Poor efficiency--??

[mongoose33]

My first all-grain brew. Went to the LHBS and had the owner specify the grain to approximate another extract brew (with steeping grains) I've been doing. That brew will produce a beer with about 6.2% ABV.

He gave me 14 pounds of 2-Row and 3 pounds of Wheat. My initial gravity (before boil) was about 1.050. After the boil I'm getting about 1.058 or so.

I started with 4.5 gallons of strike water at 160' F which dropped the mash temp to 150. I sparged with 3 gallons at 170' F. Treated the water with a PH amendment to bring it to 5.2.

I put the numbers in a couple of calculators and my efficiency is awful--something in the neighborhood of 50 percent.

The only thing I can think of is that the crush was off--but the LHBS owner crushed it for me, so I'd think it would be ok. Except for the one thing, which is that the efficiency is horrible. When I sparged I ran the water through a colander so as to not create tunneling.

Other than a bad crush, can you think of anything else that might result in such a poor efficiency? It's my first all-grain try and I'm not impressed with my abilities.

 

[tennesseean_87]

What vessel are you mashing in?

 

[alexacuna]

That's a lot of grain for your first beer. 17 pounds seems a little high, but perhaps he had his reasons.

 

[RM-MN]

When someone gets efficiency in the 50% range the first thing that comes to my mind is poor crush because that is usually the cause. Your LHBS owner is trying to balance the efficiency against the chance of stuck sparge and decided to err on the side of lower efficiency instead of stuck sparge because more people will be upset if they can't drain their tun than will if their efficiency is low. If you want to improve efficiency and consistency, you get your own mill. Then you make the mill payment by buying grain in bulk for a discounted price. The mill doesn't have to be a big investment, many people are able to mill their grain adequately with a cheap Corona style mill.

 

[mongoose33]

That's a lot of grain for your first beer. 17 pounds seems a little high, but perhaps he had his reasons.

Potosi Brewing Company (home of the national brewery museum) brews a beer called "Cave Ale." Best beer I've ever had. Or did, anyway, because they changed their recipe in summer of 2015 and it's not a good change. Sour unpleasant finish, and the alcohol level went from 6.5 to 5.5.

Anyway we were trying to approximate the old recipe in some extract brews (which, I might note, have come fairly close to the old recipe), so we were trying to see what we might do in an all-grain. This was a first shot at it.

While not a "big" beer, what I'm shooting for is something I suppose you could label a "sizeable" beer. My OG for both of those earlier attempts was 1.063.

My LHBS owner also knows I'm new at this so perhaps he set the crush a little coarse to make sure I didn't get a stuck sparge. I don't know, he didn't say.

 

[mongoose33]

When someone gets efficiency in the 50% range the first thing that comes to my mind is poor crush because that is usually the cause. Your LHBS owner is trying to balance the efficiency against the chance of stuck sparge and decided to err on the side of lower efficiency instead of stuck sparge because more people will be upset if they can't drain their tun than will if their efficiency is low. If you want to improve efficiency and consistency, you get your own mill. Then you make the mill payment by buying grain in bulk for a discounted price. The mill doesn't have to be a big investment, many people are able to mill their grain adequately with a cheap Corona style mill.

I was smiling when I read this because it's exactly what I told SWMBO yesterday, that I can cut the cost roughly in half if I mill my own grain. She said something along the lines of "what will one of THOSE cost?"

Actually, she's been pretty tolerant of all this. I told her yesterday was going to be a brew day and she went out to run errands; when she came back she parked the car out of the garage, where I brew, without even being asked.

I've got to get a couple more recipes for beers others are more likely to like. She likes Summer Shandy, others like a wheat beer, neither of which are on my own list. I need a couple more kegs I think.

And yes, I am looking at getting a mill. Yesterday was one of those initial attempts where I controlled one variable (milling the grain) by putting it in the hands of someone who presumably knows what he's doing. I was trying to "prove the process."

In the end, I know what matters is how the beer turns out. A OG of 1.055 or so is not bad, just not what I was shooting for. But everything must be ok to this point, as that beer already has a kreusen this morning 14 hours after racking to the fementer, and the airlock is bubbling like mad.

 

[RM-MN]

I was smiling when I read this because it's exactly what I told SWMBO yesterday, that I can cut the cost roughly in half if I mill my own grain. She said something along the lines of "what will one of THOSE cost?"

Actually, she's been pretty tolerant of all this. I told her yesterday was going to be a brew day and she went out to run errands; when she came back she parked the car out of the garage, where I brew, without even being asked.

