# Not Getting Full Potential From Mash



## murrayr (24/10/09)

Hey all, first post
I've only been all grain brewing a few months but i'm already seeing a rather none too good pattern emerging. The gravity my beer is reaching is somewhat lower than what i work out it should be. The IPA I did yesterday had a grain bill that should have gotten the wort to a gravity of 1.075. when all was said and done it reached a mere 1.052...any suggestions?


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## Frank (24/10/09)

A few Questions:
How did you crush the grain?
How fine was the crush?
What is your mashing procedure?
What is your sparging procedure?
What was your expected efficiency%?
What was your final efficiency?


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## murrayr (24/10/09)

wow, a lot of questions
the homebrew shop crushes it for me, so it can'y be that.
use a single temperature infusion at 65 degrees for 90 minutes.
sparging, i heat water to 70 and just pour it over the grains.
expected efficeincy is 75% and my actual efficeincy is only 53%


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## jonocarroll (24/10/09)

murrayr said:


> the homebrew shop crushes it for me, so it can'y be that.


Why not? Is your local HBS perfect?



murrayr said:


> sparging, i heat water to 70 and just pour it over the grains.


This isn't hot enough for a mash-out (flame suit: not that you *have* to do one) and hotter water might reduce viscosity more, allowing a better lauter. Exactly what are you doing for sparging? Allowing that hotter water to sit for a while, extract the remaining sugars, and let the grain bed settle a little? Running the wort straight back out? Sprinkling the water over the top as you run off the wort?

Are you measuring the final volume correctly, or going by (water in - water out)?

Lastly, how did you calculate the expected FG?


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## Frank (24/10/09)

murrayr said:


> wow, a lot of questions
> the homebrew shop crushes it for me, so it can'y be that.
> use a single temperature infusion at 65 degrees for 90 minutes.
> sparging, i heat water to 70 and just pour it over the grains.
> expected efficeincy is 75% and my actual efficeincy is only 53%


Nothing too out of the ordinary there. I heat sparge water to 80C though, it will help strip some of the sugars out.
Do you batch sparge (mix the grain)? or Fly sparge (pour water over the grain bed at the same rate as it drains out the bottom)?
How many kg's of grain did you have? and How many L's in the fermenter?


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## warra48 (24/10/09)

Did you correct your OG for temperature to get to your mash efficiency?

Can make a big difference in your measurements.

For example: 1.052 at 55C = 1.065 at 20C.


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## boybrewer (24/10/09)

Personally I would sparge with a higher temp whether it is fly or batch . Try and get your sparge temp a little higher like around 74-75* C this will help to wash the sugars from the grain a lot easier . Do you mash out with a higher temp ? If you batch sparge do you sparge until your gravity reading is around 1.008 - 1.010 from the mash tun ?


Brew Well
Beerbelly


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## enoch (24/10/09)

QuantumBrewer said:


> This isn't hot enough for a mash-out (flame suit: not that you *have* to do one)



Flame on (only a tiny well mannered one). Mashouts could improve efficiency but is probably not going to be that dramatic in my modest experience.

My questions re efficiency are around how comfortable you are with the calibration of your mash tun thermometer and the volume measurements.

The former can have a marked effect real efficiency and the latter on the calculation of efficiency.


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## Frank (24/10/09)

enoch said:


> Flame on (only a tiny well mannered one). Mashouts could improve efficiency but is probably not going to be that dramatic in my modest experience.
> 
> My questions re efficiency are around how comfortable you are with the calibration of your mash tun thermometer and the volume measurements.
> 
> The former can have a marked effect real efficiency and the latter on the calculation of efficiency.


Also, mash out is mainly used to denature enzymes to ensure the size of the sugars you targeted in your mash remain the same size and are not broken down to smaller fermentable sugars. If the resultant beer continually finished at a lower SG and was dry on the finish I would start to target the mash out procedure.
The OP's issue could be as simple as wrong weight of grain supplied compared with recipe. I know when I was purchasing single batch, pre crushed grain from the HBS I never reweighed the grist. I always took it as being correct. 100g out will make a big difference.


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## alford_j (24/10/09)

murrayr,

I am also a recent convert to all grain and I had this problem with my first batch. I was fly sparging and I was draining my mash tun quickly and ended up way under target gravity. To rescue the batch I sparged some more and boiled for longer to reduce the volume and hit the target in the end.

After speaking to my LHBS, I sparged/drained my tun much slower (about 30 min for 30L pre-boil volume) and got around 74% efficiency- right on target. I hadn't seen anyone else sparging and I was surprised how slow the runoff was.

If you are that far under your target it might be something simple like this.

Alfie.
*
*


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## beers (24/10/09)

This might be a dumb question but how did you measure your OG? If you're using a hydrometer have you corrected your SG reading to the wort temperature?


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## murrayr (25/10/09)

just got back from work and am very grateful to see all of your advice.
i did adjust the hydrometer reading for temperature...that is i cooled a small amount and measured that.
i might have to try hotter water for a longer sparging time, and maybe more of it. thanks all for your advice, i'll put it to good use.
cheers


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## Nick JD (25/10/09)

Hey Murray, try this (the SG converter on the bottom left) for converting SG depending on temperature. It's in F though ... but there's a converter in the top box. It's accurate.


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## Fourstar (25/10/09)

Hey murray, 

If you are batch sparging, make sure you mix well at end of sacch rest/mashout before the 1st lauter and very well again between the subsequent sparges. I find this alone helps bump up the eff quite abit. I can only assume the thorough stirring/mixup shakes any ecess sugars the grains mightbe holding onto. I guess its sort of like stirring up sugar in the bottom of a coffee cup. 

