One recipe gets poor efficiency??

[gratefuldisc]

I normally get efficiencies in the 80's but the last two times I have brewed my wit recipe, I have gotten really poor efficiency. Trying to figure out what is going on. TIA

This is a quick excerpt from my blog post today with the details...

This recipe has failed me twice. I'm thinking it's not my method, bc I have brewed other things since and still hit my high efficiency numbers.
Posting recipe to reach out to more experienced brewers.

3 lbs belgian pils
1 lb 6 row
5 lbs unmalted wheat
1/2 lb quick oats
1 lb rice hulls

mashed 1.125 qt/lb (normal for me) not counting rice hulls. (pre-soaked rice hulls) mashed at 152 for an hour lost 5 degrees. double batch sparge 2.5 then 3 gallons at 170. 7ish gallons into brew kettle, 1.5 gallons boiled off in 90 minutes. 5.5 gallons into fermentor

was expecting 1.055 with my normal efficiency, ended up at 1.038... maybe it's the all the unmalted wheat? do I need a longer mash? I don't mind making mistakes if I can learn from them, but I have no idea what I am doing wrong...

link to full blog post if interested..

 

[gratefuldisc]

after messaging back and forth with my LHBS guy, he is suggesting I start testing/adjusting mash ph?

 

[Yooper]

I'm wondering about the recipe. Five pounds of unmalted wheat?

Did you do a protein rest or a cereal mash? I'd consider that the other malts don't have enough diastatic power to convert that high of a percentage of unmalted wheat. A cereal mash would help, and a protein rest might be a good thing.

 

[kegtoe]

yep, too much wheat. wheat should be less than 50% of your grain bill. id suggest more like 30%.

 

[gratefuldisc]

thanks for the responses. looks like I misread the wiki on the white beer style when I came up with this recipe. reading up on cereal mashing and it seems a little out of my league right now. would it be simpler and still have satisfactory results to just switch the unmalted wheat to wheat malt?

 

[Malticulous]

All you need to do is cook the wheat to gelitinize all the starch. If you try boiling cracked wheat you'll soon see how thick it get's. With a cerial mash you add about 33% base malt to the wheat and then heat it to about 160F. You'll want about 2 qt per pound. You will see the starch haze fade. After a 20-30 mash you can boil it much easier. Boil it 10-30 minutes than add it in with the strike, or use it to up the temp of the main mash. This is an American style mash, not Belgian. If you don't use it use 28-30 ppg for your raw wheat because that's all the extract you will get.

I probably add a pound or more of malted wheat. Malted wheat has high DP and would work great as the base in a cereal mash. 33% is about the limit before adjuncts have departmental effects on beer quality. I've pushed raw wheat to 40% but not higher.

 

[gratefuldisc]

not really following, just quick numbers in my head... 5 lbs wheat plus 33% base malt? is 6.65 lbs x 2 qt/lb is like 13 qts which is more water than I mashed with to begin with. So then I have 2.35 lbs of grain left to add to the 212 degree mash? seems impossible to hit a sacc rest temp? I'm thinking my recipe is totally screwed up from the get go... didn't realize unmalted wheat was such a pain.

checking my notes I have brewed this 3 times. first 2 times 4lbs pils, 5 lbs unmalted wheat. the first time I got 1.057 second time 1.041. then at the suggestion of LHBS i changed 1 lb pils to 6row for more enzyme action to boost efficiency. that obv didn't do it because I got 1.038

edit- now wondering if maybe I asked for malted wheat the first time by accident?

 

[Malticulous]

It could just be you used malt from different maltsters that have different DP and extract rates.

 

[TenaciousJ]

My suggestion would be to add 2# of pils to you grain bill. This way if you post around 75% efficiency you'll end up with 5.5 gallons of 1.055 wort. Plus it'll reduce the adjuct total to less than 50%

 

[gratefuldisc]

I ended up changing my recipe and brewing again. I changed 4 of the 5lbs of unmalted wheat to malted wheat. I detailed the results in my last two blog posts in my signature. But long story short, I ended up with 1.047, which I figure to be about 70% efficiency.

I do suspect that this time, I may have been accidentally shorted a pound of grain by the lhbs (sure was honest mistake) bc the guy initially wrote down 8lbs instead of 9 (i corrected), my mash looked looser than I have ever seen, and with 1 less pound, my normal efficiency would have gotten me 1.048 and I was expecting 1.055 with 9lbs.