I've got to get a couple more recipes for beers others are more likely to like. She likes Summer Shandy, others like a wheat beer, neither of which are on my own list. I need a couple more kegs I think.

And yes, I am looking at getting a mill. Yesterday was one of those initial attempts where I controlled one variable (milling the grain) by putting it in the hands of someone who presumably knows what he's doing. I was trying to "prove the process."

In the end, I know what matters is how the beer turns out. A OG of 1.055 or so is not bad, just not what I was shooting for. But everything must be ok to this point, as that beer already has a kreusen this morning 14 hours after racking to the fementer, and the airlock is bubbling like mad.

This is the mill I bought. Note that it won't take very many batches with buying grain in bulk to pay for this mill. http://www.discounttommy.com/p-189-...er-for-wheat-grains-or-use-as-a-nut-mill.aspx

I was a bit apprehensive about all grain and decided to buy this mill since my local store doesn't have a mill and went to BIAB. With this mill set tight, my first batch got me 80% efficiency no-sparge. I was hooked. I've read about people getting poorer efficiency with wheat but when I did a wheat beer my efficiency didn't change.

 

[bowserm]

I put your numbers into Brewers Friend, and I got an OG of 1.086 at 75% efficiency. Perhaps you need to mash with 2X the water?

Everyone does their beers differently, but for me, I normally mash 10-12 pounds of grain in 6 gallons of water followed by 3 gallons sparge. You may not be washing enough sugars from the grains because of not enough water.

When you drain your mashtun, it should take you anywhere from 15-25 minutes. Then sparge and another 10-15 minutes.

If this is your first all grain, practice makes perfect and your next beer will get better. My first 2 batches were disasters.

 

[bowserm]

Sorry for the double post

 

[mongoose33]

what vessel are you mashing in?

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[JimRausch]

That's a lot of grain for your first beer. 17 pounds seems a little high, but perhaps he had his reasons.

I agree with alexacuna. 17 lb grainbill is pretty big for a what should start out with an OG of 1.065 or so.
With me, and I think most folks would agree, when I do a big grain bill my efficiency drops significantly. Batches below 12 lb. I can get mash efficiencies of 75-85%. But above that they drop to more like 60-65%. So, I wouldn't necessarily blame the LHBS crush. And for me, it doesn't matter if I use my 5G picnic cooler with a braid, or my big rectangular cooler with a BIAB setup. Also doesn't matter if I'm doing a single step mash, or 2-step infusion, or even a decoction. It's all about the volume(or maybe the grain/water ratio) with my system.
So, my solution has been to mash no more than 13 lb grain, and make up any difference with DME on higher gravity brews.

 

[tennesseean_87]

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Batch or fly sparge?

 

[mongoose33]

Batch or fly sparge?

Fly sparge. I used a small plastic colander through which I poured the water. I left the valve open when I did this and collected the resulting wort.

It took a long time for this to drain--I ended up with less wort that I might have thought, and kept adding a bit here and there as it continued to drain from the tun.

 

[mongoose33]

I agree with alexacuna. 17 lb grainbill is pretty big for a what should start out with an OG of 1.065 or so.
With me, and I think most folks would agree, when I do a big grain bill my efficiency drops significantly. Batches below 12 lb. I can get mash efficiencies of 75-85%. But above that they drop to more like 60-65%.

Why is that? Logic--which always works for me except when it doesn't--suggests that more grain equals more sugars extracted. I'm not saying you're wrong--heck, it appears spot on for what happened with me.

So, I wouldn't necessarily blame the LHBS crush. And for me, it doesn't matter if I use my 5G picnic cooler with a braid, or my big rectangular cooler with a BIAB setup. Also doesn't matter if I'm doing a single step mash, or 2-step infusion, or even a decoction. It's all about the volume(or maybe the grain/water ratio) with my system.
So, my solution has been to mash no more than 13 lb grain, and make up any difference with DME on higher gravity brews.

I'd thought about doing that but I didn't have any DME.

The original recipe--the current effort is a first attempt at not only all-grain but also to see if I can duplicate the original recipe--is as follows:

3.3 lbs Malt Extract Syrup
1.0 lbs Wheat DME
3.0 lbs Light DME (2 more pounds than the original LBHS store recipe specified)

Then steeping grains:

0.5 lbs Maris Otter Malt
0.25 lbs Pilsen Malt
0.25 lbs Wheat Malt

1.0 oz Challenger Hops (60 min boil)
2.0 oz Goldings Hops (5 min boil)

The extra 2 lbs. of Light DME was to get the OG up to a level that might produce a resulting ABV level of 6.5%. I did get about 6.2% out of it so I was close.

