Tired of low efficiency

[agroff383]

Hey all, getting pretty pissed off lately. I bought 40 bucks worth of grain, trying to make a huge ass barleywine, put it through the mill at the LHBS twice. i had another post about that here

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/grain-crush-pros-cons-190030/

13lb 2 row american
9lb 2 row english
1 lb c120
.75 lb honey malt
2 lb vienna
.125 lb black malt

mashed half these grains at 152 for an hour, vorlaufed and drained into kettle, sparged to get to around 4 gallons and heated back up to mash temp and mashed the other half of grains with the wort from the first half.

adding 1lb turbinado sugar to brew and that is all my fermentables. i did not add the sugar before taking my reading.

adjusted for temp my hydro reading was 1.069. awesome. thats like 55% efficency. great. ill end up with 10.5 abv instead of 15 like i wanted. i wouldnt have bought all the grain to make something like that, still the biggest beer i have made to date.

wtf is going on. i have all standard equipment and follow all the things i have learned on here. i have gotten 80 percent with my setup before, on a wit and a christmas ale. i have a good grasp on the importance of temps and got a sight glass on the kettle to keep track of my volumes, just to figure out efficency as well too.

 

[shroomzofdoom]

Maybe the LHBS is adjusting their mill gap on you?

I have my own mill and found my efficiencies to be much better when I do my own. Malt conditioning seems to help too, but this is probably not an option if LHBS is milling for you.

 

[Randar]

When brewing new styles or exceeding my usual range of gravities or adjunct %, I like to use the efficiency spreadsheet that has been floating around the webtoobz. That way if something like this happens I will have some idea of where in my setup things went awry. Sorry that's not much help for you at this point, but it's something to keep in mind for the future (or perhaps you took the appropriate readings and can get an idea by filling in what you've got?)

 

[Randar]

I have my own mill and found my efficiencies to be much better when I do my own. Malt conditioning seems to help too, but this is probably not an option if LHBS is milling for you.

Yep. I am a control freak and I don't trust anyone else to crush my grains. Conditioned TIGHT crush every time and I check the gap before and after every crush.

 

[jmo88]

Probably a lautering efficiency problem. Dead space is a killer on efficiency if you have a braid. The best thing I did for my efficiency was to build a cpvc manifold. It got rid of my dead space caused by the braid. I also started fly sparging, but the efficiency gain was mainly due to the manifold upgrade in my system.

 

[agroff383]

i will note that is my preboil volume gravity reading so i am boiling it to 5 gallons, it should still be a stiff strong brew. that was my goal. i just dont know what else it could be.

i dont have a brew sculputre so i can batch sparge as of now, fly sparge still eludes me with the equipment i have. i just dont get why it was that low.

i did a christmas ale the same method same eqipment and got almost 85 percent efficency. very frustrating.

i remember that ignorance was bliss when doing extract full boils. oooh was that easy and without variables

 

[jmo88]

You don't need a brew sculpture to fly sparge. You just need a manifold or false bottom. But, forget about fly sparging for a moment. Just think about all the sweet wort that doesn't get out of you tun when you use a braid because the spigot is higher than the floor of the tun. When you install a manifold and drain through a tube into your kettle, it creates a vacuum that pulls out most of that wort that would normally be left behind with a braid.

 

[phishfood]

13lb 2 row american
9lb 2 row english
1 lb c120
.75 lb honey malt
2 lb vienna
.125 lb black malt

mashed half these grains at 152 for an hour, vorlaufed and drained into kettle, sparged to get to around 4 gallons and heated back up to mash temp and mashed the other half of grains with the wort from the first half.

You used the combined sparge and mash water from the first half of the grain to mash the second half of the grain in? There is a lot about brewing that I don't know, so perhaps this is common and perfectly acceptable brewing practice. But it seems to me that mashing in a sugary wort solution instead of fresh water is going to drastically limit the ability of the liquid part of the mash to absorb more sugars.

Also, what was your quarts of water to pound of grain ratio? With 13 lbs of grain, to mash and sparge with only 4 gallons of wort in the end, you had to have been using way less than 1 quart per pound. Most recommendations that I have seen have used 1 qt/lb as a basement, with 1.5qt/lb+ being preferred. With ~ 26lbs of grain, 1.5 lbs/at probably isn't realistic, and 1 lb/qt still doesn't leave you with much sparge water unless you boil for a ridiculous amount of time, but efficiency will suffer.

 

[spriolo]

shroomzofdoom, Randar? What do you mean by conditioned?

