At what point in the process do I pull efficiency? We brewed the Honey Kolsch today. After the mash and sparge, our gravity reading was 1.024 on the wort (adjusted for temp) with 6.08 gallons of water.
It came out to 48% efficient.
I ran it again post boil and after we added the honey to the mix. This time we had 5 gallons at 1.038 and the efficiency went to 49% (because of the honey).
So yea - is this how I’m supposed to measure efficiency? 49% is awful low. We also missed our gravity mark by 10 points too.
I’ve never been concerned with 1st run gravity readings.
Occasionally I might do a pre-boil reading for gee wiz.
I’m only (mildly) concerned with the OG going into the fermenter. I usually over sparge and end up boiling for to long to get the volume down and OG up.
If I would hit my pre-boil volume, things would work out just fine. :roll:
Mashed at 152. Started with water at 172. Let it sit in the mash tun to heat the cooler, then added grains. Temp dropped to 158. Added some ice. Hit the temp. Closed and mashed.
I’ve read several places with at say the NB grain crush isn’t very good, so I did send them an email asking about what they calculate efficiency at.
As you the all-grain process, mash + lauter efficiency is very valuable data, because it is a key metric that will enable you to improve your process. It’s certainly not necessary to continue measuring efficiency after you have your process down, you’re happy with your efficiency level and you’ve comfortable that you can achieve that efficiency level consistently. Personally I have continued to measure it, because it’s easy to do.
Out of curiosity, did you input the honey into the grain bill on the calculator before calculating your mash + lauter efficiency?
48% is low, but I wouldn’t get too worried about it as your first go at all-grain. Now you can start researching efficiency and tweaking your process.
[quote=“stompwampa”]Mashed at 152. Started with water at 172. Let it sit in the mash tun to heat the cooler, then added grains. Temp dropped to 158. Added some ice. Hit the temp. Closed and mashed.
I’ve read several places with at say the NB grain crush isn’t very good, so I did send them an email asking about what they calculate efficiency at.[/quote]
[quote=“kcbeersnob”]Out of curiosity, did you input the honey into the grain bill on the calculator before calculating your mash + lauter efficiency?
48% is low, but I wouldn’t get too worried about it as your first go at all-grain. Now you can start researching efficiency and tweaking your process.[/quote]
Yes and no to the honey question…which is kinda why I posted this thread. I took the first efficiency reading with the wort going into the kettle. 6.08 gallons, came out to 48% efficient.
However, we didn’t add honey until flame out. So I redid the efficiency based on the new 5 gallon volume with honey added, and the efficiency only went up to 49%.
This was actually our 4th all grain batch. I felt like I was starting to dial the system in for this batch, so I was disappointed to see such a low efficiency and horribly missed gravity.
I generally take a sample of wort just before it starts to boil. I let it cool and compare to what BeerSmith estimates. I may adjust my boil time by 5 to 10 minutes either way depending on that result.
The efficiency you’re going for is from the mash. Do not include the honey. The efficiency will be based on potential sugar and actual sugar from the grain. Multiply your preboil gravity with preboil volume to get the total sugars. Then divide that number by the potential sugars from the grain at 100%.
Like others, I use the brewer’s friend calculator to determine my efficiency. NB’s crush is not always great but if you ask for a double crush, you will at least have better odds. I’ve had efficiency all over the map, as low as 60 and up to 92. It’s pushing me to buy my own grain mill.
It might help to pinpoint the cause of the lower than expected efficiency if you post the recipe and your water volumes. And how did you measure “6.08 gallons” of wort?
49% efficiency is crazy low. What kind of water do you brew with, you need very soft water for this style and with no darker malt in it your ph may have been way high.
I had a friend tell me that the Pilsner malt is hard to pull sugars from and is good to use a 90 minute mash and 90 minute boil with Pilsner malt.
I measured 6.08 gallons with a stainless steal yard stick. I used it to measure out half gallon increments and I have a table of depth:gallon ratios saved on my computer. So 9.25 inches is exactly 6 gallons. From there I can do the math to figure out the exact water volume based on the depth measurement of the wort.
I use RO water and additional brew salts added that I calculated from Bru’n Water. Based on what I put in, my ph was 5.4 if I recall.
[quote=“stompwampa”]3 gallons strike water. 4.2 gallons sparge water.[/quote]With 8 lbs of grain and those volumes, you didn’t leave much wort in the MT, so the problem is conversion. At 100% conversion you should have about a 90% efficiency - grain crush is the first place to look (as already mentioned).
Yea. I sent an email to NB asking about the grain crush.
Of course they’re not going to come out and admit that they have a poor crush. In fact, just the opposite. The guy I spoke to said “the mills were just recently adjusted and the crushes are looking really nice!”
I did request a double crush on this particular batch, but there’s no way to tell if that actually happened.
What about the pilsner malt thing? I had a friend tell me that pilsner malt takes longer to extract sugars from; a 90 minute mash would have helped.
Double crushing won’t help much if the mill gap is simply too wide. The people at the HBS I use checked their mills for me once, and while I can’t recall what it was, it was definitely on the wide end of what’s considered optimal. Ultimately, I bought my own mill and use a credit card to set the gap (IIRC, a credit card sets it to the low-middle end of optimal).
Think in terms of gravity points. One gallon of 1.050 wort equals 50 gravity points (150). Two gallons of 1.050 wort equals 100 gravity points. (250)
the MAXIMUM amount of gravity points for base grain is between 36 and 37.
Therefore:
if you have a beer with 10lbs of 2-row and 3lbs of Munich, (also, forget about gravity of first runnings for this example), and your pre-boil gravity is 1.058 for 7 gallons, or 406 gravity points.
Since you have 13lbs of grain, your maximum points you can get is (13*37), or 481. Divide your actual gravity points extracted by your maximum (406/481) and you get 84% efficiency.
Simple? yes. 100% accurate? No. Accurate enough to figure out how many sugars you are leaving behind? Absolutely.
[quote=“stompwampa”]What about the pilsner malt thing? I had a friend tell me that pilsner malt takes longer to extract sugars from; a 90 minute mash would have helped.[/quote]A wort with a high percentage of Pilsner needs to be boiled for 90 minutes to drive off the precursors for DMS (canned corn aroma and flavor) but I know of no difference in the mash requirements (versus 2-row).
