What went wrong? - (efficiency)

[eulipion2]

Hello,
I brewed an AG pale ale today.

10 lb. Pale Malt
1 lb. Crystal 60
.75 oz Centennial (60)
1 oz Centennial (15)
1 tsp. Irish Moss
3 tsp. Yeast nutrient
1 oz Centennial (0)

StrangeBrew calculated my OG at 1.061.

I mashed in my Coleman Xtreme with Kewler Kit and Bazooka Screen, which came out a little low (147º, 3.2 gallons), and mashed out with ~170º water (4.5 gallons), and proceeded to boil.

Post boil, which went right on schedule, I forgot to take a reading but came back and took one after the yeast had been in for about 15 minutes. I used a Fermtech Wine Thief, which took in lots of sediment, and got a reading around 1.030.

That's 30 points off. How could my efficiency suck that badly? Low mash temp? Trub in the sample? I'm afraid that if that was an accurate reading, it's going to be little more than a hop tea. And a waste of good grain and money.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome!

 

[surfbrewer]

Did you mash at 147 and for how long? If that is the case then it is possible you didn't get full conversion. When you mash at low temps. you usually need to mash longer than 60 min. to get full conversion, somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 min. would be better. If you mashed at say 154+ it may have something to do with your sparge, your crush, or just a bad reading on your hydrometer, although I doubt that was the problem.

I just plugged your ingredients into beersmith and came up with 1.054 as the o.g. a little lower than your estimate but still not as low as what you came up with. Check your crush and let us know what your mash temp. was.

Cheers

 

[surfbrewer]

Forgot to ask, I assume this was for 5 gal. batch?

 

[scinerd3000]

i would guess that you didint convert in the cooler long enough. low temp is a pain because it takes longer time. what was your goal temp?

 

[Brett0424]

It looks like you were assuming a 75% efficiency and actually got about 37-38% which is really low. This could be caused by many factors: type of sparge, starch conversion (mash temp. time), speed of sparge, crush of grain, bad hydrometer reading (hopefully), etc.. As stated above a low mash temp will take longer to convert. How long did you mash at that temp and how did you collect the wort. If you did a single batch sparge this would probably be about the number you'd get.

 

[brewjunky]

Did you lower your reading temp to 60F. If you didnt it will give you an off reading

 

[EvilTOJ]

OK here's a stupid question; Did you crush the grains?

If you got a really coarse crush that can also greatly affect your efficiency.

 

[eulipion2]

Did you mash at 147 and for how long?

Yes, somewhere in that neighborhood for an hour. From what everyone is saying it sounds like that's my problem. I was aiming for 154º, my tun was hot, having put hot tap water into it before as not to lose heat to the cooler, and my strike temp was around 165º so I thought I was safe. I lost around 20º to the cooler!

Did you lower your reading temp to 60F. If you didnt it will give you an off reading

I'd say it was around 68º, but still, the reading shouldn't be that far off.

OK here's a stupid question; Did you crush the grains?

I don't have easy access to a crusher, so I had The Grape and Granary crush them for me. It seemed like a good crush. So I'm guessing it was the low mash temp.

Thanks for all the input. If anyone else has any theories or replies to the above I'd be glad to hear them.

 

[eulipion2]

On a related note, do any of you use the Coleman Xtreme coolers? How do you do on achieving your strike temp?

 

[EvilTOJ]

Heck, if the beer is tasty, boil up a few lbs of DME and add it into the fermenter. No sense dumping it after all that work. I think it was just mashed too low and/or not long enough.

I use a Coleman Xtreme 30qt with SS hose braid and I love it. There's a calculator on rackers.org I use to get my strike temp, although usually the water is only 10º hotter than what I want the mash to be. I dump the water in, dump the grains in, swish it all around, and step on the lid because the cooler is a little warped.

 

[tnlandsailor]

I really don't think conversion is the problem. 60 minutes even at 147 F should easily convert. Typically, conversion will occur within the first 20 minutes. Even if it didn't convert fully, it would be 90 - 95% converted after 60 minutes which wouldn't account for such a huge discrepancy I would guess that your reading was off for other reasons. I would check your hydrometer with water to make sure it's reading correctly.

