Low efficiency

[HoppyMaltPoet]

So I brewed a Stout this weekend and my efficiency was lower then normal...about 65%. I think this was due to my sparging. I don't believe I sparged with enough water. I use BeerSmith and I used the single infusion batch sparge full body selection. BeerSmith directions said to sparge with 4 gallons, then .5 gallons, then 2.8 gallons. I felt this was a bit too little to begin with so I did about 5 gallons 1st round, 2.5 gallons for 2nd, and 3 gallons for final. My runnings were still pretty dark so I was afraid that I might need to sparge a bit more but I had no water heated at this time and I really did not have much room left in my pots for additional runnings (I am currently doing split pot boils, soon to move to a newly purchase 15gal pot). I had 13# of grain in my grain bill, 80% base 20% mix of specialty. Basically I upped my initial mash thickness to 1.5lbs of grain per quart instead of 1.25lbs)

So my question is, do you think that I sparged with too little water? If so why is BeerSmith giving me these amounts? Maybe I am missing a something with the initial settings that will help me get a better representation of how much water I should be sparging with. If I am not sparging with too little water, maybe I should be looking at something else in my process?

 

[bertmurphy]

It told you to add .5 gallons for second runnings???

I'd make sure you have your equipment and mash type setup correctly.

 

[HoppyMaltPoet]

I have to check when I get home but you are probably right. I think my equipment might have been set wrong. I was playing with the setting here at work after you said that and it looks like that might be where I went wrong.

 

[bertmurphy]

This is what beersmith usually gives me on my brew sheets

Add 21.88 qt of water at 169.4 F
Hold mash at 154.0 F for 60 min
Sparge with 3.72 gal of 168.0 F water.
Add water to achieve boil volume of 6.84 gal

See
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1742878/Scottish_Wee_Heavy_Ale.htm and
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1742878/Wee_Heavy_Brew_Sheet.htm

Note, I adjusted my mash temp between publishing those two docs to the web.

 

[Bobby_M]

Note that the initial volume of water added to the dry grain is called "strike" water and it's not to be listed as the sparge amount.

5 gallons in 13 pounds works out to 1.53qts/lb which is fine. Did you drain the tun after the mash before adding any additional water? You should have gotten about 3 gallons out then.

Assuming a preboil volume of about 7 total gallons, you needed to sparge a total of 4 gallons. You sparged 5.5 gallons instead for a total of 7.5 gallons preboil. What was your final batch volume, 5 gallons? If so, I'd be amazed you only got 65% efficiency because you sparged A LOT.

 

[HoppyMaltPoet]

Yes I drained the running from the first before adding the additional water to 2nd round and so on. I did have between 7.5 and 8 gallons pre-boil. And my final batch volume was aimed at 5 gallons but I had a bit more post boil...probably closer to 6 gallons. I aimed high to get more runnings because I felt I was a bit low on my target efficiency and didn't want to leave anything behind.

 

[Bobby_M]

You had the opposite effect though. You oversparged and collected more wort than you could reasonably boil down. Unless you can fit all of it into the fermenter, you left sugar behind anyway in that extra gallon of wort.

 

[HoppyMaltPoet]

So I should have probably boiled for some additional time before my initial hop addition.

That or use my proper targeted sparge volumes. I think with the correction of my equipment in BeerSmith this should resolve that issue. But also never really thought about what you said. I have been trying to extract as much sugar during my sparge as possible (without extracting tannins) that I didn't realize my post boil efficiency could suffer. Up until this round this hasn't been an issue because I pretty much hit target volumes. But I will definitely be more cognizant of this in my future batches. Thanks guys. I think I learned something today and just maybe I won't make the same mistake twice.