!!!

 

[LarMoeCur]

5 minutes max... It goes clear in less than 2 quarts. I have the tun drained in less than 15 minutes.

As I said I have tried it both ways - no measurable difference!!!

15 is dead smack in the middle of 10-20 minutes. Which really isn't immediately, I've never heard of anyone draining to the kettle as they are pouring the sparge water into the mash tun. Most everyone stirs and waits for the running to run clear before draining to the mash tun.

Like I said in my first post it depends on what you believe draining process is. I believe we are in agreeance. I maybe just cutting hairs with terminology.

 

[kh54s10]

15 is dead smack in the middle of 10-20 minutes. Which really isn't immediately, I've never heard of anyone draining to the kettle as they are pouring the sparge water into the mash tun. Most everyone stirs and waits for the running to run clear before draining to the mash tun.

Like I said in my first post it depends on what you believe draining process is. I believe we are in agreeance. I maybe just cutting hairs with terminology.

Maybe you are splitting hairs. I add the sparge water, stir, vorlauf and drain. I do not add the water, stir, WAIT 10-20 minutes, then, vorlauf and drain

So about 15 minutes total not 25 - 45 minutes.

 

[dmtaylor]

We may have to agree to disagree. Clarity happens within about 1.5 quarts whether you wait 10-20 minutes for the grain bed to settle or not. There's science behind it but I can't be bothered to discuss it here. I would however suggest you try this sometime and see if it really makes any difference. You'll find that it does not.

 

[55x11]

5 minutes max... It goes clear in less than 2 quarts. I have the tun drained in less than 15 minutes.

As I said I have tried it both ways - no measurable difference!!!

I no longer do much vorlaufing - if at all. I have a pretty good screen and I NEVER see any husk material, even in the first minutes of first runnings. Since I do larger batches, I doubt it makes any difference at all. Decoction would make all beers super-bitter if this was the case.

I also find the chasing of high mash efficiency issue the most overrated in brewing community. We all (ok, some of us) compare those numbers and obsess about getting them as high as we can as if they mean something about our skills as a brewer.

One of the advantages of being a home brewer is that (unlike commercial brewers) you can afford NOT to care if your efficiency is 60% or 100% (and I still maintain that most of us have a pretty big uncertainty in our efficiency measurements) - the consistency is what matters, but even then not that much. Just throw another pound or two of US 2-row, it will cost you $1 or $2, and focus on other things, like how your beer will taste.

I honestly never had anyone taste one of my home-brews and tell me: "Tastes great, but your efficiency may be a bit off, if only you could double-mill it and fly-sparge it, it would be a much better beer".

 

[Hoppybeav]

Denny Conn's is the technique that I originally tried to mimic.

Until I started trying to improve efficiency recently, I would set the grain bed w/ the valve maybe 1/4th open, then one it ran clear, open it up to maybe 3/4ths to drain the tun.

Now, I drain the mash the same way, but take more time stirring in half the sparge water and only open it about 50-60% of the way while I fly sparge the rest of the water while draining.

I don't know where my improvements in efficiency came from, but I would guess that the grain crush and malt conditioning were big players. Someone has said that "consistency" is the key in homebrewing and I agree. But in my case, I had been consistently getting low mash efficiencies that I believe were due to deeply ingrained brewing habits that weren't ideal. So, I read and read and read and looked for opportunities to tweak my process to make that area of my beer making better. So far, so good. Now if I can repeat this improvement in efficiency in my beers over the next year and deeply ingrain THIS new process, then I'll have achieved my goal.

I'm not chasing 90%. I'd be perfectly happy hitting around 80% from now on.

Thanks again for all you big brains in here. Even in this thread there's some good discussion going on that may help someone some day!

 

[kh54s10]

I no longer do much vorlaufing - if at all. I have a pretty good screen and I NEVER see any husk material, even in the first minutes of first runnings. Since I do larger batches, I doubt it makes any difference at all. Decoction would make all beers super-bitter if this was the case.

I also find the chasing of high mash efficiency issue the most overrated in brewing community. We all (ok, some of us) compare those numbers and obsess about getting them as high as we can as if they mean something about our skills as a brewer.