Promash says your gravity target is 1.059 for 5 gallons at 75% efficiency. A low efficiency would be in the neighborhood of 60% which would give you 1.047, which is still way above what you got. You either have a hydrometer that is lying to you or you had very substandard ingredients. A few points here or there and we can nitpick the process, but this far off and something major is amiss.

Prosit!

 

[RichBrewer]

One other important point to consider, you probably didn't sparge with enough water and you probably didn't rinse all of the sugars from the mash. I try to use 1/2 gallon per pound of grain. This would give you 5 1/2 gallons of sparge water. The down side to this is you end up with more wort in the brew pot and a longer boil to get the correct volume. Even then, your efficiency is pretty low. Can you tell us more about your procedures? Maybe we can find something you are doing that lowers your efficiency.

 

[Cape Brewing]

...how about doing an iodine test next time to check conversion? It might be a reasonably easy way to rule out a few big things and help narrow down what the real problem is.

Just a random thought...

 

[Bobby_M]

Hello,

I mashed in my Coleman Xtreme with Kewler Kit and Bazooka Screen, which came out a little low (147º, 3.2 gallons), and mashed out with ~170º water (4.5 gallons), and proceeded to boil.

Ok, some terminology in here is bothering me. What do you mean by "mashed out"? Did you add this water into the mash before you drained anything? Did you stir? With a bazooka screen, you're going to be batch sparging and I don't think you're using an optimal process.

Check out www.suebob.com/brew/allgrain.htm for help with terminology, sparging methods, and what affect efficiency the most (IMHO).

 

[scinerd3000]

Heck, if the beer is tasty, boil up a few lbs of DME and add it into the fermenter. No sense dumping it after all that work. I think it was just mashed too low and/or not long enough.

this is a great idea. add some more fermentables and the fermentation should restart possibly even saving your batch. below 40% efficienty i have never heard of anyone having such a low efficiency number...very odd. When you say the grains were crushed well, was there a fair amount of powder in the grain from the crush?

 

[eulipion2]

What do you mean by "mashed out"?

Sorry, I get the terminology mixed up often. I sparged my grain with 170º water.

When you say the grains were crushed well, was there a fair amount of powder in the grain from the crush?

Nope, not much for powder. Every grain was cracked/crushed, but not too fine.

Can you tell us more about your procedures?

Okay, I heated my tun with hot tap water as not to lose too much heat to the tun when I started mashing. I drained the tun, added my grains, then added the mash water. After an hour I started draining out the mash liquid, then as the level decreased I slowly added the rest of the water at a rate to leave it just above the grain bed.

After draining out about 6.5-7 gallons I commenced with the boil, which is about the only part of the process that went smoothly. Chilling took a little longer than usual, but still not too long, and the siphoning wasn't so great because my hops kept clogging up the racking cane.

Hydrometer sample had lots of sediment in it.

The brew is bubbling away happily, has a good head of foam on it, but I'm just wondering how long it will last, and if it'll be too hoppy given my FG.

 

[brrman]

did yo vorlauf? Not that it would matter much to the efficiency.

 

[eulipion2]

did yo vorlauf? Not that it would matter much to the efficiency.

Yes. Probably the first gallon or so.

 

[karbinator]

I have the extreme cooler, and found the mash/water ratio's that recipes call for is a bit thin for the initial strike. First AG with 1.25 qts per lb still left a good 2" of grain sitting above water!! I decided to hit more water on it, and found that 3.5-4 gallons of strike covered the grain by 2" nicely.... First runnings just at 3gal....Sparge at 70f with 5gal split for two more runnings. Hit all the numbers nicely like this.

You must pre heat this cooler with HOT water. I put 190+ in it until it's down to strike temp, and dump in grains.

