New member, and brewhouse efficiency

[jefft]

I've been looking at this forum for a few weeks now, and I'm impressed with the information available and the helpfulness of the members and mods. Proud to be signed up.

Anyway, I've been brewing for about eight years, and finally bought my own mill recently. I've never bothered to calculate efficiencies before, I just knew what worked for me. The first IPA I brewed with my usual IPA grain bill was way over the top compared to what I was used to. OG was near 1.080, abv ended up 8.3%.

Fast forward to today, and I brewed an all Cascade APA. I toned things down a lot, and kept track of some numbers. Efficiency came in at 87%. I knew I was getting a better crush with my new mill, but I wasn't expecting numbers like that.

My question is, is there a point where I can be too efficient? When will flavors and body be affected by high efficiencies? Seems like there's got to be a point where that happens.

 

[Tall_Yotie]

Howdy and welcome!

Efficiency, high or low, will effect how your beer turns out. If you get higher than normal it will taste different as you will have a higher OG. Your recipe has a target OG; if you are above and want to have the real flavor of the beer, then water it down to your target OG.

 

[BigB]

Efficiency is just a measure of how much sugar you are getting out of the grain. So for example, a recipe that is calculated to use 10 pounds of grain with 75% efficiency... You could get the exact same beer at 87% efficiency with roughly 1# less grain. If you had perfect efficiency (100%) it will be the exact same flavor and body as 50% efficiency if you adjust the quantity of the grain (in the case of 50%, you would have to use double the grain).

 

[Catt22]

Opinions vary considerably on this question. IME, it does not make any difference. I've make excellent beers with a very high lautering efficiency and also excellent beers with marginal lautering efficiency. IMO, there are much more critical factors that can affect the end product. Some of the experts would differ with me on this I am sure. The big breweries max out their efficiencies and somehow they seem to do OK, so it must not be damaging in and of itself.

 

[bannonb]

I sweated the efficiency when I first started because I felt it was too low.

I have learned that a consistent result (high or low) is what pays off because you can buy the right amount of grain and always have the right volume of wort in the boiler.

I use beersmith and with my rig and my Homebrew shop grind, I find that 73% is repeatable every time. I can hit my original gravity as planned with the right amount of liquid so the hop utilization is also on target.

It's different for every rig and every grind, but once dialed in, I could move my attention to mash temp consistency (via RIMS).

87% is awesome if you can repeat it reliably.

BannonB

 

[jefft]

I never worried about efficiencies before. I just knew after my first brew with the new mill, that something had changed. I didn't have anything written down from that IPA, but I came up with some rough numbers from my foggy memory and adjusted the grain bill accordingly for today's brew. I was hoping for an OG of 1.056-58, and got 59, so I'm pretty happy.

The last brew, by the way, was very drinkable. I can't drink very many, but tasty never the less. There is just a bit of burn from the alcohol, but very smooth bitterness that goes down extremely well. It's fun to share 'cause my friends don't realize how quickly they are getting silly. It's just a couple of beers, right?

 

[smp1]

Higher efficiency saves money. Pretty durned good reason. Gotta watch the end of your sparge though, to make sure your runoff is still below 6.0 ph, otherwise you're going to pull out some tannins. Commercial brewers extract virtually 100% of available sugars routinely.

 

[arturo7]

Efficiency only matters in it's consistency.

 

[JuanMoore]

Efficiency in and of itself doesn't effect flavor, but crushing too fine can have negative consequences such as tannin extraction and stuck sparges. Those can often be remedied by conditioning the malt prior to crushing if you're really chasing high efficiency. The other impact it can have is an unplanned for OG which will definately effect flavor. As arturo said, the most important aspect of efficiency for homebrewers is consistency.