Trouble with Efficiency

Mash temp?

 

What was your expected vs actual pre-boil gravity? Helps to break it down.

 

There's the source of your problem! You must mill it yourself, real tight gap, if you want 85% efficiency. Plain & simple.

Cheers.

 

Ya 85% is crazy high efficiency. I get like 60-70 percent as I'm still figuring out my mill.

 

There you go. Work on your mash efficiency. Maybe mash a little longer or stir more frequently or like dmtaylor said, crush the hell out of it and use a mash bag so you don't have to worry about a stuck mash. I have found that even with a less than optimal crush I can mash a little longer (90 minutes) or stir a little more often. Just shoot for 70%. 85% is crazy high as Prep8611 said. Manage your expectations, what are you gonna save? $5 bucks or so on the grain at most going from 70 - 85%. I would just buy the extra grain and shoot for 70%. Eventually you will settle in on your efficiency with your equipment.

 

You want 85%?
Good luck. Unlikely. Maybe some people around here claim efficiency above 80, but they are full of shit. So. Ask yourself if this goal is truly important. It's not going to make better beer but it will save a dollar of grain. Go figure.

Trying to scratch out a few efficiency points from a home system is really an exercise in frustration imo. Anything above 70 is adequate and most folks have other areas to improve anyway. Just my opinion.

 

My brewhouse efficiency currently averages 82%. It used to be 90% but I opened my mill gap slightly to avoid stuck mashes which began happening more often than I would have liked. Still happens once in a great while but not bad.

Extent of crush of the grains is about 95% of the issue. Other efforts don't matter so much.

 

They may be full of shit in some cases, but I think most of the time when someone claims unusually high efficiencies it turns out they just don't understand how to measure and calculate properly. It's often a failure to account for a different wort volume than was expected.

 

I used to get 90% efficiency, but dialed it back because of consistent stuck lauters and noticably less pleasant malt character. I’m at about 80% now and happy with the results.

High efficiency mashes are certainly possible, but are scale and equipment dependent. I brew 1bbl batches with a large diameter mash tun and a grist hydrator, so I could push it to stupid efficiency if I really wanted to, but don’t because I find the effect deleterious.

Home brewing isn’t pro brewing, and a 90%+ efficiency on a pro system may make a lovely beer. Same mash and efficiency on a small system may make a shit beer.

 

I would classify this symptom as "full of shit". Anyone else?

 

I'd call it full of ignorance. Ignorance can be cured. Those who are truly full of shit (i.e. liars) are beyond help, at least beyond internet help.

 

Might be helpful then to discuss the proper way to measure efficiency. I'll describe my method and people can let me know if I'm doing it wrong.

I've always done it by measuring the total gravity units in my kettle when mash is done, which I believe I learned from Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. So for instance, if I measure 5 gallons of 1.050 wort in the kettle, I consider myself to have 250 gravity units (5 times 50 is 250—in doing this calculation, I leave off the first digit of the gravity measurement and treat the next three digits as the relevant number). Then I compare that to the maximum gravity points from my malt bill. (I think this theoretical maximum is based on a Congress mash, but I'm hazy on that part. You can look up the theoretical maxima for different fermentables, and you can also sometimes get this information from the maltster.) So for instance, if the only fermentable in my recipe were 9.25 pounds of base malt, which I assume has a theoretical maximum gravity contribution of 1.036 per pound per gallon of wort, I would figure that the theoretical maximum for my recipe was 333 gravity units (9.25 times 36). Then you just divide one by the other. 250/333 is about 75%, which I would calculate as my efficiency.

By the way, during the boil the gravity of the wort changes as water evaporates, but obviously the sugar content does not. So you can do the exact same calculation at the end of the boil, it's just complicated by the fact that your volume now includes hops or whatever, which could throw it off a bit (which is why I always measure before the boil). So for this recipe at the end of the boil I might measure 4.5 gallons of 1.056 wort, which would correspond to 252 gravity units (the 2 extra gravity units being a rounding error).

If I'm doing something wrong I'd welcome any input. I don't stress much about efficiency, to me it is just a useful figure in recipe formulation. For what it's worth, for mid-gravity beers I generally observe efficiency in the mid to high 70s, but lower for high-gravity beers.

 

^This is correct. Also, don't forget that water (and wort) volume increases when heated. It should be measured at about (or adjusted to) room temp.

