Low efficiency on 1st All-grain, help?

[ViciousFishes]

After only having done partial grain + extract, I recently upgraded to 15G kettles, chugger pump & plate chiller. Yesterday was my first all-grain brew and I had a very low efficiency and was hoping for some constructive criticism and ideas.

First off, I attempted to brew a 5 gallon batch of BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=42841) and followed his grain bill exactly. The estimated OG is 1.040.

In BeerSmith, I used a BIAB equipment profile. With the grain bill entered, the estimated OG was 1.041. I ended up with 1.030

A few notes:

• I had my grain bill crushed by the LHBS. I don't have experience to know whether or not it was a good crush
• I mashed with my full water (9.75 gallons) and recirculated for the entirety of the 60 minute mash.
• I hit my mash temps perfectly at 150* and kept them between 150*-152* for the entire mash
• My recirculation port is connected to a short length of 3/8" high-temp silicone hose. After draining off from the mash, I could see that the grain had a light cone on the top and a bit of channeling on the sides (see pic)
• I did not mash out, simply drained off the 150* wort to the boil kettle
• I ended up with 8.3 gallons pre-boil, just as BeerSmith calculated
• I ended up able to drain off 5 gallons post boil, leaving trub behind

Again, I missed the 1.040 target and only got 1.030. Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[dtwhite]

What was the final post-boil volume? Based on the recipe's assumed 70% efficiency, you'd need a post-boil volume of 7.2 gallons to have an OG of 1.03.

 

[ViciousFishes]

What was the final post-boil volume? Based on the recipe's assumed 70% efficiency, you'd need a post-boil volume of 7.2 gallons to have an OG of 1.03.

I should have paid closer attention. I cut the drain when I started getting some of the trub cone. I'll guess I left 1 to 1.5 gallons in the kettle. One other thing I should have mentioned.... As I was coming to the end of the boil, I realized that I hadn't rehydrated the yeast. So I boiled for another 15 minutes or so and did one more .25 oz addition of Cascade at flameout.

 

[tootal]

If 1.030 is your post boil numbers then I would say it could be 2 things. The crush at the home brew shop is probably on the course side to keep folks from sticking their mash. BIAB can use a finer grind. Also you used all your water for the mash and did not sparge. Using sparge water at 170 degrees helps melt the sugars away from the grains and rinse them. You probably left a lot of sugar in the mash.

I would try sparging next time and see your results. If you're still not happy then try mashing longer because a course ground malt will take longer to convert. In order to learn what was really wrong only change one thing at a time. I know that's hard to do but it's the only way to know for sure.

 

[madcowbrewing]

8.3 gallons pre-boil sounds way too high. If you boil for 60 minutes you should have anywhere from 1-1.25 gallons boil off.

 

[Onkel_Udo]

I should have paid closer attention. I cut the drain when I started getting some of the trub cone. I'll guess I left 1 to 1.5 gallons in the kettle.

Two things...

A bit of trub is a good thing.

Crush...not sure what your frame of reference is but there is almost nothing too fine for BiaB. At the very least you need a standard chunk of 2-row to be in a minimum of about 10 pieces. 1/16th inch pieces are good (dry Quinoa?) is better.

 

[merse24]

Looking at the picture, it looks like the "cone shape" and channeling on the sides was due to some whirlpooling that occurred. I would suggest moving the hose around occasionally while your are recirculating. It appears that it was sitting against the side of the tun, causing the mash to swirl.

 

[ViciousFishes]

Two things...

A bit of trub is a good thing.

Agreed. I spent a bunch of time reading Brulosophers ExBEERaments, including the one on trub (http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/). I fear no trub, but may have been a bit anxious given I was working with all new hardware for the first time.

Crush...not sure what your frame of reference is but there is almost nothing too fine for BiaB. At the very least you need a standard chunk of 2-row to be in a minimum of about 10 pieces. 1/16th inch pieces are good (dry Quinoa?) is better.

To be clear, I was using a BiaB profile in BeerSmith because I'd read to do so when using a no sparge approach (which I kinda think of as a constant vorlauf). I'll talk to my LHBS about their crush. Thanks for the feedback

 

[ViciousFishes]

Looking at the picture, it looks like the "cone shape" and channeling on the sides was due to some whirlpooling that occurred. I would suggest moving the hose around occasionally while your are recirculating. It appears that it was sitting against the side of the tun, causing the mash to swirl.