If you just pour water on it, it doesnt completly dissolve. If you stirr it up, you dissovle it allot faster.

Cheers.


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## Trough Lolly (25/10/09)

Fourstar said:


> Hey murray,
> 
> If you are batch sparging, make sure you mix well at end of sacch rest/mashout before the 1st lauter and very well again between the subsequent sparges. I find this alone helps bump up the eff quite abit.



Conventional wisdom supports this approach - the idea being that the stirring helps release the trapped sugars from the grain matter and thus improve efficiency. Yet this approach is also a well known culprit behind cloudy beers. Stirring the mash is good, during the saccharification rest, to ensure a more complete conversion and to help knock out any dough-balls that may have inadvertantly been created during the dough-in stage.

For years I adopted this approach and had nice but always cloudy beers that needed either filtration or PVPP - which was a dead giveaway that I had tannin-protein haze issues caused by stirring during the mash, during mashout and in between batch sparges. The negatively charged PVPP silica gel bonded to the positively charged tannins that caused the tannin-protein haze thus brightening the beer and also quite importantly, not stripping the protein levels out of the beer that help foam and head retention in the glass. Isinglass finings were useless because the positively charged isinglass didn't bond with the +ve tannins and whilst they did help flocc out the cloudy yeast strains, the finings did jack all to the chill haze in the beer.

And then I recently bought a copper sparge ring for the 10 Gallon mashtun;







Straight away, I managed to gain at least 10% extraction efficiency and routinely brew at 80% - without stirring at all...For the first couple of batches, I used the ring and stirred the mash between batches during the sparge and whilst I did gain efficiency, I still had cloudy issues...so I made a conscious decision to do a couple of brews (light and dark beers) and not stir at all after the mash had concluded. Result? No loss of efficiency and very bright beer!

I dough-in and stir well to eliminate dough-ball formation. At the end of the mash, I add my first batch of sparge water via the ring (note the holes are topside on the copper ring so I'm not ramming water down into the grainbed) at mashout temps - the ring just sits on top of the grainbed. I vorlauf then drain without stirring yet keeping the sparge water at least 2 inches above the grainbed, stop the sparge, add more hot sparge water for the second batch - still no stirring because I have a great filter bed now and I don't want to disturb it and I have no channelling since the sparge liquor is always above the untouched grainbed surface - drain the mashtun (knowing your sparge volumes is important here because you don't want to oversparge the mash and pull tons of tannins into the brew kettle) and start the boil.

So, my experience is that yes, you can gain efficiency by regularly stirring the mash, but I get much brighter beers (and still have excellent conversion efficiency) by trying not to trash my grainbed filter through stirring in between batches - *the key is to keep at least a couple of inches of sparge water above the grainbed throughout the sparge*. 

I've also been able to do a "mashout single batch sparge" - where I add the entire volume of the sparge to the mashtun, wait 5 mins, vorlauf, and just let the mashtun drain in one go - having a 10 Gallon mashtun helps!!

Cheers,
TL


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## Fourstar (25/10/09)

Trough Lolly said:


> Conventional wisdom supports this approach - the idea being that the stirring helps release the trapped sugars from the grain matter and thus improve efficiency. Yet this approach is also a well known culprit behind cloudy beers. Stirring the mash is good, during the saccharification rest, to ensure a more complete conversion and to help knock out any dough-balls that may have inadvertantly been created during the dough-in stage.
> 
> So, my experience is that yes, you can gain efficiency by regularly stirring the mash, but I get much brighter beers (and still have excellent conversion efficiency) by trying not to trash my grainbed filter through stirring in between batches - *the key is to keep at least a couple of inches of sparge water above the grainbed throughout the sparge*.



Wow, informative post there TL!

Funnily enough i have only just began to experience that my recent beers have had chill haze since adopting a filter. Funny thing is some beers ive had that are naturally conditioned and dropped bright have not had chill haze. Is this something that can dissipate over time? E.g. The tannins and excess proteins drop out of suspension?

Maybe ive had chill haze all along but only really noticing it recently due to the filter (thinking it was just yeast). Also, yep is its chill haze as when it warms its diamond bright. Thankfully my beers do not have a gawd aweful astringency.

Maybe i am being excessive TL, do you think if i just give a casual stir between batches im better off? I find the grainbed tends to slope away some times after the 1st sparge (around the drain hole area or around the edges).

Cheers!


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## Trough Lolly (2/11/09)

Fourstar said:


> Maybe i am being excessive TL, do you think if i just give a casual stir between batches im better off? I find the grainbed tends to slope away some times after the 1st sparge (around the drain hole area or around the edges).
> 
> Cheers!



If you find that your grainbed is being affected by the sparge to the extent you've described, then yes, I would give it a stir - perhaps only stirring the first few inches down and try to avoid stirring up the bottom of the grainbed - my mash is quite deep and the sparge ring has its holes on the upper side of the copper pipe which keeps the mash pretty much flat.

Water is lazy and will find the quickest / most direct route and in your case, you need to keep the mash under water and undisturbed as much as possible so that you effectively try to minimise the extraction of tannins out of the mash - thanks to an effective filtration mechanism in your grainbed. Palmer is quite right in suggesting that mashtun geometry is important if you want to consistently have good extraction efficiency - noting of course that it's not necessary to have 100% efficiency in order to make great beer!