One of the advantages of being a home brewer is that (unlike commercial brewers) you can afford NOT to care if your efficiency is 60% or 100% (and I still maintain that most of us have a pretty big uncertainty in our efficiency measurements) - the consistency is what matters, but even then not that much. Just throw another pound or two of US 2-row, it will cost you $1 or $2, and focus on other things, like how your beer will taste.

I honestly never had anyone taste one of my home-brews and tell me: "Tastes great, but your efficiency may be a bit off, if only you could double-mill it and fly-sparge it, it would be a much better beer".

I vorlauf. A little.

My water heater braid is good so I only get a little bit of fine particles. As I said earlier, it takes less than 2 quarts into my pitcher to go clear.

I also don't care too much about efficiency. I use a corona mill and will double grind sometimes, especially wheat. I have tuned my processes so that now my efficiency is pretty consistent. I only get about 70% but it does not fluctuate much.

The beers turn out great and none of my friends complain.

I guess I may be adding the $1-$2 of grain but I don't see it happening because Beersmith is adjusting to my efficiency %.

What I don't know won't hurt me in this case.

 

[dmtaylor]

70% is pretty much ideal from what I can tell. I'll continue to run more efficiency experiments just to see if I can refine my theories and conclusions. And it's never a bad idea for anyone else with the capacity and interest to repeat similar experiments themselves and arrive at their own conclusions.

 

[kh54s10]

Denny Conn's is the technique that I originally tried to mimic.

Until I started trying to improve efficiency recently, I would set the grain bed w/ the valve maybe 1/4th open, then one it ran clear, open it up to maybe 3/4ths to drain the tun.

Now, I drain the mash the same way, but take more time stirring in half the sparge water and only open it about 50-60% of the way while I fly sparge the rest of the water while draining.

I don't know where my improvements in efficiency came from, but I would guess that the grain crush and malt conditioning were big players. Someone has said that "consistency" is the key in homebrewing and I agree. But in my case, I had been consistently getting low mash efficiencies that I believe were due to deeply ingrained brewing habits that weren't ideal. So, I read and read and read and looked for opportunities to tweak my process to make that area of my beer making better. So far, so good. Now if I can repeat this improvement in efficiency in my beers over the next year and deeply ingrain THIS new process, then I'll have achieved my goal.

I'm not chasing 90%. I'd be perfectly happy hitting around 80% from now on.

Thanks again for all you big brains in here. Even in this thread there's some good discussion going on that may help someone some day!

Your method seems to be working and I am not suggesting that you change anything but what is your mash tun setup.

I use a braid so if I tried to fly sparge the water would make a straight run from the fly to the outlet end of the braid. Thus leaving at least 1/2 of the grain bed not rinsed. The flow will take the path of least resistance, in other words, in this case, a straight line. Thus bypassing all the grain in the lower corners of the tun.

 

[str1p3s]

I also find the chasing of high mash efficiency issue the most overrated in brewing community. We all (ok, some of us) compare those numbers and obsess about getting them as high as we can as if they mean something about our skills as a brewer.
.

I've seen this a lot and I know it's true, but I cannot bring myself to think this way! I'm a software engineer so it irks me to think I could be doing something more efficiently if I could. Someone did a poll on here to try to figure out how many engineering backgrounds are on here and it was like half, so I can't be the only one that feels this way.

 

[casualbrewer]

Glad I biab lol... Sounds exhausting dealing with all that. Full volume no sparge. Very little to calculate and very predictable

 

[dmtaylor]

I've seen this a lot and I know it's true, but I cannot bring myself to think this way! I'm a software engineer so it irks me to think I could be doing something more efficiently if I could. Someone did a poll on here to try to figure out how many engineering backgrounds are on here and it was like half, so I can't be the only one that feels this way.