 

[barleyhole]

I agree with phishfood. The first thing that caught my eye was mashing with wort from the first mash. I too haven't heard if that is not best practice (like using double negatives), but water can only hold so much sugar. Maybe that's not a problem as long as the starches are converted and the sparge takes care of the rest....might need a healthy sparge though. If you only used 1 qt/lb to mash, it might take longer than 1 hour to fully convert, too. Of course this is coming from someone who gets 60% efficiency on average from BIAB! I hate under achieving my OG too.

 

[spriolo]

maybe the mash half then heat up and mash the other half is a form of Decoction?

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter16-4.html

Not sure I like it though. I've gotten the best efficiencies with fly sparge (or I even tried a modified fly sparge with spooning in a 1/2 cup at a time with some good rhythm).

 

[PVH]

You don't need a brew sculpture to fly sparge. You just need a manifold or false bottom. But, forget about fly sparging for a moment. Just think about all the sweet wort that doesn't get out of you tun when you use a braid because the spigot is higher than the floor of the tun. When you install a manifold and drain through a tube into your kettle, it creates a vacuum that pulls out most of that wort that would normally be left behind with a braid.

Another reason to batch sparge if you're using the 10-gal MLT w/braid setup for 10-gal batches. By the time you've hit your pre-boil volume, the wort in your dead space is no big deal.

 

[Randar]

Also, what was your quarts of water to pound of grain ratio? With 13 lbs of grain, to mash and sparge with only 4 gallons of wort in the end, you had to have been using way less than 1 quart per pound. Most recommendations that I have seen have used 1 qt/lb as a basement, with 1.5qt/lb+ being preferred. With ~ 26lbs of grain, 1.5 lbs/at probably isn't realistic, and 1 lb/qt still doesn't leave you with much sparge water unless you boil for a ridiculous amount of time, but efficiency will suffer.

The way I combat this issue is to mash in at roughly 0.8 to 1.2 qt/lb. If I am doing a 2 step mash I will do my Beta Sacch rest at 0.8 and step to 1.2. That usually leaves me plenty of sparge water. For higher gravity (I admit I have never done a barleywine) I will slow my sparge down considerably and milk it, so to speak.



To the question about conditioning. It is just a method of misting the raw grains with water to soften the husks. This allows you to crush at a tighter setting to get a nice flour and keep the hulls soft and intact so you still get an efficient filterbed. You should be able to find descriptions of this process by searching for "conditioned malt" or "malt conditioning" here and on google.

 

[HoppyDaze]

why worry so much about efficiency? Efficiency numbers are the most overrated, useless, pos statistics in brewing. Just buy more grains...problems solved! I think I just split the atom!!!

 

[Randar]

why worry so much about efficiency? Efficiency numbers are the most overrated, useless, pos statistics in brewing. Just buy more grains...problems solved! I think I just split the atom!!!

I would say that consistency is the number 1 factor. But IMO efficiency does matter to you if you are a cost-conscious brewer (and judging by the number of cheapskates repurposing cardboard boxes and such, that's most of us!)

 

[spriolo]

why worry so much about efficiency? Efficiency numbers are the most overrated, useless, pos statistics in brewing. Just buy more grains...problems solved! I think I just split the atom!!!

This guy has a billion dollars.

Cost is a factor, tweaking a recipe to be exactly the way you'd like it is important too. if your efficiencey swings from 80% to 45% and back... you'll ruin your beer (or your beer volumes because you have to boil down your wort to get the correct OG).

I could go on.. but I would not if I had a billion dollars like you! :fro:

 

[HoppyDaze]

For the record...I only have a half billion dollars

sheesh!

Well I brew five gallon batches and buying an extra pound of grain to make up for efficiency issues is hardly a concern for me. 1.20 spread over 50 beers equals about 2 1/2 cents per beer. Just think the mansion you could buy with those savings!

 

[mkling]

On the Brewing Network Brewstrong show recently, John Palmer was pointing out that at some point in mashing, the wort only wants to absorb so much sugars. He suggested that the max preboil gravity you should ever expect to get from mashing was around 1.080, no matter how much grain you use. He suggested there are a few things you can do: 1) boil longer -- 1.080 wort after 60 minutes of boil is 1.093 but is 1.112 after 120 minutes, 2) add a bit of extract -- 1 lb will add about .009 to your 5 gallon batch & you'll never taste it. Now I don't really know if Palmer is right about this, but I do know that personally I've never got a preboil gravity higher than 1.075 on any of my wort without adding sugars or DME.

The biggest message is that trying to get beer near or over 1.100 with all grain is hard and you really are going to have to do some things that are special to get you there.