 

[sittingturbo]

I own one of the extreme coolers, but I use it for the desert not brewing. However the bottom on my is contoured in all sorts of funny ways. Is yours like this also? This is horrible for efficiency, also what is your pickup method... false bottom, manifold, bazooka?

 

[eulipion2]

Karbinator, I went with the 1.25 qt/lb, which in StrangeBrew gave me 3.1 to mash, 4.8 to sparge, collecting 6.5 gallons to boil. I have a 30 qt. (7.5 gallon) kettle, so I have a little bit of room to play with, though I'm a bit afraid of boil-over or splashing out. Perhaps next time I should bump it up to 1.5 qt/lb, which according to StrangeBrew is 3.8 and 4.1 to get 6.5 gallons.

Somehow I don't think StrangeBrew is giving me the whole picture of what I need. I should probably upgrade to BeerTools Pro (I'm a Mac user).

 

[karbinator]

THat sounds close to what I "guesstimated" my water at. I was just concerned with the grain bed being visable (I'm no expert...it just seemed low on water in that cooler). So far, all gravity readings have been on the +side. My barley crusher makes slight flour on pre settings. I also boil in a keggle now, so I can go over water, and boil hard if needed without wearing the wort on my shoes.
Good luck

 

[Bobby_M]

The problem is that you are fly sparging in a MLT that is only good for batch sparging. You will never get good efficiency fly sparging with a stainless braid. The sparge channels down through the center right to the braid. Please try batch sparging next time. I just hit another 92% mash efficiency today using the method I describe on my site (linked in sig).

 

[brewjunky]

Yes, somewhere in that neighborhood for an hour. From what everyone is saying it sounds like that's my problem. I was aiming for 154º, my tun was hot, having put hot tap water into it before as not to lose heat to the cooler, and my strike temp was around 165º so I thought I was safe. I lost around 20º to the cooler!


I'd say it was around 68º, but still, the reading shouldn't be that far off.


I don't have easy access to a crusher, so I had The Grape and Granary crush them for me. It seemed like a good crush. So I'm guessing it was the low mash temp.

Thanks for all the input. If anyone else has any theories or replies to the above I'd be glad to hear them.

If you did the reading at 68 of 70 it would make your reading off enough to get you worried. I believe 9 points off or so

 

[Bobby_M]

If you look at the calculators, you'll find that a reading of say 1.050 at 70F temp corrects to only 1.051 at 60F. It's not that big of a difference. I'm positive that fly sparging on a stainless braid is the biggest problem.

 

[Big "A"]

Ok, by NO means am I as experienced as most of these guys that have replied.
I do read alot about the brewing process and have read a lot hear on HBT.
I have to agree with Bobby completely. You fly sparged but should be batch sparging. Meaning add half of your sparge water (calculated @ .5gal per lbs of grain) Try using slightly hotter sparge water, around 175-180 degrees. That will make sure that your runnings are less viscous and will get the sugars off the grains. Stir in the sparge water then let that rest for a few minutes before beginning the run off. Then add the remainder of the sparge water (again @ 175-180 degrees) Stir and repeat the rest then runoff.

Your heat loss is because the cooler was not warm enough. I suggest using your calculated sparge water to warm the cooler (heated to above 170) to preheat the cooler. Then place in another vessel until rewarming for the sparge. (I have an extra couple buckets just for that)

BTW Bobby M thanks for the youtube video of the keg cutting!!! Cut mine on Friday.

 

[brewjunky]

If you look at the calculators, you'll find that a reading of say 1.050 at 70F temp corrects to only 1.051 at 60F. It's not that big of a difference. I'm positive that fly sparging on a stainless braid is the biggest problem.

Yeah i seen that too on promash I think i was thinking of it coming out of the kettle my mistake.

The only reason I could see it being so low is a bad crush or too much water.

Personally I don't really test my SG that much because I usually do the same recipes a lot and have it down to a science already. I will take them during fermentation thats about it.

also what are you using for a lautering device. I Use a braided hose but I do Batch Sparging. If you are fly sparging could be to quick of a sparge, not hot enough water, channeling.