Brew house efficiency

I recently remade a recipe of mine from a few years ago. I didn’t change much from back then, and still using roughly the same equipment. Only thing that changed so far is I moved into a new house, so the water supply is slightly different. We only moved across town, so I don’t think water chemistry has much to do with it.

My results weren’t much different than last time, pretty precise… But not accurate. (also the color this time appears much darker, but that isn’t super concerning just yet). I bought the grain from NB already crushed because I don’t own a mill yet.

My brew house efficiency is very low. If I plugged in all my fermentable ingredients into a computer program, and account for low efficiency, I still come in under the numbers. I feel like I’m hovering around 50% efficiency or worse. That is a very alarming number to me, but I don’t know what area to focus on to improve those numbers. Water temperature was fine (154) , as was pH (strike was 5.6). No stuck mashes, vorlauf went smoothly. Gathered about 2.75 gallons of first runnings (did not test gravity of these), then batch sparged. I did a batch sparging method that worked for me in the past that took about a total of 35 minutes. I don’t think I need to list the recipe here, but obviously I can if needed.

What could possibly have gone “wrong” here? Outside of getting a heated mash tun or a HERMS, I don’t know what to change next time. But 50% or lower feels like failure to me, and that color darkness feels weird. I bet the beer tastes fine after all is said and done, but I feel like I’m throwing money away in the form of gravity points somewhere.

what was the recipe and how long was your mash? did you take a picture of the grains? 2 of us had partially or barely crushed grains recently from NB

Could be issue with crushing of the grain. Because 50% seams kind of low.

5# 2 row pale
5# pale malt
0.2# honey malt
1# Honey added during boil

Single step infusion, mash was 60 minutes. Once the sparge water was added later, I stirred the mash back up and let it sit for 25 minutes before re-vorlaufing and then draining. I know this could be seen as overkill, but it should only help my efficiency, not hurt it. Mash tun is a cylindrical cooler with SS false bottom and screw-on lid

I always knew grain crushing has an impact, I just trusted NB not to mess that up

Pretty basic grain bill. Hard to get into much there. If I were you I would revisit all that can be involved in determining brewhouse efficiency. It is routinely confused with mash efficiency. Much more involved calculations involving equipment and volumes. Make sure you are calculating correctly. You may be doing better than you think,

Maybe I am confusing mash and brews house efficiency. I just know that with such a simple grain bill and pretty straightforward “recipe”, I should have gotten a higher gravity than I did.

I got similar gravity to the last time I brewed, and that beer turned out wonderful, so I’m not fretting yet. But using an online calculator, to get the OG I did with that grain bill requires me to enter 52% efficiency.

So I come up with a 1.057 starting gravity… That equates to 80%… what was yours?
Sneezles61

Crush is usually the #1 issue when it comes to poor efficiency. It may have been a poor crush as their mill may have come out of tolerance if they’ve been crushing tons of grain. But crush is VERY system dependent. For example BIAB often gets away with a much tighter crush than a HERMS or RIMS system. It’s could very well be that NB didn’t ‘mess up’ as much as that crush isn’t good for your system. That’s another benefit of owning your own mill.

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I came out with 1.040

How did you calculate the 1.057?

I’m sure I can find documentation somewhere, but how do I determine crush size for my system if I buy my own mill? I know trial and error obviously, but where to start?

I have been thinking about getting one, but I have no idea about this step. Would I change mill size per style of beer? Or just keep it the same for all brews once I find a number that works well for my equipment?

Efficiency is most often related to grain crush.

It’s very hard to advise you without accuarate information though to be honest. You said you “feel” like you’re around 50%. not sure how you intuit that without taking gravity readings…

As to your question about grain crush it depends on your MO and how you mash but generally speaking start with a mill gap of around .032(which is roughly where they all are from the mfg) and widening or tightening from there based on your results. To determine this you’ll have to keep more accurate records of your gravity readings.

You also need to design recipes with your system’s efficiency in mind. If you use a recipe that I designed for my system where I get high efficiency and your system efficiency is lower then you won’t hit the target OG no matter how hard you try without increasing the amount of grain. It’s all related. A good example is @sneezles61 post above. He designs his recipes for 80% efficiency on his system so he’ll get a higher OG from that recipe than you may.