I definitely need a different approach on how to return the recirculated mash liquor. I've been eying the loc-Line product Bobby sells, but assume that suffers from the same issue of returning water to a single location throughout the vorlauf/sparge. Am open to all ideas

 

[Biscuits]

Honestly, I just think you used too much water for the grain bill. You say you left about a gallon and a half of wort/trub in the kettle and you started with nearly 10 gallons of water. Because your system requires so much water, you should probably also have adjusted the grain bill...there was just no way of knowing this was the case for your inaugural brew. Basically, you brewed a 6.5-7 gallon batch using the grain bill for a 5 gallon batch.

 

[casualbrewer]

Sounds like you didn't actually do a biab. So you basically didn't sparge or squeeze a bag... sugars are left in your grain.

 

[ViciousFishes]

Sounds like you didn't actually do a biab. So you basically didn't sparge or squeeze a bag... sugars are left in your grain.

But, but, but.... I recirculated through the mash for 60 minutes at my mash temperature of 150*... wouldn't that have accomplished the same effect when I completely drained out my MLT?

 

[ViciousFishes]

Honestly, I just think you used too much water for the grain bill. You say you left about a gallon and a half of wort/trub in the kettle and you started with nearly 10 gallons of water. Because your system requires so much water, you should probably also have adjusted the grain bill...there was just no way of knowing this was the case for your inaugural brew. Basically, you brewed a 6.5-7 gallon batch using the grain bill for a 5 gallon batch.

That makes sense. But I also followed the BeerSmith calcs to a tee, which I assume would have accounted for the grain bill and no sparge/BiaB approach. Know what I mean?

 

[Biscuits]

That makes sense. But I also followed the BeerSmith calcs to a tee, which I assume would have accounted for the grain bill and no sparge/BiaB approach. Know what I mean?

Yeah, I have never used BeerSmith so I am not sure what parameters you have to adjust to customize for your brew system, etc. The only thing I can think of is maybe the boil-off was accounting for what should have been kettle loss. :dunno:

I could be way off base, it's known to happen...but my gut is telling me there is something off with the calculation somewhere along the line.

 

[theseeker4]

But, but, but.... I recirculated through the mash for 60 minutes at my mash temperature of 150*... wouldn't that have accomplished the same effect when I completely drained out my MLT?

No. Sparging decreases the concentration of the wort left absorbed in the grain, increasing the amount of sugar collected in your brew pot. If you don't sparge, the water held by your grain is at the same gravity as your wort, whereas if you do sparge, your gravity of the wort left in the grain is lower than your first runnings, retaining less sugar in the grain.

Squeezing the bag reduces the amount of wort retained by the grain. This of course increases the amount of sugars that end up in your brew pot. Non-squeezed grain can retain over 0.1 gallons per pound of grain, while I can get my grain retention under 0.05 gallons per pound of grain by squeezing. You really want to do one or the other, or both, to increase your efficiency.

Recirculating at a set temperature is great for conversion of the starch into sugar, and good for maintaining the temperature, but where this sugar ends up depends on your sparge, how much wort is retained by the grain, how much is left in the mash tun dead space, how much boiled wort you leave in your brew kettle, etc.

 

[EJay]

At what temperature did you take your post-boil sg?

 

[JohnSand]

You'll work it all out with practice. The advice above is all sound. Meanwhile, keep some extract handy to adjust gravity.

 

[ViciousFishes]

At what temperature did you take your post-boil sg?

I did not anticipate the efficiency issues described above, so I took a sample from what remained in the kettle after draining to the fermenter. I allowed it to cool to room temp and then took the hydrometer reading.

 

[dtwhite]

I personally don't think it makes sense to change your process until you have a good understanding of your pre and post boil volumes, because as it is you have no idea what your efficiency is without them. For all we know you only boiled off .75 gallons and had great efficiency. What you said about the process sounds fine to me. When I used to do no-sparge with homebrew shop milling I'd get 70% efficiency, which is pretty similar to what you are doing.

I would test just boiling some water on your stovetop and measure the boiloff rate so you can more effectively calculate a recipe in the future. If you are like me and choose to have a higher ending volume than is typical for a 5 gallon recipe (I like 7), you will have the chance to up the grain / hops beforehand. Assume 65% efficiency but keep some DME on hand if your beer ends up way too weak. Use a refractometer with an accurate pre-boil volume measurement so you can know before you start the boil if you need to add DME or boil longer (at the expense of ending volume) to get the gravity you want.

