Efficiency Gremlins Persist

[aceofspades9911]

Hi all,

I posted a few years ago about efficiency issues I was having, the advice given was get a good recipe (mine was crap), get a grain mill, which I did, and get temperature control (which I did although I know it doesn't effect efficiency).

I've brewed about 6 batches since then (I took a hiatus) but I haven't been able to get my brew house efficiency above mid 60's and I'm pulling my hair out over it. Below I describe the recipe, procedures used, and numbers I got. I was wondering if there's anything I'm missing that's preventing me from getting close to normal efficiency

I brewed the AVG Perfect Neipa recipe (details listed below). I used bottled distilled water. I used beer smith to calculate volumes and water adjustments. The only modification I made to the original recipe was to sub the wheat for additional oats as the SWMBO is allergic to wheat.

BIAB full volume mash, mashed in cooler with a bag for 2 hours stirring every 30 minutes.

I have a cereal killer mill and crushed once, and realized the lock nuts were not set and crushed again at .025, there was lots of flour and no untracked grains.

Grain bill was 10LB 12 OZ 2Row, 2LBS 12.8OZ flaked oats, 11.2 OZ acid malt, and 8OZ honey malt.

Beersmith indicated using 8.59 gal of water, I withheld one gallon as a potential top off in the event of low efficiency

I adjusted the water (the entire 8.59 gal, before pulling one gallon for top off) with 1.25 TSP of cacl, gypsum and Epsom salt (Beersmith has the measurements in grams, I don't have an accurate gram scale so I converted them to TSP and got as close as possible with kitchen measuring spoons).

I mashed in at 152, over the course of the 2 hr mash, the temp dropped to 146F

I measured my temp and SG @

Mash SG and T @60min 147.7f @ 1.054
Mash SG and T @90 min 146.4f @ 1.056
Mash SG and T @ 2 hrs 144f @ 1.059 .

The volume post mash, pre top off was 6 gallons

I poured 4 cups of 170f water over the bag while draining, the squeezed the crap out of it.

After boiling for an hour and transferring to the fermenter, I has 5 gallons of wort @ 1.064

As far as I understand, my mash efficiency was 69% and my brewhouse efficiency was 60.66.

I don't care to spend an extra dollar or two on grains and I think I could get repeatable results with these numbers, but everything I've read says you should get mid 70-80% efficiency or you have a big problem. Am I calculating things wrong? Is there something else in my process I need to adjust? At this point I'm thinking of buying water test kit and ph meter to make sure everything checks out on that end, but I;be read that should not effect things this much.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[bracconiere]

but everything I've read says you should get mid 70-80% efficiency or you have a big problem

i don't BIAB, otherwise i'd say, i got help from the world wide webs way back when telling me to slow down the sparge. went from 63% or so to 83%. maybe a hybrid BIAB batch sparge or something?

(now i'm dissappointed with 92%, lol you'll figure out something!)

 

[bracconiere]

I don't care to spend an extra dollar or two on grains and I think I could get repeatable results with these numbers,

and meditate on that, if you're fantasizing trying to go pro, brewing mega batches. that would be serious! your going to end up getting under-cut!

 

[McKnuckle]

First of all, 69% mash efficiency, if accurate, is not particularly low. Of course it could be better, but consistency is more important than anything here.

You should not be shooting for a brewhouse efficiency target, because it factors in volume losses which are entirely within your control to minimize. Mash efficiency is what you care about, because it is based on conversion and extraction.

I roughly calculate that your absorption rate was 0.11 gal/lb, and your evaporation rate is 1.25 gal/hr. Check those settings in your software to confirm they are accurate.

Whenever I see posts that say "Beersmith indicated that I should..." it makes me skeptical. Calculate the volume losses yourself on a spreadsheet, and measure accurately. There's far too much "fluff" in volume measurements and the errors add up over the course of the brewing process.

The other thing I see is that you added a lot of acid malt and three salts that lower pH, all guesstimated as you admit. I don't have a quick way to estimate your mash pH, but it could have been pretty low, which would not be ideal for mash efficiency.

 

[aceofspades9911]

Thanks for the advice. In response to McKnuckles, all of the volumes listed were measured, not calculated. I just used beersmith the figure out what volumes i should start with.

 

[doug293cz]

If I did the math right, you have 14.75 lb of grain, with a weighted potential of (36.85 pt/lb), for a total potential of 522 (after correcting for grain moisture content of 4%.) With 7.6 gal of strike water, your end of mash SG should have been 1.061 - 1.062, if you got 100% conversion. Your 1.059 SG gives a conversion efficiency of ~95%, which isn't bad.

Can't really say anything about mash or lauter efficiency, since you didn't provide a pre-boil volume and SG, or a post-boil volume (before transferring to fermenter) that can be used with your post-boil SG (i.e. OG.)

Brew on

 

[aceofspades9911]

If I did the math right, you have 14.75 lb of grain, with a weighted potential of (36.85 pt/lb), for a total potential of 522 (after correcting for grain moisture content of 4%.) With 7.6 gal of strike water, your end of mash SG should have been 1.061 - 1.062, if you got 100% conversion. Your 1.059 SG gives a conversion efficiency of ~95%, which isn't bad.

Can't really say anything about mash or lauter efficiency, since you didn't provide a pre-boil volume and SG, or a post-boil volume (before transferring to fermenter) that can be used with your post-boil SG (i.e. OG.)

Brew on

Thanks, I'll have to remember to check the volumes at those steps next brew day and see if I can pin point where my losses are.