Braumeister and efficiency.

chris.laws.54943 · Post by **chris.laws.54943** » Tue Jul 28, 2015 3:59 pm

Hi All

Im just after a little advice. I have been failing to gain the kind of efficiency that other BM users boast of.
For instance I brewed today a recipe which aims for 23L in the fermenter (according to beer smith) and I've ended up with 19L at the correct OG!
Beersmith tells me I have an actual efficiency of 55% as opposed to the guesstimated (but reasonable I am led to believe) 75%.
I have no idea what I might be doing wrong here so any thoughts would be appreciated.
My brew today was a pretty standard 4.0kg maris otter 0.4 speciality malts.
Mash with 23L at 68c for 60 mins mash out at 76c for 10 mins
Sparge/Rinse with 4.5L 76c water.
Boil 90mins (with pellets)
Needed a fair bit of top up water as OG after boil was 1.052 (aiming for 1.041)
Still only managed to get to 19L.

Beer always tastes good I just want more of it

One other quick question is how long do BM users leave the cold break to settle down?
After steeping more hops for 30 mins and then immersion chiller for about 30 more, there is still a lot of break floating mid wort which tends to make it to the fermenter. This is a question about clarity really I guess but Im interested to know others' technique.

Thanks for filtering through my ramblings,
Chris

Waffty · Post by **Waffty** » Tue Jul 28, 2015 4:34 pm

I did my second brew last weekend, the first being way off my numbers. After my first brew, I was off on the gravity and volume and bitterness. So I simply tweaked the Beersmith profile by increasing the evaporation amount and increasing my dead space losses, which gave me pretty much the volume and gravity I was looking for. As I don't perform a manual sparge as some others do, I got an efficiency in the area of 75% which whilst not ideal, it's what I was expecting and gives me a starting/reference point, to play around with crush size, manual sparge step etc.

I have a 50L BM fitted with a 25L malt tub and brew 22L brew lengths, as such my 90 boil off amount is 6L (12.5% per hour) and my losses to Trub and Chiller are 3.5L

I agree on the cold break, as I did the same as you and got mine down to 19c and have tried both Irish moss and those fizzy tablet things, whose name escapes me, both of which have resulted in excess trub making it into the fermenter. I fill using a muslin type cloth over the neck of the fermenter, which helps remove large partials + helps to add some air into the mix. The only thing I can think of is, as I use a hop filter, the hop aren't being used as a filter bed, as they would in a manifold type system, so now that I have my numbers and one good brew under my belt, I may look to use loose hops and possibly buy the Braumeister hop filter and see if that makes any difference.

McMullan · Post by **McMullan** » Tue Jul 28, 2015 7:09 pm

Sparge/rinse slowly with the top filter screen in place with more water. Add at least what you topped up with. BS is not always accurate. Determine empirically what works for you when using BS. Which type of hops and how much did you use, pellets or cones? What size was the grain milled?

McMullan · Post by **McMullan** » Tue Jul 28, 2015 7:18 pm

At the end of boil, I cool the wort straight away, steeped hops or not. I let the cold break settle for 2 hours. Most people seem to go for 30min to an hour. You'll find a lot of info and help in the BM forum.

vacant · Post by **vacant** » Tue Jul 28, 2015 9:08 pm

I'm wondering if you have an older model pump or faulty pump

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=317778

McMullan · Post by **McMullan** » Tue Jul 28, 2015 9:32 pm

vacant wrote:I'm wondering if you have an older model pump or faulty pump

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=317778

Are the pumps different on the new control modules?

chris.laws.54943 · Post by **chris.laws.54943** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 8:09 am

@Wafty

Thanks for the info. I guess I shall double check the braumeister setup in beersmith.
I think i need to account for more boil off, more loss to trub.
Ive also heard about having the grains crushed differently for a BM. Should it be more coarse or finer?
Id be interested to hear your experiences with the hop filter as I always use muslin bags for an easier clean. Pellets or cones.

chris.laws.54943 · Post by **chris.laws.54943** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 8:12 am

McMullan wrote:Sparge/rinse slowly with the top filter screen in place with more water. Add at least what you topped up with. BS is not always accurate. Determine empirically what works for you when using BS. Which type of hops and how much did you use, pellets or cones? What size was the grain milled?

Thanks McMullen. I did keep the filters in place this time. Sample I took for gravity reading had some break in it but when that settled down the wort was sparkling clear. I hope any that made it through will also settle out after fermentation. Grain milling is something I shall look into on my next MO bulk order.

chris.laws.54943 · Post by **chris.laws.54943** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 8:13 am

McMullan wrote:At the end of boil, I cool the wort straight away, steeped hops or not. I let the cold break settle for 2 hours. Most people seem to go for 30min to an hour. You'll find a lot of info and help in the BM forum.

.......oh and Ill also give a 2 hr settle a go. I reckon I did 1 hour including steep and cool.

chris.laws.54943 · Post by **chris.laws.54943** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 8:15 am

vacant wrote:I'm wondering if you have an older model pump or faulty pump

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=317778

Thanks for the reply Vacant. I have no idea wether its an old style pump but I bought my BM towards the end of 2013 making it a fair bit newer than the one in the post you linked to. It makes no noises and APPEARS to pump correctly.

McMullan · Post by **McMullan** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 5:30 pm

chris.laws.54943 wrote:
McMullan wrote:At the end of boil, I cool the wort straight away, steeped hops or not. I let the cold break settle for 2 hours. Most people seem to go for 30min to an hour. You'll find a lot of info and help in the BM forum.
.......oh and Ill also give a 2 hr settle a go. I reckon I did 1 hour including steep and cool.

Due to the time of year (warm weather = bugs), I wrap the top with foil sprayed with starsan.

Jocky · Post by **Jocky** » Sat Aug 01, 2015 11:44 am

You have to be careful when comparing efficiencies because there are multiple measures, and some people feel the need to exaggerate their numbers...

Beer smith has brew house efficiency as its standard figure, which is a combination of how much extract you got from the mash combined with how much waste you liquid you lost to trub/dead space etc. This is the value you can set in beersmith.

It calculates an expected mash efficiency from this and your equipment settings. You can also see your mash efficiency once you have entered the length and SG of each of your mash runnings.

So it's not uncommon to have a brew house efficiency of 65% but a mash efficiency in the high 70s.

chris.laws.54943 · Post by **chris.laws.54943** » Sun Aug 02, 2015 10:40 pm

I totally expect you're right Jocky. I'd just like to get a little more "in the ball park"

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