I'm an engineer. I chased efficiency for many years and won. Averaged more than 90% brewhouse efficiency on every batch for a while. Then I noticed that my beers were tasting kind of bland and watery. Theory: A lot of the flavors in beer come NOT JUST from the starches converted to sugars (which is what efficiency is all about) BUT perhaps MOST importantly the flavors are coming from the non-fermentable husk materials, proteins, and non-sugar materials in the grains. If true (and I believe that it is), then this explains why a no-sparge beer with poor efficiency of 50-65% will have improved malty flavors as compared with a high efficiency beer of say 80-95%. Hence my current experiment discussed on the previous page.

That's how this engineer thinks. Efficiency might be everything for numbers fools, but this numbers fool is more concerned about flavor than high efficiency.

 

[LarMoeCur]

I'm an engineer. I chased efficiency for many years and won. Averaged more than 90% brewhouse efficiency on every batch for a while. Then I noticed that my beers were tasting kind of bland and watery. Theory: A lot of the flavors in beer come NOT JUST from the starches converted to sugars (which is what efficiency is all about) BUT perhaps MOST importantly the flavors are coming from the non-fermentable husk materials, proteins, and non-sugar materials in the grains. If true (and I believe that it is), then this explains why a no-sparge beer with poor efficiency of 50-65% will have improved malty flavors as compared with a high efficiency beer of say 80-95%. Hence my current experiment discussed on the previous page.

That's how this engineer thinks. Efficiency might be everything for numbers fools, but this numbers fool is more concerned about flavor than high efficiency.

I just listened to a pod cast on this very subject. John Palmer basically said that high efficiency is not necessarily a good thing. At higher efficiencies you are extracting more sugars but lots of other things too that affect the taste of your beer. He thought that 75% was a good target number and if you fell short add a little more grain to hit your target OG. Now if you are seeing very low numbers it may be time to look at your processes.

 

[str1p3s]

I'm an engineer. I chased efficiency for many years and won. Averaged more than 90% brewhouse efficiency on every batch for a while. Then I noticed that my beers were tasting kind of bland and watery. Theory: A lot of the flavors in beer come NOT JUST from the starches converted to sugars (which is what efficiency is all about) BUT perhaps MOST importantly the flavors are coming from the non-fermentable husk materials, proteins, and non-sugar materials in the grains. If true (and I believe that it is), then this explains why a no-sparge beer with poor efficiency of 50-65% will have improved malty flavors as compared with a high efficiency beer of say 80-95%. Hence my current experiment discussed on the previous page.

That's how this engineer thinks. Efficiency might be everything for numbers fools, but this numbers fool is more concerned about flavor than high efficiency.

Certainly makes sense! My efficiency is still around 70% so I don't have that problem . I think if it started effecting taste then that would be a new factor to consider. Even numbers fools know that efficiency means nothing if you aren't getting the job done.

 

[dmtaylor]

I just listened to a pod cast on this very subject. John Palmer basically said that high efficiency is not necessarily a good thing. At higher efficiencies you are extracting more sugars but lots of other things too that affect the taste of your beer.

This I do NOT agree with. I brewed a 40-point beer with 92% efficiency. It was judged as such in competition. No one noted anything off in it. The one comment that was consistent among multiple judges is that it seemed "thin, watery" etc. No astringency or anything like that was encountered. I agreed (and I am Certified).

 

[dmtaylor]

Update: Sorry, I was wrong, it was 94% brewhouse efficiency, not 92%. That was a different batch.

 

[Hoppybeav]

Your method seems to be working and I am not suggesting that you change anything but what is your mash tun setup.

I use a braid so if I tried to fly sparge the water would make a straight run from the fly to the outlet end of the braid. Thus leaving at least 1/2 of the grain bed not rinsed. The flow will take the path of least resistance, in other words, in this case, a straight line. Thus bypassing all the grain in the lower corners of the tun.

I have a 10g Igloo Round cooler w/ a copper manifold I made. It was my first go at mashing, and I've never had a stuck sparge or channeling that I could observe, so I let it be. I've considered the screens a few times, but just never got around to it.

 

[55x11]

Update: Sorry, I was wrong, it was 94% brewhouse efficiency, not 92%. That was a different batch.

Now you are just showing off!