Are you using a false bottom / screen in your mashtun?

Cheers,
TL


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## Fourstar (2/11/09)

Trough Lolly said:


> Are you using a false bottom / screen in your mashtun?
> 
> Cheers,
> TL



Just a stainless braid coiled into a circle in the center of a Rubbermaid cooler. It doesnt happen all the time, but it notice it on say every 3rd beer.

I also slowly drain during my batch sparge process to try and reduce the channeling down the side of the tun.


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## Thirsty Boy (4/11/09)

TL makes some interesting points -

But you need to be a little careful about terminology.

If you batch sparge and dont stir up the mash - then you aren't really batch sparging, you are flood sparging. I dont give a hoot about what you call it, but it means you have to pay attention to and do some different things.

In a batch sparge, you stir up the grains in order to homogenise the mash - all the sugars etc get spread evenly throughout the mash, and all you need to do is drain them out leaving behind the solid portion. So, channeling, speed of run-off, mash tun geometry etc etc. They don't mean a thing at all. Now whether you believe that that makes for good quality wort or not is a differnt matter - I do, TL doesn't.. beside the point I am trying to make.

BUT

If you add you sparge water and don't stir - then you are flood sparging, which is a variation of fly sparging and has a lot in common with it. You don't have a homogenous mash, so you need to be aware of mash tun geometry and channeling, because you need the water to infuse through the mash evenly to get at all the sugars. And run-off rate is important too. All the same stuff as with fly sparging.

You just need to be aware that by not stirring the mash in a batch sparge - you are suddenly in a whole other world. You follow the basic sort of "Denny Conn" routine for a batch sparge.. but you just leave out the stirring part. And what you will have is the worst of both worlds. You wont get the good things TL is talking about, and you will get lousy efficiency.

So by all means take TL's advice - but make sure you take all of it and dont just latch onto the "don't stir" part of it.

Sorry for being an anal bastard, but I have seen so many bugger ups just because people used the wrong words to describe what they do or think someone should be doing. I have an uncontrollable urge to clarify...

TB


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## newguy (4/11/09)

So far I've helped 4 members of my club get their efficiencies up from the 50's to the 70-80's simply by suggesting they develop and stick to a water budget. For instance, the total water you should use can be calculated as follows:

1. Start with your finished wort volume into the fermenter, eg 20l.
2. Add the amount of wort left in the kettle due to hops/trub/waste, eg 1l.
3. Add the amount lost to evaporation during the boil. This will depend on your batch size, kettle, heat source etc. Assume for the sake of argument that it's 5l.
4. Add the amount lost to the grain in your mash. I lose about 1.5l per kg. For 5kg total grain, you'd lose 7.5l.

In this example, you'd need 33.5l water total. If you're using more than this it can really impact your anticipated efficiency.

Another thing that I've noticed is that my efficiency drops when doing higher gravity beers. I get 85-90% for brews with an OG of about 1.060 or less and it drops to about 70-75% for beers with an OG of 1.100.


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## Fourstar (4/11/09)

Thirsty Boy said:


> TL makes some interesting points -
> 
> But you need to be a little careful about terminology.



Thanks for the deets Thirsty. I'm just a little concerned ive been overly aggressive with my stirring in between batches and possibly pulling across starch to the boiler etc. My eff is usually in the mid-high 70's. 

A little :icon_offtopic: 
As you are also into filtering, do you Polyclar often? All of the beers ive filtered so far have had some chill haze which is a little unfortunate. I was rambling recently that i hadn't noticed chill haze often in my non filtered beers but was thinking the tannins and proteins where floccing out over time so when the beer was young and unfiltered, the chill haze was there but was masked due to yeast. 

I can't remember correctly but can oxidation from filtering cause haze? I'm very confident this shouldn't be the case as i purge the filter housing/lines with CO2 before i begin, but i just want to rule out this as a possibility. I can always push more CO2 through the housing on my next attempt to be sure.

Cheers!


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## Thirsty Boy (5/11/09)

I know that when I filter a beer and it does end up with a little chill haze - it gives me the absolute irritations. I can see that its hazy, sticks out like anything. But other homebrewers stare at me like I am stark raving mad and make comments about the clarity of the beer.

So if it were my beer you were talking about, I'd say that all thats happening is that you have seen the difference between a truly clear beer, and a very lightly hazy beer - which you would have called clear before.

Oxidation can cause haze - but its primarily an aging reaction. Not something you would be likely to see in your newly created brew. Starch - if you were pulling across into your boiler, doesn't cause _chill_ haze, and you said your beer clears up when its warmer, so you have chill haze not starch haze. Excess tannins might, I don't subscribe to TL's theory about stirring doing that - but if it did then that would more likely be your issue than starch.

Chill haze is a reasonably regular thing for me, no matter how I brew - because the malt I use is designed for sugar adjunct beers, so it has high protein levels. Oh there is stuff I could do... but to honest, polyclar works and is easy, so thats what I do. I use it on every brew - don't even wait to see if its needed, it just goes in.

Sure, if you have a bug up your rear end about brewing naturally with naught but the 4 gifts from Jeebuz and your mighty skill set - filtering and polyclar are probably the tools of the devil. Me.... I care about whats in the glass and couldn't give a rats how it was made. So it pretty much all goes through the filter with a handfull of ground up plastic for good luck - and now hazy beer is something that happens to other people.