 

[doug293cz]

Did you measure either your pre-boil or post-boil volumes? We can't double check your efficiency numbers without them.

The pH 5.2 buffer product does not do what it claims. More information available in the "Brew Science" section of HBT. To adjust your water to get a proper mash pH (5.3 - 5.6), you need to know the mineral content of your starting water, and then use a water calculator like Bru'nWater to make adjustments based on your grain bill. To be really accurate you need to get a good pH meter and actually measure your mash pH (however, many brewers get by just using a water calculator.)

Efficiency drops with larger grain bills because the more grain you have, the larger the percentage of the total wort is retained by the grain (which is like a sponge, more grain = bigger sponge) Since a larger percentage of the wort is retained, so is a larger percentage of the sugar, thus lowering efficiency. You can improve efficiency by using more water, but then you have to do longer boils to get rid of the excess volume. There is no way around this.

Another potential contributor is lower conversion efficiency (the percentage of starch actually converted to sugar by the mash process.) Coarser crush and low water to grain ratios can reduce the conversion efficiency. Mash efficiency is equal to the conversion efficiency times the lauter efficiency. For brewers with efficiencies below about 70%, low conversion efficiency is usually big part of the problem.

Below is a chart that shows lauter efficiency for no-sparge vs. equal runnings volume batch sparge (fly sparge cannot be simulated for a general case) as a function of grain bill weight and various grain absorption rates. In all cases the pre-boil volume is 6.7 gal. Since you are sparging in a conventional MLT, you should compare your efficiency to the sparged line for 0.12 gal/lb grain absorption (lowest dot-dash line.) If your efficiency is significantly lower than this, then you most likely have low conversion efficiency. The fixes for low conversion efficiency (in order of importance) are finer crush, longer mashes, more mash agitation, and/or better mash pH control.



Brew on

 

[mongoose33]

I put your numbers into Brewers Friend, and I got an OG of 1.086 at 75% efficiency. Perhaps you need to mash with 2X the water?

Everyone does their beers differently, but for me, I normally mash 10-12 pounds of grain in 6 gallons of water followed by 3 gallons sparge. You may not be washing enough sugars from the grains because of not enough water.

When you drain your mashtun, it should take you anywhere from 15-25 minutes. Then sparge and another 10-15 minutes.

If this is your first all grain, practice makes perfect and your next beer will get better. My first 2 batches were disasters.

I brewed an all-grain again yesterday.

I had the grain bill at about 12 pounds. I did it the way you suggested above, though I was a little shy on the initial water. Besides reducing the grain bill, I also did these things differently:

I bought a Barley Crusher and crushed the grain twice. Lots of smallish particles but the husks were mostly still intact. The mash drained well once I did the vorlauf.

I stirred the mash partway through, and instead of fly sparging, I batch sparged. Oddly, though, I also had a sort of fly-sparge element to it. Because I didn't start with enough water in the mash, I was shy after the batch sparge. I added 5 bottles of bottled RO water, sprinkling it over the grain bed. The last runnings were still coming in at about 1.037-1.040, which in retrospect I probably should have even sparged more. But what I was getting was a lot better than last time.

It was about what I'd have hoped for. Trying for an OG of 1.063-1.065, and going into the fermenter I have an OG of 1.063. I verified that with both a refractometer and a hydrometer. The beer tasted...well, like wort, but I think it's where it should be.

I feel a lot better about the whole process now, even though I still made a few small mistakes. I should have rinsed the grain a bit more, I left sugar in there I'm sure. And I didn't pay as close attention as I should have to calculate efficiency; I ended up with about an average of 1.052 out of the tun, which if I used the calculator correctly gives me an efficiency in the 71 percent range or so. That's not so awful terrible, and I'm really anxious to see how this compared to the extract recipes I used.

I added the yeast yesterday about 5pm (dry yeast, S-04), and it's going like mad this afternoon, 2" krausen and bubbling away. Smells normal and all I have to do is be patient for 3 weeks.

Thank you all for the help!

 

[RM-MN]

If you are happy with the results you got, you did just fine. You hit your expected OG and that is what you were after.

If you want to increase the efficiency so it takes less grain to hit the same OG, tighten your mill a bit and then condition your grain by spraying or sprinkling a bit of water on the grains before you mill. That little bit of water will toughen the husks so they don't rip apart as easily and the tighter mill will get you smaller grains particles which seems to be the key to better efficiency. Also, while a thinner mash will improve the conversion, equal amounts of mash and sparge will be the most efficient if you use only one sparge.