Malt efficiency turned out higher than expected

[stijn26]

Hi,


Yesterday I brewed an IPA that typically has a abv of 4,5% after bottling.

I first heated 95 liters water to 67° degrees celsius and then I took some of the water (25 liter) to use later in the sparge.
Then I added 12,35 kg's of pale malt to the water.
I mashed 35 mins in water of 66°.
After mashing I pumped some water onto the grain + I added 15 liters of the sparge water. The remainder of the water I wanetd to use at the end of the boil to correct the OG to my desired value of 1,041.

Now the odd thing, at the end of the boil I added the 15 liters + I needed to add 6,5 liter additional water to reach the OG of 1,041.

This resulted in volume to fermentor of around 77 liters, in previous batches of the same recipe I only reached 66 liters and I did not have to add the 6,5 additional liters of water.

The difference to previous batches is that I didn't do a sparge and did not pump around onto the mashed grain. Is it possible that I have gotten so many more sugars from this?

I also used 100% pellets hops instead of 50% flowers and 50% pellets.

I need to know the cause of this because now I have an IPA of around 90 instead of the desired 100.

 

[doug293cz]

Adding a sparge to you process will definitely increase your mash efficiency (collect more sugar from the same amount of grain.) That is why brewers do sparges.

Brew on

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Adding a sparge to you process will definitely increase your mash efficiency (collect more sugar from the same amount of grain.) That is why brewers do sparges.

Brew on

The OP is explaining that by not circulating or sparging his efficiency went up so much that he had to add a bunch of water to bring his OG down to his initial target.

https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com/

 

[stijn26]

The OP is explaining that by not circulating or sparging his efficiency went up so much that he had to add a bunch of water to bring his OG down to his initial target.

https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com/

No, I'm sorry if it wasn't clear:

- batch nr. 1 no sparge: didn't add water
- batch nr. 2 with sparge: had to add water