Hillbilly house bitter (Revised)

[Horden Hillbilly]

Hi everyone,

I intend to brew my house bitter tomorrow, my Brewlab yeast starter is fizzing away nicely now. After my recent low effiency on Mrs H's pilsner & others noticing low effiencies as well, I have lowered the estimated effiency on this brew to 72% instead of the usual 79%.

It is a 23 litre brew, the 79% figures are the ones in brackets.

Pale Malt 4312g (3930g)
Crystal Malt 288g (262g)
Torrified Wheat 192g (174g)
Goldings hops start of boil, aim for 36 EBU.
Goldings hops last 15 mins 20g.
Goldings hops at end of boil, soak for 30 mins 8g.

I will start a new thread on the brewdays page when it is all done & will let you know how I got on with mash effiencies this time.

It would be nice if we could find out what our reduced effiencies are, it would make our recipe planning easier & more accurate.

[Horden Hillbilly]

I'm getting pretty much 70% consistently batch sparging. fwiw you could always add a little sugar or dme if you fall short until you've fine tuned things again.

I have some spraymalt at the ready just in case! I won't be too upset if I only slightly miss out on my estimated og, I would rather have it that way as to having it over the estimated og. As DaaB rightly points out, if you wish to increase your og you could always add extra sugar, dme or spraymalt to your brew to achieve your og.

If you over achieve your og you could always top the brew up with water but this could knock your hop calculations out. I estimate that I achieved just below 72% effiency on my last brew, but that contained 10% sugar which would have nudged the overall effiency upwards. This brew contains no sugar so I should be able to work out my effiency better on this brew.

[nobby]

I'm getting pretty much 70% consistently batch sparging. fwiw you could always add a little sugar or dme if you fall short until you've fine tuned things again.

If the experts are only getting 70% it make me feel better with 65%

[Horden Hillbilly]

Here is the link to the brewday, I was only slightly low on the gravity, I estimated 1044 based on 72%, I ended up with an og of 1042. I will probably try 70% myself next time.