TB


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## murrayr (25/11/09)

hey ya'll,
did another all grain brew on the weekend putting all of your advice into practice and got my efficeincy at 73%. many thanks, cheers, murray


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## manticle (25/11/09)

I was going to add to this thread but most of what I might have added has been added and said better. First thing I would have looked at though would be the crush - lhbs cracking doesn't necessarily mean that's not the culprit.

Here is an article on batch sparging which is essentially the method I follow. My efficiency usually sits around 70 which I'm happy with. My understanding is too high an efficiency can be problematic. If someone could clarify, that would be wonderful.

http://www.grainandgrape.com.au/articles_o...ch_sparge01.htm


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## murrayr (25/11/09)

interesting read. i thought he didn't use much water for the initial mash though. 11 litres for 5kgs of grain? i always thought at least 3 litres of water per kg of grain? do you use about that ratio?


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## manticle (25/11/09)

Between 2.5 and 3 kg generally. I wouldn't use any more than 3L per kg. My understanding is lower for ales, higher for lagers. So 11 Litres sounds pretty good. I'd generally go for 12-15 depending on grain bill (most of mine are closer to 6 kg) but it's not a massive difference.


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## Mantis (29/11/09)

I used a mash tun for the first time last weekend and did what TB says is a flood sparge. I hadnt read enough on here and remember someone going on about not stirring the mash so I didnt. 
I just drained the tun after the initial mash, with no mashout, then did 2 flood sparges and draining them straight away. Got a massive 62% eff  

Just boiling my second mash tun attempt now and this time I mashed out,with a stir and rest, but could only get the temp up to 75. Then did a batch sparge with 78C water and stirred and rested
Will get back with the eff of this one later


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## Mantis (29/11/09)

Well that got it up to 68%


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## Tony (29/11/09)

I got 91% efficiency from my brew yesterday  Thats into the Fermenter too.


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## manticle (29/11/09)

I was under the impression that super high efficiency can work against you. Can someone with more experience please either elaborate or squash this idea if it's incorrect?


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## Mantis (29/11/09)

Tony said:


> I got 91% efficiency from my brew yesterday  Thats into the Fermenter too.



Yes this is into the cubes. 
New mill and new mash tun and will take time to learn them eh


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## Frank (29/11/09)

manticle said:


> I was under the impression that super high efficiency can work against you. Can someone with more experience please either elaborate or squash this idea if it's incorrect?



Measuring efficiency is measuring sugar extraction and potential alcohol. Some lines of thought are that the "flavour" compounds are diluted when you get high efficiency, ie less grain required for same volume of beer. Some people believe you can get a higher malt character at lower efficiency.
I regualarly get 80% efficiency to the fermenter and I believe get plenty of flavour.


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## manticle (29/11/09)

Cheers.


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## Tony (29/11/09)

Plenty of flavor here too. Trust me!

A while back i have Les the Weisguy who is a BJCP judge around for a beer at my place.

I had a simple pale ale on tap made with TF Golden Promise and Aussie Clucter hops. I got around 90% efficiency with that beer too.

I poured him a glass and turned around and he made a noise that i first thought was disgust but when i spun around ready to appolagise for the beer that i reconed was tops....... he was pouring it down his throat saying........ Id like to see that in a comp!

The way i see efficiency is that there is a certain amount of sugar that can be produced by the given amount of grain you use. It will all convert in the mash but the efficiency is the amount that you get in the kettle. If you get low efficiency, you leave more sugar in the grain than if you get high efficiency. 

There for if you get lower ifficiency, you need to use more grain as you are leaving more behind. 

I dont buy the more/less flavour thing. I get very high efficiencies from perfecting my crush, mash and sparge routines over many years and comp results tell me there is no lack of maltiness...... i usually get penalised for too much maltiness actually.

I just ectract more sugars from a given amount of grain.

Thats my point of view only. and we all know what opinions are like 

cheers


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## Tony (29/11/09)

Plenty of flavor here too. Trust me!

A while back i have Les the Weisguy who is a BJCP judge around for a beer at my place.

I had a simple pale ale on tap made with TF Golden Promise and Aussie Clucter hops. I got around 90% efficiency with that beer too.

I poured him a glass and turned around and he made a noise that i first thought was disgust but when i spun around ready to appolagise for the beer that i reconed was tops....... he was pouring it down his throat saying........ Id like to see that in a comp!

The way i see efficiency is that there is a certain amount of sugar that can be produced by the given amount of grain you use. It will all convert in the mash but the efficiency is the amount that you get in the kettle. If you get low efficiency, you leave more sugar in the grain than if you get high efficiency. 

There for if you get lower ifficiency, you need to use more grain as you are leaving more behind. 

I dont buy the more/less flavour thing. I get very high efficiencies from perfecting my crush, mash and sparge routines over many years and comp results tell me there is no lack of maltiness...... i usually get penalised for too much maltiness actually.

I just ectract more sugars from a given amount of grain.

Thats my point of view only. and we all know what opinions are like 

cheers


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## manticle (29/11/09)

Tony said:


> Plenty of flavor here too. Trust me!



One of the people on this board whose opinions and experience on things I do trust pretty much as is.

It's just something I've heard and I had no exact understanding as to the reason or validity. I get 70 % on a regular basis and haven't been massively concerned trying to up it but it's just good to know. Still see myself as a noob in so many ways.


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## Tony (29/11/09)

Mate i have done some hard thinking on the whole high efficiency / flavour thing and i honestly cant speak the truth....... i dont know scientificly if its true or not.

