Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

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StrontiumDog
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Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by StrontiumDog » Sun Mar 26, 2017 9:31 am

Good morning everyone. I’ve been using this forum for some time to get advice but this is my first time posting so please, be gentle ;-)

I have transferred to all grain but I’m only doing small, 1 gallon (imperial), batches at the moment due to the fact I’m still building the brewery in the garage, I’m still getting together a recipe I’ll be happy drinking 5 gallons of and my stove won’t let me brew any higher volume batches.

So, I have a recipe I’m working to, it’s supposed to give me an OG of 1.041 but I’m consistently getting around 1.030. Using the Brewhouse Efficiency Calculator on Brewers Friend it looks like at 75% efficiency I’ll hit my OG but apparently I’m at 54.10%.

I was hoping you guys could help me out with where I’m going wrong

Recipe;
700g Maris Otter Pale Malt
54g Crystal Malt
41g Flaked Maize

5g Challenger (60 mins)
5g Bramling Cross (30 mins)
3g Fuggles (Flame Out)
3g East Kent Goldings (Flame Out)

Set up;
9ltr HLT
5ltr Mash Pot
20ltr BK
Colander

Process;
Heat up 1,987.5 ml strike water to 75ºC and Mash in to 66 ºC

Mash for 1 hour in oven, checking every 10 minutes with probe. Max temp 68 ºC, min temp 65 ºC but I’m happy my mash temp stayed close enough to 66 ºC.

Heat up 7,807.5 ml sparge water to 75 ºC. The mash was then transferred to a colander and sparge water poured over it through another colander to cover the whole grain bed and allowed to drain through. This continued until 9ltrs of wort was collected.

Wort boiled and hops added. After an hour the wort was cooled using an IC and transferred to glass demijohn.

Volumes;
9ltr pre boil;
2.5 ltrs lost to boil off
Around 2 ltrs left in BK with break material and hops
4.5ltrs in FV

I have experimented with a 2 gallon cooler for my mash in the past but I loose so much temperature it was ridiculous, even after I wrapped it up in a sleeping bag.

I could have possibly reduced my boil volume down by another litre but I don’t think this would be enough to bring my gravity points up so much.

Any advice would be gratefully received and if there’s any other info you need then just let me know and I’ll do my best to supply what I can.

Thanks.

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Sadfield
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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by Sadfield » Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:00 am

Hi

What are you doing wrong? Not much, 75% efficiency is possibly too higher expectation at this stage. Water treatment, grain crush, mash and sparge process all play a part in efficiency. Could be a water/mash ph issue, I would guess that with you current process you could also be sparging too quickly, however, this may be difficult to rectify. Given that this setup is temporary whilst you build your brewery I wouldn't worry too much and just adjust your grain bill to your current efficiency, i.e. use more grain to to accommodate for the shortfall in gravity.

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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by Kev888 » Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:33 am

Brewhouse efficiency includes losses to dead-space and so on. In very small systems these losses are usually a bigger proportion of the brew length and so have a bigger impact on brewhouse efficiency - this is quite normal. For example: you have two litres left in your kettle (plus hops etc) whilst my system has 3L, but with such small batches your 2L loss is about 30% of the total wort at that point, whereas mine (producing 65L) is only 4.5%.

It may help to measure the pre-boil gravity and volume (i.e. what you have following the mash and any sparge, after all the wort has been separated from the grain). This will allow you to calculate the mash efficiency, and I'd expect it to be reassuringly normal.

EDIT: Don't forget that efficiency is about extraction and subsequent losses of sugars, so gravity readings are important along side the volumes if you want to track progress through your process - for example the evaporation loses only water vapour and so (whilst it changes the volume) it has essentially no effect on efficiency.
Last edited by Kev888 on Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by lord groan » Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:48 am

OK by a process of elimination, and stating the obvious, if you're not hitting the expected gravity it's because you're not getting enough sugar out of the grain. To track down why I'd do this;
On your next brew taste the first run of wort from the mash, that'll give you a starting point, then taste the last drops of sparged wort, how sweet is it in comparison? If there's almost no sweetness and it is really just water then your sparging is probably fine. Taste a bit of the grain, any sweetness there, no? then the sparging is fine. If you're getting a lot of sweetness then the sparging is at fault.

If there's little or no residual sweetness (there'll always be a bit BTW) then starch conversion might be the issue. You're mashing at 66c - that should be fine, so how are you checking the temperature? I recently found that my electronic temp probe was well out - under reading by 3-4c. Now I use a traditional glass thermometer. I don't really think the mash temp will be to blame, starch conversion is quite forgiving of temperature.

If it's not mash temp what about the grain itself- how well crushed is it? Very hard to judge on your own but have a look at the bag it comes in. Is there a fair amount of loose flour in there? If none, then it's not been crushed, if lots then the grain is definitely crushed but how well? The drawback with overcrushing is lots of loose flour which forms doughballs which block the mash and don't convert because they don't get wet inside. Have a look at the grain after you've sparged, pick some out and pull it apart, any sign of tiny air pockets having been caught inside the husk -like tiny bits of flour left behind? That'll partially prevent conversion too. Oh and how do you mix the water with the grain at the start of the mash - do you give it a good stir to ensure all the grain is thoroughly wet through and all air bubbles removed?