As @dannyboy58 said start at .030 and go from there. And it’s only trial and error. Brew a batch at the specific gap and then tighten it a bit, say to .028. If it helps efficiency keep tightening it until you have problems (i.e stuck mash, poor efficiency). I will say that if you took a poll of brewers with traditional systems they’ll be around .026 to .032. Recirculating systems usually perform better with a looser crush. Before I went RIMS I was at .029. Now for the RIMS I’m at .040.
I do not change my mill based on recipe. If I’m using a smaller kernel grain such as wheat I’ll crush it separately first then add it back with the rest of the bill and give it a second crush.
I would encourage you to get a mill. You’ll benefit from fresher grain as well as knowing the crush. You can get some decent 2 roller mills for fair price.

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I’m BIAB… and after numerous brews, that is where I’m at…
To determine MY gravity… Base malts are figured using “35 points per pound” So you had 10.2 pounds…
10.2 X 35= 357… I also threw the honey in at this point(not the correct way) which is 40. (40 points per pound)
our total is at 397… I divide by 5.5 (gallons that I expect to put into a fermenter) 72.18181818… ( think of this as 1.072 to keep it simple… With me?
72 now multiplied by 8 (80% MY brew house efficiency) = 576 (think of to as 1.057… keep it simple)
Got it? try just doing this without brewing… The next brew day have a recipe designed… see if you can hit your numbers…
Volume IS a HUGE piece of the equation… Spend time to verify all the volumes are correct on yer equipment… even a half gallon will throw yer numbers off…
Sneezles61

So I said I feel like I am around 50% because when I used an online calculator, the only way I got my OG to match up to the predicted OG, I had to type in 50% efficiency. I took pH readings, temperature readings throughout the process, the only thing I didn’t check was gravity until it was cooled and in the fermenter… Meaning I didn’t take gravity readings of first runnings, second runnings/pre boil.

I guess what I’m saying is, the online tool I used to predict my OG said I should have a much higher OG, unless I really lowered my efficiency. Link below to what I used

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Totally with ya, so I mean I’m looking at roughly 55% efficiency to get to the gravity I did. That’s where my concern comes in. Basically, I improved my brewing methods, tech, etc from the last time I made this beer, gravity was slightly higher than last time. But I expected (hoped?) to be at least about 65%.

Your volume assumptions are correct, 5.5 gallons into the fermenter.

Well it sounds like you have a good grasp of the calculation of efficiency so the two things to focus on are your crush and volumes. You’ll only be able to control and vary your crush if you have your own mill. Beyond that you’re relying on someone else’s crush and maintenance of their mill.

Did you by any chance weigh the grains just to confirm? NB is pretty good but it’s possible you were shorted on weight.

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You know what? That is definitely something I didn’t do. I never really considered it, but I will do that from now on… Great idea.

I guess I will just hafta get a grain mill for the next brew. I also want to get a plate chiller because even using glycol running through my SS immersion chiller is taking forever (but that’s a different story, no need to hijack my own thread). Just when I think I don’t need to buy more equipment, here we go again!

If this beer turns out wonky I will just try it again but with my own mill.

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I’ve got the old JSP (JPS?) non adjustable mill… Had that since… 2005???. Its still working fine…
I’m with DannyBoy… Crack yer own malt (cheaper too!)… check all yer weights and liquid volumes…
I’m certain you’ll get to the bottom of this plague… :sunglasses:
Sneezles61

I’ve had two mills a barley crusher that didn’t last very long and I now have a cereal killer that I love. I need to expand the hopper because it only holds about 7 lbs at a time but I run it with a drill and since I BIAB I run it pretty fast.

I have a duda diesel plate chiller and I love it. Don’t let anyone talk you out of it because “it’s hard to clean, wah”. It is absolutely not hard to clean. Run hot water through it in both directions immediately after chilling your wort before it’s had a chance to dry in there and you’ll never need to do anything else. I occasionally run hot PBW through it for 15-20 minutes but I seldom get any crud out of it.

Yea I just bit the bullet and bought a hull wrecker and a plate chiller. I have a homemade “glycol chiller” that I can run into the water port, and I’m thinking just letting gravity take the wort through, but could use a pump if needed.

I’m going to monitor the beer for now, I think it will be ok but not great. I was planning on adding strawberries to it, but maybe I’ll just keg this one and remake with my new mill. Hopefully the remake turns out better. Whichever is a higher efficiency gets the strawberries.

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