Understanding Efficiencies of My Brews - Seeking Help Please

[Jiffster]

I use Beersmith and enter my numbers for my brews and it gives me my efficiency numbers but I'm still not truly clear on:

1) What the numbers mean
2) If the results are accurate (i.e. due to errors on m part).

My most recent brew was a Watermelon Wheat that called for 2# of honey at flameout.

Grain Bill
3.5 lbs Wheat Malt, White
2.5 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row)
4.0 oz Acid Malt
3.2 oz Carabelge

The target OG according to Beersmith was 1.050 and I hit 1.050.

My pre-boil SG was 1.027 with 6.5 gallons of wort.
Batch size into fermenter was ~5.4 gallons. I estimated it to be 5.25 without honey addition.

Beer smith stated my efficiencies were as follow:

Measured Efficiency: 111.9%
Measured Mash Efficiency: 72.7%


Alternatively, my brew prior to this one was Yooper's "Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA Clone".

Grain Bill
13 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row)
6.0 oz Amber Malt

The target OG according to Beersmith was 1.070 and I hit 1.071.

My pre-boil SG was 1.060
Pre-Boil Volume: 6.5 gallons
Batch size into fermenter was ~5.12 gallons.

Beer smith stated my efficiencies were as follow:

Measured Efficiency: 74.9%
Measured Mash Efficiency: 80.4%

Not sure what to make of or how to use these numbers.

Appreciate any insight.

 

[Amadeo38]

Efficiency, simply, refers to the total amount of sugars you were able to extract from your grains. If you had 100% efficiency, you essentially converted all of the sugars from the grains into the wort.

I am getting the same efficiency for your watermelon wheat, which leads me to two questions:

1. Is your OG measurement being done with a refractometer, or if with a hydrometer, are you allowing it to cool to 60 before measuring?
2. Are you sure you included all boil additions of grains? No LME or DME in these recipes?

111% is mighty high, and usually means something was calculated wrong. The 60 minute clone looks to be about standard in terms of efficiency.

 

[Jiffster]

Efficiency, simply, refers to the total amount of sugars you were able to extract from your grains. If you had 100% efficiency, you essentially converted all of the sugars from the grains into the wort.

I am getting the same efficiency for your watermelon wheat, which leads me to two questions:

1. Is your OG measurement being done with a refractometer, or if with a hydrometer, are you allowing it to cool to 60 before measuring?

I use a refractometer.

2. Are you sure you included all boil additions of grains? No LME or DME in these recipes?

111% is mighty high, and usually means something was calculated wrong. The 60 minute clone looks to be about standard in terms of efficiency.

I'm fairly certain the higher efficiency number is due to the honey addition at flameout. I don't think Beersmith uses those sugars in the calculation. Maybe because it recognizes it as "Fermentation" since it is added at flameout and not during the boil?

 

[Gavin C]

Efficiencies Explained.

Hope that's useful.

 

[Amadeo38]

Ah yes, you are correct. I forgot the honey in my calculations and when I add it, you end up with an efficiency of 86.8%. Great job!

 

[McKnuckle]

Efficiency, simply, refers to the total amount of sugars you were able to extract from your grains.

Yes, but unfortunately, also no. :cross: (And yes, I saw the word "simply" and I wish it were so...)

That statement is only strictly true at the very beginning - the very first step - conversion efficiency. The efficiency values from that point forward (lauter, mash, brewhouse) all take wort volume into account as well. That is why this topic confuses people so much.

If you got every molecule of starch in those grains converted to sugar, you'd have 100% conversion efficiency... but the sugar and liquid would still be trapped in your mash tun. You have to rinse it out into the kettle.

The degree to which you do that is lautering efficiency. If you somehow trapped half the liquid in your tun, recovering only half of the volume you began the mash with, your lautering efficiency would be 50%!

The conversion value multiplied by the lautering value (both percentages) produces the first truly useful efficiency value in brewing: Mash efficiency. And it will never be 100%. Why? Because even if you converted every single molecule of starch to sugar, you cannot rinse every drop of liquid out of the grains. They will permanently absorb a certain amount no matter what.

Next, you boil the wort. Efficiency is now locked in during and after the boil - because the sugar and liquid volume are inversely proportional. If you boil off half the wort, your volume is reduced to half of what it was, but the sugar does not evaporate. So it is now double the concentration it was at the start of the boil.

The next factor affecting efficiency, then, is how much wort you recover from the kettle into the fermenter. The final product of mash efficiency times this value is brewhouse efficiency. And it's so variable by process that it's not a useful standard for brewers to use in conversation. (Or for Beersmith to use as the primary efficiency input! But I digress...)

How does a variable process affect brewhouse efficiency? Hops absorb liquid, but some people dump them into the fermenter and don't get dinged by that small efficiency drop. Some people leave a lot of trub in the kettle, which lowers brewhouse effiency; some people don't. And so on.