I can see a good basis for the theory, its makes sence thet if you use more malt you get more flavour, but the whole in the theory for me is your collecting only so much sugar from the mash so how is it going to increase malt flavour? These flavour compounds that are suposed to be a seperate entity????? i have seen no proff if this?

I would love to see some scientific proff though to clear the whole thing up! Untill then im a sceptic based on personal experience getting 85 to 90% efficiency every brew these days.

I speak from my experience with my brewing equipment. A big mistake people make is making a call on a subject based on results from there system. Results can vary wildly between different brewers equipemnt and methods.

cheers


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## Screwtop (29/11/09)

Tony said:


> Mate i have done some hard thinking on the whole high efficiency / flavour thing and i honestly cant speak the truth....... i dont know scientificly if its true or not.
> 
> I can see a good basis for the theory, its makes sence thet if you use more malt you get more flavour, but the whole in the theory for me is your collecting only so much sugar from the mash so how is it going to increase malt flavour? These flavour compounds that are suposed to be a seperate entity????? i have seen no proff if this?
> 
> ...




Spot on, agree Tony. My brewhouse eff is 84%, the mash eff is above that, no shortness of maltiness, depending on my choice of ingredients. Some malts produce more maltiness, and some yeast strains accentuate malt, some ferment clean with little flavour contribution. More to maltiness than efficiency, but that's our opinion eh! Those with lower eff% will have a different opinion methinks  

Cheers,

Screwy


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## under (29/11/09)

How do you calculate efficiency anyways??


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## Thirsty Boy (30/11/09)

I'll try chucking a little pseudo science at it.

First - I dont think very many people believe it is efficiency in and of itself that is detrimental to maltiness - it is Sparging that is detrimental to maltiness. A good many people believe that the more you sparge, the less malty your beer will be - and because one of the more common ways to increase your efficiency is to increase your sparge volume... the notion of high efficiency started to become entangled with the notion of sparging being detrimental to maltiness.

Now combine that with the fact that sparging too aggressively can also cause the whole tannin extraction/astringency thing.... overlay it with efficiency = sparging.. and suddenly bright sparks all over the place are starting to decide that getting anything over X efficiency (ie anything good) must mean that your beer isn't as good as it could be.

The only explanation I have heard of, that makes this seem like a sensible proposition is this..

The compounds that contribute the "malty" flavours in beer, aren't really the sugars. They are predominantly maillard products like pyrozines, pyrols, furnans, furanones and melanoids and a swag of others including caramels that aren't made by pyrolisation but are catalyzed by amino acids.

So the two main things you want from your mash - sugar and malt flavour/aroma are different, and its feasible that they could be extracted at different rates during the sparging process. This seems to make a bit of sense because many of the maillard products are very soluble in water. Maybe they get dissolved and carried away first?? The majority of them already in your kettle, while you are still sparging away to rinse out the more stubborn sugars. So if you were to use more malt and sparge less - you would extract sugars less efficiently and not get a higher gravity.. but you would get more of the very soluble flavour and aroma compounds and thus a "maltier" beer.

And there is the fact that melanoidins are also produced in the boil - and a more concentrated boil favours the production of both melanoidin and caramels, while a dilute one eliminates the caramels - sparging a lot means a greater pre-boil volume and a more dilute wort... incapable of producing one set of the flavour compounds. More sparging would tend to increase the pH of the kettle wort.. which negatively effects maillard production in the boil - AND .. just to top it off, higher levels of polyphenols (as you might get if you sparge a lot) tend to drive the reactions in the boil away from melanoid etc production and towards strecker degredation - so you get less melanoid production and more strecker aldehydes.. which are bad flavours (mostly boiled off or blown off in fermentation though)

So - that's some of the science.

It seems like there is a pretty good argument to say that "oversparging" might well decrease the maltiness of your beer by affecting flavour production in the boil (high ph, dilution and polyphenols) and there is a hand waving but sensible sounding argument to say that its possible that the malt flavour and aroma come out first.. and that more sparging is extracting sugar but not flavour from your mash.

I believed this to be true for a fair while.. now I'm not so sure. I actually did an experiment as the result of the last discussion I took part in about this subject. I took 12 samples all through the sparging of a mash and compared the gravity with the colour. Both tested on lab equipment at work. Basically the object of the game was to see if the colour (for simplicity's sake I equated colour to melanoidins and melanoidins to flavour and aroma) came out before the sugar. I crunched the numbers and my results seemed to prove exactly the opposite. The sugars seemed to be extracted more readily.. but only just.

Now I don't have a crapload of faith in my experiment's validity for a normal mash.. it was a small scale lauter in a funnel type thing and I got very bad overall efficiency (only about 55%).. so I just don't know if that translates to what you'd see in a better set-up. I plan to repeat when I have my continuous sparge brewery running. Do it on a full size brew.

But - it was enough to convince me that it wasn't all that big an effect either way. So I no longer subscribe to the "more malt & less sparging = maltier beer" school of thought - But the above overly long post is my understanding of why some people do.

Thirsty


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## Tony (30/11/09)

Awsome Post TB!

I tend to achieve higher efficiency but using a slow sparge..... like 1 or 2 hrs to drain the mash and sparge is only ever a sinlgle sparge that is sort of a mix between a batch and a fly where i drain the mash tun to the kettle and them re-fill it again and circulate it for 5 or 10 min through the herms but dont stir or disturb the grain bed at any time.

I treat my sparge water with some CaSo4 or CaCl depending on what im making and use a bit of acidulated malt in the mash the help keep the PH right. I always drain my mash tun at mash tamp and sparge cool at about 71 to 72 deg.

