Target efficiency range?

[twohoundbrewery]

I just did my first BIAB over the weekend (a small 1.5 gal batch to test the waters) and by my math my efficiency was around 67%. I know that's probably not optimal, but what's a good range? I heard in my FLHBS that efficiency works differently for BIAB so I wasn't sure what I should be aiming for.

 

[TexasWine]

I think most folks with their process dialed in are in the range of 75-90%. Personally, mine have been 80-85%.

67% isn't horrible for your first go round. Once you do a few more batches, make some tweaks here and there, I'm sure your efficiency will come up.

Edit: Just wanted to clarify, I'm talking preboil efficiency.

 

[Brulosopher]

I just did my first BIAB over the weekend (a small 1.5 gal batch to test the waters) and by my math my efficiency was around 67%. I know that's probably not optimal, but what's a good range? I heard in my FLHBS that efficiency works differently for BIAB so I wasn't sure what I should be aiming for.

67% is great! I honestly don't understand the seeming competitive drive to have the highest efficiency on earth. For BIAB, I get 73% with my own milling and I'm perfectly happy with that. Efficiency "works" the same for everything, it's just that BIAB tends to be slightly less efficient due to the fact there's no real sparge step... usually.

 

[solbes]

I had 67% on my very first BIAB also. It might take you 3-4 brews to optimize your system. I now run between 68-90% based on grain bill size. Yesterday was the biggest grain bill I have ever run, so I was defiinitely on the low side of things. My house ale runs close to 90% since its a small grain bill.

Here's some things to look at:
1) easiest way to increase efficiency is to grind your grain finer. If you don't have a tight bag though you will increase trub in the ferementer
2) Bring your grains up to 170F as a mashout prior to lifting them out. The higher temp wort more easily rinses off the sugars after the mash is completed
3) Sparge technique. Many ways to do this (dunk, slow pour over grain, etc). Traditional BIAB does not sparge, so this is completely optional. But you can get another 3-6% by adding this step.
4) Calibrate your mash thermometer. They can be off 2-5 degrees which may make a difference

 

[TexasWine]

2) Bring your grains up to 170F as a mashout prior to lifting them out. The higher temp wort more easily rinses off the sugars after the mash is completed

Not trying to bah humbug this advice (see what I did there with the Christmas season and all?) but I thought the concept of higher temps rinsing sugars more easily had been disproven by all those folks who sparge with room temp water, like myself. I even thought I saw a thread where someone did an experiment and compared a warm sparge to a room temp one and saw no difference.

 

[The_Bishop]

My BIAB experience is a year old, but I picked up a bit of efficiency by raising my temps to the 165-168 range before hoisting the grain out of the water. I don't think it has anything to do with higher temps 'rinsing' better, I think the grain mass becomes more 'fluid' and gelatinized resulting in an easier and faster drain.

I don't think I'd go to 170, as that's way too close to the temps that would result in tannin extraction, especially if you're not stirring like a madman to keep temperatures equalized throughout the kettle.

 

[LLBeanJ]

Not trying to bah humbug this advice (see what I did there with the Christmas season and all?) but I thought the concept of higher temps rinsing sugars more easily had been disproven by all those folks who sparge with room temp water, like myself. I even thought I saw a thread where someone did an experiment and compared a warm sparge to a room temp one and saw no difference.

It's been a while since I have done no-sparge w/ mash-out, but if I recall, I was seeing a small efficiency bump when doing the mash-out rest on a full-volume mash. Adding a sparge (not temp sensitive), however, results in an even bigger efficiency bump and negates any advantage achieved from the mash-out. As usual, YMMV.

 

[solbes]

Can't say that I've done a carefully controlled side by side experiment. But I have pretty solid evidence with numerous batches with and without a mashout. The mashout always wins.

For me its basically free as I have to heat the wort to boiling anyway. It just means I lift the grains out a little later in the process. Sparging with room temp water may be just as effective (I have never tried), but again you have to heat the wort to boiling anyway so how does this help?

 

[LLBeanJ]

Can't say that I've done a carefully controlled side by side experiment. But I have pretty solid evidence with numerous batches with and without a mashout. The mashout always wins.

For me its basically free as I have to heat the wort to boiling anyway. It just means I lift the grains out a little later in the process. Sparging with room temp water may be just as effective (I have never tried), but again you have to heat the wort to boiling anyway so how does this help?

My own observations suggest that a sparge will give you a larger efficiency bump than a mash-out alone. Also, once the sparge step was incorporated into my brewing, I found that there was no added benefit to doing the mash-out.

Another benefit I found from doing a sparge is that it tends to even out efficiencies from batch to batch. Before adding the sparge to my brew day, I was getting wild swings in efficiency (75-90%) between batches and the larger grain bills would naturally take bigger efficiency hits. The sparge step has minimized this substantially. I get the same 80-82% efficiency whether I'm brewing a 1.055 or 1.085 brew.

If I had to pick one or the other (or both), I would go with the sparge and skip the mash-out.

 

[dkevinb]

67% brewhouse efficiency is quite good for a first time. My first BIAB was 57%. Now I typically get around 77% brewhouse efficiency. Conversion efficiency is in the mid-80's, though I did hit 92% one time. Pre-boil is 80-82%. Double-milling the grain was the biggest improvement. Now that my process is more stable I tend to only measure OG, FG and fermenter volume, since those are what I'm really interested in.

 

[Oginme]

The optimal efficiency for your BIAB is the one that you can hit every time. Really, it's more about hitting your numbers reliably so that you can design recipes and brew with confidence that any changes you make will be reflected in your results.