terrible efficiency

[Shawnylocks]

hey guys, i dont post a ton but always try to keep an eye on things. but now i have a concern

jumped to 10gallon batch sizes and not much ans changed in theory with the system.

2 - 20 gallon pots one being a mash tun and a third pot for HLT

i did have my LHBS crush my grain and i over shot my mash temps by 5 deg F ( was suposed to be 154 and i hit 159)

10 gal batch size and it was a 38 lb grain bill for a barley wine (aha's clone of bigfoot) and my og was 1.070! absolutley terrible. trying to figure where i went so wrong. any ideas? im thinking the lhbs crush is the main culpret but i dont know if a 160*f mash would kill conversion

 

[millatime]

Hmm... Sometimes if my temp comes in a little warm I can add a tiny cold water to bring it to the temp I want. Anyway, are you sure your hyrdometer or equipment is calibrated? I suppose the crush could do it, but how were you sparging?

 

[Shawnylocks]

Hmm... Sometimes if my temp comes in a little warm I can add a tiny cold water to bring it to the temp I want. Anyway, are you sure your hyrdometer or equipment is calibrated? I suppose the crush could do it, but how were you sparging?

Tap water on my refrac and hydro were both 1.000. Batch sparging just as I did before on my 5 gal system.

 

[millatime]

If all the aspects are the same and your volume/numbers are correct for your mash and sparging, then it might be the mill is the culprit.

Did you find any doughballs or anything in the mash afterwards?

I only do 5 gallon batches and I stir/mix it really well, but I imagine with 10 gallon and that much grain I would have to stir the bejesus out of it to get it mixed to match the 5 gallon amounts I do.

Just my 2 thoughts, hope that helps!

 

[Shawnylocks]

No dough balls we could see. Next time we will go back to my painful grain mill and see if that helps at all

 

[deadwolfbones]

Have you brewed a beer with that high of a predicted OG before? Efficiency tends to drop with large grain bills.

 

[Shawnylocks]

I've brewed this same recipe on 5 gallons and got less efficiency than small beers but not this bad.

 

[BobBailey]

A poor crush is the #1 cause of poor extraction. A few degrees higher on the mash temp. would usually affect the FG, not the OG but 160 is getting to a point where Beta Amylase denatures rather quickly.
Lastly, I expect a pretty good hit on efficiency with big beers.

You don't mention your expected OG or efficiency but, with a bad crush and high OG, somewhere in the low 60s % range wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Shawnylocks]

Didnt realize I didnt put the est of

Est OG WAS 1.107

 

[BobBailey]

Didnt realize I didnt put the est of

Est OG WAS 1.107

You're at about 65% of your normal efficiency, whatever that is.

 

[doug293cz]

To better diagnose whether you had conversion or lautering issues, we need to see some actual measurement data from your brew day. The items needed:

• Grain bill weight
• Strike volume
• First runnings volume
• First runnings SG
• Number of sparge steps
• Sparge volume for each step
• SG of each sparge running
  
• Pre-boil volume
• Pre-boil SG
• Post-boil volume
• OG (post-boil SG)

If you are not collecting these data items, then you should be, if you want to be able to understand your efficiency, and be able to improve your process.

Conversion efficiency is determined by the first four data points above. Mash efficiency is determined from grain bill, post-boil volume, and OG. The other data points allow additional validity checking, which will improve confidence in the efficiency analysis. Lauter efficiency is calculated from:

Lauter Efficiency = Mash Efficiency / Conversion Efficiency​

Conversion efficiency should be close to 100%. If not, too coarse a crush is the usual culprit. Extending mash time can partially compensate for a poor crush. Temps or pH way out of the normal process window can also affect conversion efficiency.

Maximum lauter efficiency decreased with increasing grain bill weight, for the same pre-boil volume and lauter process. Max lauter efficiency is readily calculated for batch and no- sparge. The chart below shows how max possible lauter efficiency varies with the ratio of grain bill weight to pre-boil volume.

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