I have noticed when i rush and sparge quickly over say 20 min, my efficiency drops to around 70 to 75% and the beer just isnt as nice. Perhaps im catching more flavour compounds with the slow sparge and less tanins with the low temp sparge?

It seems to work at my place anyway.

Cheers


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## Mantis (30/11/09)

Thats another thing I am doing wrong then. I have drained the mash and sparge way too quickly by the sounds of it. 
Much refining to do :icon_cheers:


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## manticle (30/11/09)

When I batch sparge, I leave the water in for at least 10 minutes (also allowing the grain bed to settle).


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## Tony (30/11/09)

Mantis said:


> Thats another thing I am doing wrong then. I have drained the mash and sparge way too quickly by the sounds of it.
> Much refining to do :icon_cheers:



When i sparge fast i get fairly weak runnings and very little colour addition to the water. 

When i sparge slowly i ged a deeper saturated colour from the grain and more sugars.

I think when you sparge quickly, the water just runs over hte grain and washes off any residuals on the surface. When you sparge slowly it allows time for the sugars and other compounds like colour, still held within grain particles in the mash to be drawn out and into solution in the water. This naturally results in higher efficiency from the mash.

After reading thirstys post, im thinking that the extra colour i get in the sparge water are these compounds that are associated with malt flavour and aroma in the finnished beer. fast sparge water tastes dull to me and i usually stop the sparge and just top up with water if im in a hurry to avoid anything nasty. But if im sparging slow i let every drop into the kettle because its better tasting. I guess the word is maltier!

Here is another thing to back up slow sparging i just thought of! Its open to discussion of course.

When you read malt specs it usually states conversion times of around 10 to 20 Minutes. Why do we mash for 60 minutes... or longer? I know my mash is sweet by the time i finnish stiring it all in! Perhaps its to give the sugars and other compounds time to form and soak out into the water? It's possible things are the same with the sparge.

cheers


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## Screwtop (30/11/09)

Mantis said:


> Thats another thing I am doing wrong then. I have drained the mash and sparge way too quickly by the sounds of it.
> Much refining to do :icon_cheers:






manticle said:


> When I batch sparge, I leave the water in for at least 10 minutes (also allowing the grain bed to settle).



Like Tony, I increased my sparge drain time years ago in the quest for increased eff. Still many brewers have posted on here that they achieve high eff but drain quite quickly. So I thing is a case of.............it depends............maybe on your mash tun geometry and manifold. Try lengthening the drain time for your first runnings, then sparge runnings and see what effect this has on your efficiency. I too sparge over an hour, tried 90 min without much increase in eff, cut back to 20 min and mash efficiency drops from nearly 90% to the low 70's. Pretty much it's dependent on your kit and process. Efficiency also increased for me when I changed from 60 min to 90 min boils. The extra couple of litres required for sparging due to the extra boil off volume managed to get that little extra in the way of sugar out of the grist and lift my eff.

Cheers,

Screwy


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## gjhansford (30/11/09)

manticle said:


> When I batch sparge, I leave the water in for at least 10 minutes (also allowing the grain bed to settle).



This thread has been extremely helpful and thought provoking. Thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

My 2 bits worth (20 litre 'standard' ABV brews) ...

I mash at a ratio of 3 litres per Kg of grain - usually 15 litres and 5Kg - (which includes 4% Acidulated Malt for Ph correction - all brews except the stouts) for 45 minutes and run off all I can - about 10 litres - of high gravity wort into my kettle. I fire up the burner immediately, bring it to a boil and keep it going while ...

I add 10 litres of water (at a temp that gives me the same mash temp as the first mash) back into the mash once the first run off has finished, give it a good stir and leave for another 45 minutes.

After the "second mash" or "long batch sparge" I run a second 10 litres off into the now boiling kettle and fly sparge fairly quickly (about 10 minutes) with another 8 litres of mash temperature water.

In all, in 90 minutes, I get 27 litres of 1.044 pre boil wort, which I now boil for 60 minutes with the required hop additions to end up with 20 litres of 1.048 to 1.050 wort in the fermenter.

It's a sort of double mash idea that I read used to be done, and still is apparently, in some UK breweries, except there they make two brews, one from the high gravity first runnings and a second brew from the second loweree gravity runnings, and blend them after fermentation.

Or it's a batch sparge with a long wait before running off the sparge water.

The 30-40 minute boil of the first runnings also seems to improve the final beer.

Afrer reading this thread I'm thinking of changing two things - slowing the final sparge even more, and increasing the termperature of the final 8 litres sparge water.

Any comments or suggestions?


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## manticle (30/11/09)

I'll try the tap open less next time I brew so it drains slower and see what that does to my gravity. While it's never concerned me overly it is interesting to see what effect a change in process has.


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## Screwtop (30/11/09)

Tony said:


> When i sparge fast i get fairly weak runnings and very little colour addition to the water.
> 
> When i sparge slowly i ged a deeper saturated colour from the grain and more sugars.
> 
> ...




Funny you should bring this up Tony. Was contacted recently by a brewer who made a recipe of mine for an Aussie Lager. Dead simple thing, sometimes I make it with Pale and some sugar and other times some Galaxy or Pils Malt and less sugar. Single Cluster hop addition, a good summer quaffer along the lines of a XXXX, as a gateway beer to offer the typical megaswill drinker. He made the beer but said it was way too pale. I use 10% sugar with Pale malt or 5% with Galaxy or Pils and the colour is usually a little darker than that of XXXX. I asked him about his boil time, thinking that my usual 90 min boil may contribute to the darker outcome. Made the same beer last Sat (as an ale this time instead of a lager) and noticed how dark the wort was in the kettle prior to the boil. Looks like getting more colour from a long sparge is also a contributor......Interesting.


