Trouble with Efficiency

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.