Efficiency! Help

[Frothy]

Wow I have a major difference in my first 2 brews.
Single infusion 1hr @ __oc with 4L/kg

ESB: 19L @ 1.0467
3.00kg Marris
0.25kg Crystal
0.50kg F.Maize

Mash: Start- 69oc End-64.5oc
79.94% efficiency


Stout: 22L @ 1.035
3.60kg Marris
0.50kg Crystal
0.25kg R.Barley
0.25kg F.Maize

Mash: Start- 65oc End-?oc
60.39% efficiency

No major differences in my technique although the ESB went down the sink and the Stout is lovely

Would the different mash temps make that much difference?
Matt

[Jim]

Wow I have a major difference in my first 2 brews.
Single infusion 1hr @ __oc with 4L/kg

ESB: 19L @ 1.0467
3.00kg Marris
0.25kg Crystal
0.50kg F.Maize

Mash: Start- 69oc End-64.5oc
79.94% efficiency


Stout: 22L @ 1.035
3.60kg Marris
0.50kg Crystal
0.25kg R.Barley
0.25kg F.Maize

Mash: Start- 65oc End-?oc
60.39% efficiency

No major differences in my technique although the ESB went down the sink and the Stout is lovely

Would the different mash temps make that much difference?
Matt

My first thought is that your mash pH would be much lower for the stout, due to the extra dark malts. If you had pretty hard water, this would probably explain it.

[Jim]

Been reading a lot of posts about brewing Efficiency whether its on water,hops,grain suger, im still none the wiser (im a bit think )




Anyone know were i can get some easy and understandable info on the subject ,dummies guide maybe !!!!!

Howdy, Mr C This is John G by way of Texas. I read you guys post and enjoy them. I went to flight school many years ago with Brits, Scots and others here in Texas (we have good flying skies) and always enjoyed the difference in our way of expressing ourselves. Here is a site that I use to get the #'s on my brewing
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/
Hope this helps, Cheers

Hi John, nice to see another US brewer on here. We can just about understand you by now.

[DRB]

The brews I make are for 65% efficiency,which I manage to get pretty much smack on after adding water after the boil to get my 12lt and the required OG. my mash efficieny alone is 90%,is that pretty good?if it is how come I only manage to get 65% overall efficieny.I mash for 90 min then sparge for about 30 min (spinny sparge),all the time keeping the water level just above the grain until I get 16lt,boil add water and hit my OG and quantity,anyone know how I could try and get the efficiency up a little,(little tricks that can get that extra bit, I'd like to hit 75% and be happy by that)

[SteveD]

Try adjusting your mash PH to 5.3 and make sure you sparge down to 1006. Also during run off, when your boiler is 2/3 empty gently add a little extra water, this way more water is rinsing over the hops and what you loose to the hops and trub will be a more dilute wort meaning more sugars end up in the fermenter. You could also try reducing the intensity of the boil as its not just water that is driven off, valuable sugars can get carried away by the steam. One way to do this is to use a power controler, another way is to periodicaly add a little cold water but you must be carefull not to over dilute the wort.

it's a good idea to boil down to your required brew length, rather than end up short and have to top up. Daab's point is one of the reasons why.

You could also lightly and very gently sparge the hops after the boil with a kettle of boiling water after the wort is run off. This would help retrieve sugars that would otherwise be lost. (only if your boiled volume is below your required brew length!) Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. As long as efficiency is within an acceptable range, I'm not bothered. We craft brewers don't have to penny pinch in the same way as accountancy driven commercial brewers, so the odd percentage point or two of efficiency here or there shouldn't bother us.

[DRB]

When you say it's a good idea to boil down to your required brew length,say I want to end up with 12 litres from the 16 litres which I collect,do you mean stop at the 12 litres,if so I wont be getting the full 90 min boil time dont that matter.

[Frothy]

My first thought is that your mash pH would be much lower for the stout, due to the extra dark malts. If you had pretty hard water, this would probably explain it.

Thanks Jim, I haven't really delved into mash pH yet although I did buy a digital pH meter on Ebay. Will definately look into it.

Matt

[SteveD]

When you say it's a good idea to boil down to your required brew length,say I want to end up with 12 litres from the 16 litres which I collect,do you mean stop at the 12 litres,if so I wont be getting the full 90 min boil time dont that matter.

No, it's more important to boil for the required time, in which case you'd need to top up. What you do is from experience work out what your losses would be between collected volume after sparging and running into the fermenter, and ensure that you collect enough to allow for those losses. When you calculate your grain bill to obtain a given gravity at a given volume, that volume should be before losses, so, if you work out that you lose say 1 litre to hops, ullage, etc, and you want 24 litres in the fermenter, work out your grain bill/gravity on a 25L basis. Add to 25L your losses due to evaporation in the boil, and that gives you the volume you need to sparge to.

[Orfy]

I need 30l in the kettle so use 37l for mashing and sparging,

[Vossy1]

Bringing this one back to life as I'm getting different answers from Scooby's and SD's equations on page 1.

Can somebody enlighten me as to what I'm doing wrong.

I've done 2 x 46ltr batches of the same brew using 8.55kg of pale malt in each (same batch pale malt)

On the 1st brew I got the 1040 OG I aimed for but in 50 ltrs
On the second brew I got the 1040 OG but in 54ltrs.

My efficiency,

1st batch

Scooby's way

8.55 (kg) x 300 (degrees pale malt) = 55.76
46 (target volume)

55.76 max extract figure

50 ltrs collected = 84.75%
55.76

Second batch

55 ltrs collected = 93.22%
55.76

But if I use SD' calc I get different figures

OG x VOL = efficiency
Ext x WGT

40 x 50 = 0.77 ?
300 x 8.55

[Scooby]

8.55x300/50 = 51.3

40/51.3x100 = 77.79%





8.55x300/54 = 47.5

40/47.5x100 = 84.2%

Nice one Vossy

[Frothy]

wow over 80% nice one Vossy
- is that with step mashing or single infusion?

Frothy

[Vossy1]

Thanks Scooby

I'll have a look at that tomorrow when the effects of the Styrian Stunner have worn off

Single infusion Frothy

I've just looked at my brew log and it wasn't 54ltr it was 55, so that's an extra 1.5%

I'm finally settling down with the herms and it's showing

[Scooby]

85.7% is fantastic vossy

All you did was divide by your target vol instead of the actual vol when you were working out the max extraction

[Vossy1]

85.7% is fantastic vossy

Thanks Scooby I just hope it stays the same or gets better.

Hopefully now I've got a stable system it will remain fairly constant

I think the problem with regard to the calc was that I was looking for some way to link it to the original recipe which was 75% efficiency.
I was looking for a constant that wasn't there, apart from the grain extract figure

Even so, when I put the figures into SD's formula from page one I'm getting silly figures, where I'd expaect them to match....

Any ideas