 

[Beezer94]

+1 to what 'mkling' said.

"Normal" brewing methods will not let you get a beer that big. You will need to boil for a couple hours, add sugars and/or malt extract and use special high alcohol yeast.

 

[agroff383]

On the Brewing Network Brewstrong show recently, John Palmer was pointing out that at some point in mashing, the wort only wants to absorb so much sugars. He suggested that the max preboil gravity you should ever expect to get from mashing was around 1.080, no matter how much grain you use. He suggested there are a few things you can do: 1) boil longer -- 1.080 wort after 60 minutes of boil is 1.093 but is 1.112 after 120 minutes, 2) add a bit of extract -- 1 lb will add about .009 to your 5 gallon batch & you'll never taste it. Now I don't really know if Palmer is right about this, but I do know that personally I've never got a preboil gravity higher than 1.075 on any of my wort without adding sugars or DME.

The biggest message is that trying to get beer near or over 1.100 with all grain is hard and you really are going to have to do some things that are special to get you there.

I did a double mash so I think that qualifies as special. I know it took forever and I did a third mash with extra 4 lbs of Maris otter and ran off enough for a 1.050 beer! Cant put it in beersmith but I kept the hops low it turned out clear as hell! Probbbly will be the best beer I ever made and I cant replicate it lol.

The only reason I guess I have become fixated on efficency is that I feel comfortable with other aspects of brewing and I want to be able to nail my recipes and get my moneys worth out of the ingridients. For example my california common should end up at like 5.5 to 6 percent. But now its 3.5 percent due to low efficency. So great I ended up with an overhopped beer, which is ok because I like hops, but like I said, not consistent and not close to what the recipe should be.

Come tax return time I am going all out and getting a barley crusher and like 400 lbs of grain :rockin:

 

[TheMan]

I agree, it's frustrating when you're efficiencies are all over the place. Until you can get a consistent crush I'd say you will have a hard time pin pointing your issue. LHBS crush is often the most inconsistent from what I hear.

I'd recommend ordering from Brewmasterswarehouse. Before I got my monster mill his crush was the best and most reliable. Of course, now my own crush is the best and most reliable lol

 

[agroff383]

Update to my prior bitching:

Yesterday, I went to the same homebrew store with my feeler gauges in hand, and I set the mill the way I wanted it set at. I have seen that the Barley Crusher comes with a stock gap of .039. That is pretty tight, so I set the shop's mill at around .046. It made a world of difference, I could tell just by hearing their mill that it was doing more work. The shops set gap on that mill has to be over .075! I ran through 24 lbs of grain for a 10 gal batch of spiced pumpkin ale.

Wow and wouldn't you know I got 80 percent efficency. This is after one of the shops' employees swore up and down this is how the brewery he worked at crushed grain! It ws to avoid stuck sparges is why they have the mill set that way. Well I dont get stuck sparges with my bazooka screen, it just doesnt happen. Well I don't think that brewery would be in business too long if they were getting 50 percent efficecy. This guy said it must be my process was to blame not the crush. Well I proved that wrong.

Lesson learned. Don't be timid or afraid to ask, or worried about something if you are a paying customer. I dropped $39 on grain for this batch and by god I was going to get my moneys worth. I dont care about touching their mill settings if it means a 30% jump in efficency.

Come tax return time I am buying like 300 lbs of grain and a mill so basically I will control everything in the brewing process other than water.

 

[agroff383]

I had seen some questions that I hadnt answered, they were people trying to help me out so I am sorry for that.

I mash with 1.3 qts per pound usually. This 10 gallon batch I did I made the mash much thicker, like 1 qt per pound, due to mash tun space limitations.
24 lbs of grain is about all she can hold, it was freakin maxed out!

Then I heat up sparge water, mix the hell out of the mash after adding the water, let sit 10-15 mins, then vorlauf and drain the tun and get to my preboil volume. It threw me for a curve yesterday because the batch was 10 gallons and I didnt know how much I would lose to grain abosorption with 24lbs of grain in there. So i just boiled a bit longer and more vigorous to get down to 10 gallons.

By the way, my original gravity of the barleywine ended up at 1.116 and finished down to 1.020 in all but 4 weeks. I pitched on a yeast cake that was originally 1 packet notty 1 packet windsor, and had stepped up the cake, first a nut brown, then a spiced christmas ale, then this barleywine. I racked it to secondary yesterday and it tasted malty and warm, lots of punch thats for sure. Going to age that for a year or so and see where its at.
Thanks for all the help everyone!