Terrible Efficiency

[finny13]

Brewed a blonde ale yesterday and batch sparged for the first time. Needless to say I sparged way to fast and had terrible efficiency. 55% terrible in fact.

If this fully fermented, which it should it would leave me with a 3.76 abv Blonde ale. This would be one of the styles I could get away with this with, but I'd like to up the alcohol a bit.

Would there be any harm in adding about a pound of corn sugar after 2 weeks of primary fermentation and letting the yeast chow down on that? This is going to be a dry beer as it is, would this dry it out even more?

 

[Yooper]

You can't batch sparge too fast, so that is definitely not the issue with low efficiency.

The corn sugar might be a good addition, but it really depends on the rest of the recipe.

 

[billl]

Personally, I wouldn't monkey with it. The low ABV is style appropriate and will make a great summer beer to drink while brewing your next one.

 

[finny13]

I dont know what the hell I did wrong then. Held my mash temperature for 75 minutes at 150. Had a good crush. Ran it thru the mill twice at the LHBS. I just want to get it from 3.75 to 4.75.

Grain bill was simple- 9lb US 2 Row, 1lb Carahell

 

[arnoldk2]

I batch sparge and if I batch sparge to fast I will get terrible efficiency. Slow up the sparge and the efficiency goes up. Also, check your math to verify you actually got a low efficiency.

If it were me I would leave it alone. It sounds like you have a tasty session beer. If you do add sugar to bump up the abv make sure what you put into your beer is sanitary and put it into a secondary and rack your beer on top of that.