Cheers,

Screwy


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## paulwolf350 (30/11/09)

Screwtop said:


> Funny you should bring this up Tony. Was contacted recently by a brewer who made a recipe of mine for an Aussie Lager. Dead simple thing, sometimes I make it with Pale and some sugar and other times some Galaxy or Pils Malt and less sugar. Single Cluster hop addition, a good summer quaffer along the lines of a XXXX, as a gateway beer to offer the typical megaswill drinker. He made the beer but said it was way too pale. I use 10% sugar with Pale malt or 5% with Galaxy or Pils and the colour is usually a little darker than that of XXXX. I asked him about his boil time, thinking that my usual 90 min boil may contribute to the darker outcome. Made the same beer last Sat (as an ale this time instead of a lager) and noticed how dark the wort was in the kettle prior to the boil. Looks like getting more colour from a long sparge is also a contributor......Interesting.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> ...



I actually split the batch Screwy, the first one was brewed with an ale yeast and was very pale, the second half was fermented with s189 lager yeast and was the right colur, same wort different results, so now i am at a loss to explain it. Although my sparge may be a contributing factor

Paul


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## manticle (30/11/09)

I'm assuming you guys are fly sparging. Besides opening the tap up less so as to drain slower, is there any benefit for batch spargers to leave the sparge water in for longer (longer than the 10 minutes I do for example). My understanding of the old English sparge is that it is almost like a second mash.


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## Nick JD (30/11/09)

Wouldn't a long sparge in the 70s be darker due to _more_ tannins steeping from the husks?


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## manticle (30/11/09)

I don't think so. My understanding of how and why is limited but I think tannins are harder to get out than most people believe. Oversparging may be one factor. If you don't get tannins by boiling the mash for 20 + minutes during a decoction then there must be some other factor.

Someone else should jump in with better info.


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## Screwtop (30/11/09)

paulwolf350 said:


> I actually split the batch Screwy, the first one was brewed with an ale yeast and was very pale, the second half was fermented with s189 lager yeast and was the right colur, same wort different results, so now i am at a loss to explain it. Although my sparge may be a contributing factor
> 
> Paul




Does anyone else find this weird? How did the gravities end up Paul? Have never split a batch of pale beer using different yeasts.

Cheers,

Screwy


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## Tony (30/11/09)

Nick JD said:


> Wouldn't a long sparge in the 70s be darker due to _more_ tannins steeping from the husks?



Tannins are acids like those extracted from the hops..... only they are generally considered a flaw in the beer. They are a flavour compound and as far as i know...... dont contribute colour

They are generally extracted from a high pH in the mash or sparge, or high temperatures or a combination of both.

My understanding only...... Thirsty.... can you elaborate this ?


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## Ross (30/11/09)

Screwtop said:


> Does anyone else find this weird? How did the gravities end up Paul? Have never split a batch of pale beer using different yeasts.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Screwy




Yeast can take colour out of a brew (especially prevelant when adding fruit). I'm guessing that the bottom fermenting lager yeast has scrubbed out less of the colour than the ale yeast. Certainly when i draw test samples from a S-189 wort they are very clear compared to an ale yeast.

Cheers Ross


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## Thirsty Boy (1/12/09)

Ross is spot on the money - different yeast can strip colour at different levels - although I believe that they all strip colour to some extent.

If you are a wine guy looking for a vibrant red.. you want a yeast that doesn't strip colour.. if you are a pale lager brewer looking to minimise colour and want to brew the palest beer you can.. your are after the opposite.

*Tannins = Polyphenols *- contained primarily in the husks of your malt and in hops.

NOT - a bad thing. In fact an absolutely vital part of the larger brewing process. They contribute flavour & when oxidised colour, are part of many of the chemical changes in the boil, combine with proteins to form break material, are anti oxidants which protect beer from aging. All manner of stuff.

They can be a flavour and stability issue.. in excess. Too many tannins can give a grainy or husky flavour to a beer and can lead to an astringent "mouthfeel" which together with other flavours can make a beer seem harsh and perhaps overly bitter.

Now you are getting the hop polyphenols regardless ... so the one that most people focus on is the stuff from the grain.

Dont sparge too hot
Dont sparge too long
Dont grind too fine
Check your pH
Cut your sparge at 1.010

Sound familiar?

Grain polyphenols are extracted from every mash.. all the way through the mash and sparge. But the things in the list above have valid origins. Temperture increases the rate of tannin extraction, increasing pH increases the rate of tanning extraction. Finer crush increases the surface area of husk available for extraction to occur through...

Its generally not a really problem unless you layer those things on top of each other. Hotter sparge.. sure, you get more polyphenols - higher ph, yep.... more. But does more equate to excessive?? In most cases the answer is probably no.

If you combine them though... then you start to get into danger territory. pH is you main concern, because sparge temperature is already hot enough to be an issue (in combination) and the main trigger point is about pH 5.9-6.0 -- its not a switch, tannin extraction occurs below that level.. but my understanding is that above that approximate pH range, the rate at which tannin extraction occurs, increases in a greater than linear fashion... the graph curves upwards, quite steeply.

