My equipment is a 5 gallon Gatorade cooler, 9 gallon pot, and I use a bag instead of a manifold. My last brew was an 8.3 percent ABV Stout. I mashed 10lbs of grain with a 3.5 gallons of 150 degree F water for 1 hour. I then batch sparged with 1.5 gallons of 180 degree F water for 20 minutes. Pre boil volume was 4.3 gallons, and post boil volume was 3.1 gallons at a SG of 1.073 and FG of 1.01. Any ideas on how I can improve my efficiency
Sounds to me like you did pretty well actually. General pointers for improving efficiency on big beers: Crush hard, mash thicker 1 qt/lb, sparge more and boil longer (like 105-120 minutes). Do that and you'll easily get 70-75% efficiency, and maybe even higher.
Mash thicker? I was under the impression that mashing thinner would get better efficiency, for the first runnings at least. Is that not the case? Or are you saying the combined efficiency is better if you move more water to the sparge? Related question: how much of an effect on efficiency does pH have?
I agree, at least in my BIAB experience. I tried thick mashing with a sparge, but couldn't seem to break 65% efficiency. If I do a thin 1.5qt/lb mash, I get about 75% without even having to sparge.
I've never understood the boil longer theory. Yea your gravity goes up but your volume goes down. It doesn't really increase your efficiency
I think it's meant to be combined with a larger volume of strike and/or sparge water. Your efficiency should be higher but you'll collect more wort, so you need to boil longer to get to the volume you're looking for. Of course you could also throw in more grain and not worry about your efficiency. The fool-proof way to get a higher OG, provided you have the time for a longer brew day due to the longer boil.
Yes. Sparge more and boil longer, and you'll get more sugars out. This I'm not exactly sure of, but I can say that if mash pH is between 5.2 and 5.5, you're in the golden range and there shouldn't be much effect as far as I know. Outside of that range, all bets are off.
How to know if your crush is "good enough": After the crush, look at a few kernels of grain closely. If it is well crushed, then each average kernel will have its husk mostly intact but if you look inside of the husk, you should see that the white starchy part is broken into 5-6 pieces. If you pick up a handful of milled grain and let it fall, your hand should be pretty well coated in dust. However, if you find that the white starchy portion is only broken into 2 or 3 pieces, or if any kernels remain whole, that's not good enough. If you have your own mill, you can easily change the mill gap settings to fix this problem. If your homebrew supply shop is milling the grains for you, then you should insist on at least a double crush, then check again and if the crush still sucks then do a triple. By the way it sounded above, the crush was not a major factor in your case. However it never hurts to examine the crush for future batches.
Maybe my system is a bit of an anomaly…but I don't fly sparge slowly in my big mash tun, I'm usually done with my fly sparge (13-14 gallons) in like 20 minutes and have a very high extract efficiency. Definitely one reason I prefer fly sparge to batch sparge…fly sparging actually saves me time on my system & I get better efficiencies. As always, everyone's MMV.
