Poor Efficiency Problem

[tjcavitt]

I just finished brewing a batch of beer which I've done about 5 times before, always with about 75%efficiency. To my knowledge, I didn't change anything but my effeciency decreased significantly. Haven't done the math yet but my SG came in at 1.039 and should have been in the 1.053 range according to BeerSmith (and has been on past batches)

Batch Sparging with 3.2 Gallons on my First running and 3.3 gallons on my second. Ended up with 5 gallons after a 60 minute boil.

5# Pale Malt 2 Row
4# White Wheat Malt
.5# CaraPils
.5# Rice Hulls

Any thoughts?

 

[JonK331]

Were the grains crushed exactly the same?

 

[GoldMiner]

How was the crush of the grain?

Did it look different than before?

 

[tjcavitt]

Reasonably certain the crush was the same. I purchased the grain from the same home brew store and used their mill. The crushed looked the same but I honestly didn't pay that much attention to it.

Sounds like it might be time to by my own mill. Next question will be the excuse to justify it to the wife! Something in a haiku perhaps . . .

 

[david_42]

I'd suspect their mill needs to be adjusted. Gap is critical with wheat.

 

[tjcavitt]

As a follow up, the lid blew off the fermentation bucket about 5:30 am.

 

[OLDBREW]

Not sure if this was the problem but..
White/red wheats has a smaller kernel size then pale or 2 row malts. It's best to run wheat through by itself and check your crush. You may want to run wheat through a second time if you are not going to change adjustments on the mill.

FYI they tell you to allow a third more head space when doing wheat beers they can become volcanic

 

[electric_beer]

This happened to me one time. When I came back to my LHBS the first thing they did was apologize, apparently someone had bumped the mill and it had a larger than usual gap. They had even tried to run after me after I had left (to fix the mistake), but they didn't notice it quick enough. They gave me 50% off my next purchase. I usually get 80% outta their crust so I was pretty shocked getting a little less than 55%. Doesn't hurt to ask...