And where can you get pH higher than 6.0?? Water!! Sparge water to be exact. The more water you add and the less diluted by acidic "mash" it is, the higher the pH. So as you proceed through your sparge, your mash temperature progressively goes up and the pH at any point in the lauter tun is increasing as water dilutes the mash liquor. Eventually at a given level, the temperature will max out and the pH will approach that of water (say 6.5-7??) And tannins will be being extracted a fair old rate. 

The thing that makes it a little complicated - is that this happens unevenly through the lauter tun - naturally enough, it occurs first at the top of the tun where you are adding in the sparge water.. the sugars etc get washed away and you are basically pouring hot, high pH water onto spent grain... and extracting tannins -- but at the same time, down the bottom of the tun, you are happily running off good sweet wort. The layer of high pH and tannin extraction (plus all the tannins you already extracted) moves down through the tun as the sparge proceeds; and eventually they will come out the tap.. the trick is to stop before they do.

So its not about avoiding tannin extraction... if you sparge in any sort of an efficient manner.. you are going to be extracting excessive tannins from your grains. What its really about - is making sure you leave them in the lauter tun.

If you are really looking for high efficiency - you can do what we do at work. Constantly monitor the gravity of wort being run-off. The gravity drops and drops ... the natural assumption is that it would just keep going till it gets to zero. But it doesn't. Somewhere around 1 plato, it starts to head back up again and goes back up to 3-4 plato before dropping off again. We call it the gravity break. Guess what it is?? Its tannins!! As the sugar gets washed away.. the gravity drops to the minimum point. At that point the liquid from that "hot, high pH" zone starts to come through, carrying with it all the polyphenols etc it has extracted and pushhing the density back up. So to extract teh most sugar without getting all that.. you watch the gravity and as soon as you see it bottom out .. you cut the run-off and the rest goes to drain.

Easy at a big brewery with inline density measurement.. what about you at home?? Well, thats where the "dont sparge further than 1.01 (about 4 plato) thing comes from. You could go lower... but by cutting off at that level, you make a compromise. You miss a little sugar.. but you also make sure you miss that layer of polyphenols too.

What about batch sparging??

Well, its pretty much not an issue. You dump in all your water, mix it up and drain it out. There has never been a point at which you are adding pure hot water to grain that has already given up everything but its tannins. Yes, the temp goes up and the pH does too... but never enough to put you in the danger zone. The more batches you do, the closer you will get though. Still - hands up who does more than three batches?? 

So the Tannin thing is really only for people who sparge by adding pure water at one end, while draining wort from the other. For instance Tony where he adds his sparge water and then re-circulates it... not him!! He mixes that pure water in, so its no going to happen with his technique.

And its only an issue if you get greedy.. stop at a sensible point and you avoid the issue. If your system is well designed, and you pay attention to your pH and temperatures and your technique.. then there is no reason why you couldn't expect to get around 95% mash efficiency from a continuous sparge and no issues.. but the less "good" your system and technique is... the lower the level of efficiency you can expect before you hit trouble. You can get 95% efficiency on your crappy system... just keep sparging. You will actually get a few bonus gravity points from all the tannins!! Enjoy the happy satisfied glow during your boil... it wont last into the glass.

That's how it all works in fevered imagination anyhoo.

Thirsty


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## Tony (1/12/09)

Thirsty Boy said:


> So the Tannin thing is really only for people who sparge by adding pure water at one end, while draining wort from the other. For instance Tony where he adds his sparge water and then re-circulates it... not him!! He mixes that pure water in, so its no going to happen with his technique.



 



Thirsty Boy said:


> And its only an issue if you get greedy.. stop at a sensible point and you avoid the issue. If your system is well designed, and you pay attention to your pH and temperatures and your technique.. then there is no reason why you couldn't expect to get around 95% mash efficiency from a continuous sparge and no issues.. but the less "good" your system and technique is... the lower the level of efficiency you can expect before you hit trouble. You can get 95% efficiency on your crappy system... just keep sparging. You will actually get a few bonus gravity points from all the tannins!! Enjoy the happy satisfied glow during your boil... it wont last into the glass.



Very VERY true!

I wouldnt even dream of doing a second sparge....... never have never will. If im short on my boil volume i top up with water strait into the kettle. I then open up the mash tun and let the last liter or 2 dribble out into a pot while i boil the brew and use the last bit of runnings for starters! I will generally get between 2 and 4 liters at about 1.020. I fill 2 liter vinigar bottles (they are thicker and stronger and dont split in the freezer) and freeze strait away. Defrost when you want them in a sink full of warm water and (Edit: after boiling down) you get a 1 liter 1.040 starter.

Now thats getting the most from the mash!

cheers and thanks again Thirsty :beerbang:


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## Nick JD (1/12/09)

A bottle of Tannic Acid (pH 6).


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## Mantis (1/12/09)

This is an extremely informative thread and comes at a good time for first time mash tun users like me and others. 
Many thanks TB and Tony for clearing a lot of stuff up. 
I will attack the next brew with more confidence and knowledge now

:icon_chickcheers:


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## Mantis (12/12/09)

Did a smash today with the same grain bill as last brew being 9kg of JW Trad Ale

Followed Tonys advice above re: one sparge only and sloooooww runoff. 
The other thing I did different was add 3tsp of CaCl to the water along the way

Anyhoo with the 3 mash tun brews so far I have gone 63,68 and today 76% eff into the cubes
Now I am happy with the process I can do some more adventurous brews, and maybe with some crystal and darker malts in the mix, the eff might even rise some more, but I am more than happy with 76.

:icon_chickcheers:


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