 

[pdog44450]

After only having done partial grain + extract, I recently upgraded to 15G kettles, chugger pump & plate chiller. Yesterday was my first all-grain brew and I had a very low efficiency and was hoping for some constructive criticism and ideas.

First off, I attempted to brew a 5 gallon batch of BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=42841) and followed his grain bill exactly. The estimated OG is 1.040.

In BeerSmith, I used a BIAB equipment profile. With the grain bill entered, the estimated OG was 1.041. I ended up with 1.030

A few notes:

• I had my grain bill crushed by the LHBS. I don't have experience to know whether or not it was a good crush
• I mashed with my full water (9.75 gallons) and recirculated for the entirety of the 60 minute mash.
• I hit my mash temps perfectly at 150* and kept them between 150*-152* for the entire mash
• My recirculation port is connected to a short length of 3/8" high-temp silicone hose. After draining off from the mash, I could see that the grain had a light cone on the top and a bit of channeling on the sides (see pic)
• I did not mash out, simply drained off the 150* wort to the boil kettle
• I ended up with 8.3 gallons pre-boil, just as BeerSmith calculated
• I ended up able to drain off 5 gallons post boil, leaving trub behind

Again, I missed the 1.040 target and only got 1.030. Any ideas?

Thanks!

I've personally noticed that too coarse of a crush and a rushed/unthorough sparge will lower efficiency by 15% easy. You can adjust efficiency in Beersmith and that will change around your grain bill a little.

For example, if you shoot for 60% efficiency, adding more grain (Beersmith calculates it) will get you the same amount of sugar extraction as 70% with less grain. You could also try boiling longer, which won't help with improving efficiency and it will give you a smaller fermenter volume, but it counteracts the low efficiency.

 

[curtw]

Maybe I missed it, but what was your PRE-BOIL SG?

With your pre-boil SG, your pre-boil volume, and your post-boil SG, you can calculate your post-boil volume (and hence your boil-off). Also the pre-boil SG will point at your conversion efficiency.

 

[tschafer]

First off….NICE F'ING Kitchen bud!

2nd. i didn't read all the replies to your post, but i'm sure 95% is sound advice.

Here is my 2 cents…YOU DID IT RIGHT!

Remember, this is your home brewery. It's your new system, new pots, new equipment. Not BierMuncher brewery. On his system he seems to get 70% eff. out of HIS process.

YOU have no idea what your efficiency is with your new system. That will only come with tweaking and brewing more on it. Example: your brewery maybe at 55-65% eff. That is not a bad thing.

So, what I would highly recommend. Brew this again…I know, i can hear you saying…"WHY?! I don't want to brew batch again. What am I going to do with two batch of the same thing?! It didn't even hit it's numbers!"

Go back into BeerSmith, save that recipe as Ver2 and turn down your efficiency, so that your target OG matches your true OG from the first batch. Your going to see that your grain bill will increase, BUT you are on your way to figuring out what your brewhouse eff. is, and you can now work on hitting 95-100% of that.

Thus, in the future, you can plug in a recipe to meet YOUR system and have the confidence that your going to hit the numbers you estimated in hitting.

FYI - My brewhouse is 64%…BUT after brewing and brewing, tweaking here and there. I hit my target brewhouse efficiency 98-100% of the time.

Good luck boss man. Just keep brewing!

 

[curtw]

+1 to tschafer. I used to obsess over my brewhouse efficiency, which is nowhere near as high as most folks seem to get. But who cares? If it means I need an extra 1/2 # of grain to hit my OG, as long as I can do it *consistently*, I'm a happy camper!

 

[A2HB]

I get 58-59% every single time on my system. I can live with that, and I adjust my recipes to that efficiency and am usually within 1 point of predicted SG's. Good advice above, figure out where your baseline is then just keep aiming for that or higher and you'll be a happy brewer

 

[Gavin C]

8.3 gallons preboil and 5 gallons in the FV. This points to you starting with too much preboil wort or having a phenominally high boil-off and/or leaving far too much wort in the kettle/hoses/chiller dead-space.

Why the BIAb profile. You have a two vessel setup by the looks of it with a conventional mash-tun subject to higher levels of grain absorption. Maybe I'm way off there.

Don't use default profiles. Make your own and name it 1mygreat profile (always top of the list this way with the 1)

There is a bit on efficiency measurement in my signature below that may be useful in learning your system and getting it dialed in.

Great looking setup BTW, I'm sure it will allow to make a lot of great beer.