Just threw in my third all grain. The first one didn’t go well. I fly sparged and my temps were off so my efficiency was poor. Now that I got my temps down and switched to batch sparge, I think that ,is the term. My mash efficiencies were 85% and 90%. Can I attribute that to my water or am I just lucky. I have we’ll water.
I’m curious, do you know what your first running’s gravity was? In order to ascertain the mash 's reason’s for success tell us the
1 water to grain ratio
2 grain bill
3 mash ph, temp, time.
It’s a slippery slope , but one I have found vary interesting.
PS with well water you never know. wells can be vary different from one state to the next.
Water probably played a very small part in it, if any. Your temps would have to be WAY off (like below 140F or above 165F for pretty much the whole mash) to have much effect. It could be that your lauter system wasn’t well designed for fly sparging. Batch sparging eliminates that variable. If you don’t crush your own grain, it could be that whoever crushed the second batch did a better job than the first person. There are a lot of components to efficiency, but crush is almost always the most important one.
Amount Fermentable PPG °L Bill %
10.5 lb American - Pale 2-Row 37 1.8 91.3%
0.75 lb Belgian - Caramel Pils 34 8 6.5%
0.25 lb American - Caramel / Crystal 120L 33 120 2.2%
11.5 lb Total
Mashed at 154deg for 60min w/3.5 gals .drained 2gal. Added 4.25 gals left at 170deg for ten min. Ended with 6.75in the pot BG.056 boiled 60 min ended with 5.25 gal OG.076.
Does that make sense?
Water probably played a very small part in it, if any. Your temps would have to be WAY off (like below 140F or above 165F for pretty much the whole mash) to have much effect. It could be that your lauter system wasn’t well designed for fly sparging. Batch sparging eliminates that variable. If you don’t crush your own grain, it could be that whoever crushed the second batch did a better job than the first person. There are a lot of components to efficiency, but crush is almost always the most important one.[/quote]
Well the first batch was crushed by NB. The second and third by my local brew store. My first batch could have been off that much I was using a faulty thermometer . I find batch sparging much easier so that is what I will do from now on.
ya I like those numders. actually there better then mine. with a grain bill like that I end up with 1.062 ish.
what ever it is the crush like denny said is where you see the biggest jumps in eff.
No offense intended to our hosts, but the NB crush has in the past been noted fro producing low efficiency.
Sounds like a better crush and dialing in your system both contributed to very nice efficiency. Congrats! Took me 3 years to get my system where I am happy with my efficiency along with a shorter brew day (4hrs).
Thanks dobe and all the other posters. I’ve gotten some great advice from this forum. Time will tell if I just got lucky.