Just some thoughts which you may already have investigated. I'd guess your problems might be a combination of the above but it is only a guess, hopefully something here will ring a bell, good luck!

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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by Kev888 » Sun Mar 26, 2017 11:10 am

lord groan wrote:OK by a process of elimination, and stating the obvious, if you're not hitting the expected gravity it's because you're not getting enough sugar out of the grain.
Not necessarily, because the efficiency mentioned in the OP is not the mash efficiency. It is perfectly possible for the grain to be yielding a very respectable quantity of sugars (a good mash efficiency), but for a large percentage to then be lost to dead-space and hop retention etc (lowering brew-house efficiency). The volumes are tiny, but this is undoubtedly happening to a proportionately large extent with the dead-space here; I wouldn't lay all the blame on extraction rates.
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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by lord groan » Sun Mar 26, 2017 11:21 am

True Kev, very true, but I was thinking of the unboiled wort sg, losses to deadspace after mashing and sparging I would expect to be of very low gravity as most sugars will have been washed out earlier.

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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by Kev888 » Sun Mar 26, 2017 11:34 am

Yes certainly, deadspace retaining the last runnings in a Mash Tun is relatively minor. But if I'm interpreting it correctly (and I may not be!), there is no mash tun in this system, rather it sounds like the losses of wort mentioned (other than to grain retention) were of post-boil wort in the kettle, and so comprised (about 30% of) the final, original gravity wort.
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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by vacant » Sun Mar 26, 2017 12:17 pm

If you could reduce the amount left in the kettle from two ltr to one, your efficiency would be about 75%.

On my brew-day spread sheet I allow two ltr trub but that is for up to 41 ltr brew length.
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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by Fil » Sun Mar 26, 2017 5:02 pm

test the mash grains with iodine when you think the next mash is over if the iodine turns black you still have unconverted starch present and can mash longer, or perhaps investigate the mash PH and adjust the brewing liquor accordingly for future grews or buy bottled water for the brew ;) If the iodine remains redy brown then your mash has successfully converted the available starches and you can rest in comfort that your doing well in that aspect.

BHE isnt a measure of brewers success its more of a result of the brewing process and on the smaller scales the mash mass isnt going to retain as much heat as a larger bulk can, and losses due to grain and hop absoption and deadspaces have a much more significant impact.

If your brewing with this equipment while your real brewery takes shape i would be inclined to accept a slightly lower bhe for now and simply compensate with more grain.
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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by StrontiumDog » Sun Mar 26, 2017 7:46 pm

I can't thank you all enough, this is what I love about brewing, what an amazing community!! I have some good ideas for moving forward, next one I'll reduce an extra litre or more if I can, increase my grain bill and test out the mash with some pH strips I have kicking around. Can't wait to get my full rig set up [SMILING FACE WITH SMILING EYES]

Thanks again everyone

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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by rpt » Thu Mar 30, 2017 1:21 pm

Your lower efficiency is almost certainly due to your dead space being such a large proportion of your brew length. But the only way to be sure is to take a gravity reading before the boil. This way you can work out your mash efficiency and so be sure that is high enough.

By the way, are you really measuring your volumes to the nearest 0.5mL?

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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by wilfh » Fri Mar 31, 2017 2:00 pm

When you say sparged at 75C do you mean the grain bed or the sparge water temperature? Took me ages to work that out and it did wonders for my efficiency.

My sparge water is now around 80-85C which raises the grain bed to 75C on my system.

if it's not that then all the other great comments will help
Good Luck
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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by StrontiumDog » Sun Apr 30, 2017 10:38 pm

Hi everyone, I've just finished my most recent brew taking in all your advice so wanted to make sure I shared it with you.

I think I've nailed it :-D

I cut my pre boil volume down by 2 litres and got my OG to 1.039 which is only just off my 1.041 target so I can live with that. Did get a load of crap go in to the fermenter after whirlpooling but there seems to be mixed reviews on that anyway, has meant I've learnt that the boiler for my full set up will definitely need a hop screen of some kind as my racking cane clogged.

Also gave me the chance to measure efficiency and it looks like my pre boil efficiency was 72.43% and brew house efficiency was between 74.5% and 76.05% so happy with that too :-)

Thanks again everyone

PS: rpt - lol don't worry, I'm not doing my measurements to the nearest 0.5ml, just doing it to work my calculations then rounding it

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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by Good Ed » Sun Apr 30, 2017 11:33 pm

Also don't forget efficiency is just a number you plug into your software to produce your desired result. It is whatever it needs to be with your system to produce the beer you are brewing.

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Re: Help with efficiency - what am I doing wrong??

Post by gnorwebthgimi » Sun May 07, 2017 7:56 pm

"Around 2 ltrs left in BK with break material and hops". - That's where you're losing most of your efficiency if your calculations are correct.

I lose about the same amount on 25L not 9.

My recommendation:

1) If your beer is a little thin then just use a bit more grain and suffer the loss of the efficiency (you're not a commercial brewer where this is the difference between profit and loss)

2) If your beer is light on ABV but you are happy with the body then chuck a bit more sugar in up the ABV.

3) If you are really bothered about efficiency then consider running a few more litres into you kettle and boiling more and squeezing more of the litres from the kettle.

Lastly, when you scale up your brewery you will have to get used to wholly different processes and results, just keep m,oving forward.

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