 

[dmtaylor]

Well yeah! Plus it shows that super high efficiency can lead to those thin, watery characteristics. Since those days, my new purposeful average 81% efficiency has seemed like a good balance between waste and thin taste.

 

[doug293cz]

... I've never heard of anyone draining to the kettle as they are pouring the sparge water into the mash tun. ...

Really? It's called fly sparging.

Brew on

 

[doug293cz]

yes and no. It depends on what you believe the draining process is. If you rapidly drain the wort, add sparge water, and immediately rapidly drain. Your efficiency will be lower. Now if you rapidly drain, add sparge water, wait sometime (10-20 minutes) you will see higher efficiencies. They are both batch sparging but different technics of sparging.

I have never found that waiting has made any difference in my efficiency. I add the sparge, stir very well, vorlauf with the valve only opened a little. Once it is running clear I open it all the way.

When I have waited the 10-20 minutes it made no measurable difference.

YMMV.

To get the most benefit (efficiency) from a batch sparge, you want the sugar concentration in the sparged wort to be uniform throughout the MLT. You can achieve this by vigorous stirring for a couple of minutes, or just adding the water and waiting for diffusion to get rid of the concentration gradients. Stirring is much faster. Once you have achieved uniform concentration throughout, neither additional time, nor additional stirring will allow you to extract any additional sugar (provide any increase in efficiency.)

The above assumes you have reached ~100% conversion efficiency or mashed out, so that no additional conversion is occurring during the sparge.

Brew on

 

[doug293cz]

I'm having a hard time buying the theory that higher efficiency leads to thinner or more watery beers for worts with identical mash processes and OG's. In order for this to happen, you would have to get proportionately less of some body/flavor producing component from more thorough rinsing of the grain. For this to happen, something that was in the liquid in the original mash would have to go back into the grits (or precipitate out) during the sparge step, so that proportionately less of it is recovered during the sparge vs. 1st runnings.

It is possible to get proportionately more of a component during sparging, if and only if, the concentration of that component in the original mash was at its solubility limit, and therefore more of this component could be dissolved out of the grain during the sparge. This is never the case for sugar, as the solubility limit is at an SG in the 1.300 range at mash temp. I don't see how getting more of a low solubility, minor component in the wort could make it thinner or more watery.

Can anyone explain a mechanism that would cause higher efficiency brews to be thinner or more watery.

Brew on

 

[dmtaylor]

I'm having a hard time buying the theory that higher efficiency leads to thinner or more watery beers for worts with identical mash processes and OG's.

I'm probably just not using the right words, not explaining it properly. Perhaps what is really going on is a lack of depth of flavor, as opposed to "thin or watery". My soul yearns for deep malty flavors. I am a malthead. And at 94% brewhouse, I wasn't getting it. The flavors were all there, but were not as awesome as I wished they would be.

 

[LarMoeCur]

I'm having a hard time buying the theory that higher efficiency leads to thinner or more watery beers for worts with identical mash processes and OG's. In order for this to happen, you would have to get proportionately less of some body/flavor producing component from more thorough rinsing of the grain. For this to happen, something that was in the liquid in the original mash would have to go back into the grits (or precipitate out) during the sparge step, so that proportionately less of it is recovered during the sparge vs. 1st runnings.

It is possible to get proportionately more of a component during sparging, if and only if, the concentration of that component in the original mash was at its solubility limit, and therefore more of this component could be dissolved out of the grain during the sparge. This is never the case for sugar, as the solubility limit is at an SG in the 1.300 range at mash temp. I don't see how getting more of a low solubility, minor component in the wort could make it thinner or more watery.

Can anyone explain a mechanism that would cause higher efficiency brews to be thinner or more watery.

Brew on

From what John Palmer said on the pod cast. There are proteins and other things are being extracted. These can lead to less mouth feel in the beer. If I'm remembering right the reason is that the proteins make the yeast over attenuate. but don't quote me i'm old.

 

[LarMoeCur]

Really? It's called fly sparging.

Brew on

Let me rephrase...I've never heard of anyone draining to the kettle as they are pouring the sparge water into the mash tun and call it Batch Sparging.

Better?