 

Currently I hit around 78 to 83% effecency. In the past it was anywhere from 50 to 95% and really not truly knowing what was going on.

Grinding grain gets me some control as does my control of sparging rate and sparge water temp.

No need to rush brewing, and I am the run and gun Brewer.

 

This is an excellent point. How long are you taking to sparge, @hoptualBrew?

I'd agree, though, that a finer grind of your grist is very important.

 

Hey, thanks. To add just make sure you don't make flour and keep the husks intact as much as possible.

 

That is a fair amount of time for me unless it is a big beer, then it can take me up to 1 hour.

 

Commercial breweries get 90 percent. Really wondering how people with their home systems are claiming to get similiar efficiencies. Just aim for 70 percent and be happy. Milling your own grain I would guarantee to help improve from 64% and I bet your beer tastes fresher as well.

 

Which commercial brewery?

 

I was curious and was looking on probrewer forums discussing the topic. Seems that small batch breweries are more likely to hit this figure.

 

ive hit 90 a couple times but not regular.

 

FWIW, I only brew about 2 gallons average per batch. In this way, my boiloff percentage is as much as about 32%. As such, I can sparge an awful lot more percentage-wise than the average brewer, collecting that much more sugars from the same weight of grain as someone whose boiloff rate is only like 10-20%. That's how my efficiency is so high. My batch yesterday got 91% efficiency but it was a bit of a fluke. Usually I get about 82% average.

I don't "claim" to get high efficiency. I *do* get high efficiency, if and when I want to.

 

I'd go longer. Try 45 minutes and see if that doesn't make a difference. Hell, for better efficiency, why not just double your time? It's not THAT much added time in the whole scheme of things, is it?

 

Batch sparging I regularly get 80% efficiency for an average strength beer. For a low gravity beer (less grain) that gets close to 90%; stronger beers drop to maybe 75%.

 

Wow. How fine is your crush?

 

If I might be so bold, I'll answer for @harsley: His crush is the perfect level of fineness for his process.

 

This raises a good point. It's certainly possible (with any size batch) to increase mash efficiency by sparging more, and then boiling longer or harder. Having said that, there's a caveat for Fly Spargers: If you're going to stretch your wort volume by using more sparge water, be extra careful about the sparge water temps and the pH of the runnings toward the end, to avoid extracting excess tannins, which can cause astringency.

 

Exactly why I stopped sparging in the first place.

 

There are differing opinions on this (like anything else related to brewing!). The criteria I have landed on look more like this:

pH <5.8
Runnings >2 Plato

And temperature doesn't matter at all -- go ahead and get 'er hot if you want to improve viscosity. (Ever heard of decoction?!)

 

Decoction doesn't cause astringency because although the temperature is high, it's not combined with a high pH.

 

For the OP; I had the same aspirations which lead me to buy a mill. My "store bought" crush resulted in ~70% efficiency, no shame there but expected it would improve by controlling the crush. It did not happen. Crushing my own grain yields 72% which is below what I expected.

For the 80%'ers; I grind at 0.034 inches (mill manufacturer recommended 0.042"), today I took 55 minutes to fly-sparge 6.8 gallons. Mash tun is a circular cooler with a domed false bottom. My mash ph is in the 5.3'ish range, boil-off rate is in the low 20s, pretty sure my measurements are accurate, and according to Vikeman's definition I'm not full of shit. Wish I could report a higher efficiency but that's my story.

 

High efficiency is over-rated...beer is not a muscle car. (yes, I know a lot of muscle cars have low efficiency)

 

Batch sparging could help quite a bit. I am a batch sparger.

 

The "perfect" fly sparge will beat the "perfect" batch sparge for mash efficiency. The physics enforce that; it's all about though gravity of the wort left behind in the grains at the end. But there are variables in each process, and I can imagine that a given brewhouse, if not set up for a near perfect fly, could get more out of batch than fly. And batch sparging is so much easier to set up properly, at least for homebrew scale batches. I did once do a batch sparge on a 15 barrel batch, and it wasn't easy.

I can't think of a reason a domed false bottom would particularly help a batch sparge though, unless it all happens to be configured to minimize dead space vs. some other bottom/tube.

ETA: Guess I should mention that a double batch sparge will beat a single batch sparge.