Does this mash look OK?

[DonnieZ]

Yesterday I brewed up a 2HA clone. I was mashing grains that I milled at the LHBS and I took the picture below.

I've been getting low efficiency, somewhere in the 54% range. I've noticed this like sludge/mud on top of the grain bed after sparging - kind of looks like the grains may be too crushed and I'm getting flour.

Is this normal?

 

[nukebrewer]

Looks like a perfectly normal mash to me. I don't even see what it is you're talking about.

 

[kh54s10]

If you are not getting a stuck sparge your grain is not crushed too fine. Very fine would give you a higher efficiency, not lower. If the grain hulls are shredded some feel you might get too much tannin flavor in your beer.

 

[terrapinj]

that's usually proteins

if the grains were over crushed you'd get much higher efficiency - you can prob get better feedback on the quality of the crush by posting a photo of the crushed grains dry

 

[duboman]

Yesterday I brewed up a 2HA clone. I was mashing grains that I milled at the LHBS and I took the picture below.

I've been getting low efficiency, somewhere in the 54% range. I've noticed this like sludge/mud on top of the grain bed after sparging - kind of looks like the grains may be too crushed and I'm getting flour.

Is this normal?

The mash looks fine. What efficiency are you talking about? Mash/Lauter or brew house?

Have you taken a pre-boil gravity reading to determine your mash/Lauter efficiency? Are you meeting all your volumes? Are you getting proper pH in the mash?

Lots if variables in play here to improve your numbers.....

 

[DonnieZ]

The mash looks fine. What efficiency are you talking about? Mash/Lauter or brew house?

Have you taken a pre-boil gravity reading to determine your mash/Lauter efficiency? Are you meeting all your volumes? Are you getting proper pH in the mash?

Lots if variables in play here to improve your numbers.....

I thought I was quoting mash efficiency, but apparently I was quoting brewhouse efficiency. I'm still not completely used to the Beersmith app on the iPad. I have both the full version iPad and the computer version. When I just looked at the numbers in Beersmith on the PC I was able to see a computed mash efficiency of 67%, which I'm actually happy with.

My grain bill consisted of:

13# Pale Malt
2 # Vienna
.5 # Crystal 20
.5 # Cara-Pils

I ended up with a pre-boil gravity that I measured at 1.047, which was temperature corrected. I think I actually measured in the 1.040 range, however I'm still using a 12 oz sample jar to measure the wort samples with. It's hard to cool it down enough to get an accurate reading by the time I need the jar for something else. (I have a refractometer on order for this purpose.) So my efficiency might be a little higher. I did an iodine test (2% Tincture of iodine) with a mash sample at about 35 minutes and it did not change color, but I kept on mashing for the whole hour.

My post boil gravity came out right at 1.060, which is 5 points shy of the projected gravity for this recipe.

Mash pH is something I really want to start to look at, but I'm not sure how to do that without getting a decent pH meter setup, and I'm torn between getting my own mill or getting a pH meter setup. Both will cost in the $100 range.

I'm also still getting my process down. This is my fourth AG batch on this setup, and probably 7th AG batch I've been involved with all together.