All Grain Efficiency Very Low - What am I doing wrong

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

OK guys, an update on today's brew and unfortunately it's not good news...

So firstly, the recipe:

...

5.5kg Gladfield American Ale Malt.

..,

As you can see, I was way off my original gravity. I was meant to be hitting 1.055, however, I hit 1.044 post boil.
My pre-boil gravity was 1.039.

That's 60% efficiency.

Pre Boil Volume was 28L. Volume into fermenter was 24.5 Litres.
I also milled my own grains for the first time. (Picture of the milled grains attached.)

Thanks.

First of all I ran your numbers:
Your total extract for that malt is 1698 gravity points. You got 44x24.5=1078 into the FV.

That's 63% brewhouse efficiency meaning your mash efficiency is probably closer to 70% or higher

Basically you don't have an extraction problem. You have a hitting your numbers problem. Work on your liquor ratios your mash is good.

If you boiled off down to 20L you would have had 20x 1.054 wort

 

[NzBrewerMatt]

Doesnt look like the best grist. With it looking like that 60% efficiency is not a terrible result. I would definitely be making sure the your milling it fine enough.

Also, if you add the 4L you are leaving in the kettle to the batch size, you are actually getting 70% mash efficiency. To increase your brewhouse efficiency I would be also looking to reduce your kettle loss.

If you can improve the grist (if the photo indicates what I suspect, whole grains remaining) you should be able to improve mash efficiency to 75-80% and combine this with a reduction of kettle losses to 1-2L, you should be getting closer to the target OG.

You mention that 4L is hop and trub, it may contain these but there is still a lot of remaining wort in there too. Consider something like a lauter helix to help reduce the amount of wort left in the kettle, which will allow you to boil off more excess water (or add less in the sparge).

Yeah so Kettle loss is the loss of the wort to trub and the likes right?
Also i do agree that the grains could have been milled slightly finer as there were a few that looked like whole grains still.

Without using a Lauter Helix, is there any way to limit the hop/trub in the bottom of the kettle to get down to 1-2 litres lost?

I'm leaving about 3.5 or so litres at the end of the boil. Most of that is hop trub as I'm just throwing the hops directly in.

I'm losing about 3.5 litres in the boil, not 4. I may have assumed it was 4 litres in an above post though?

@Lionman could i send you my Beersmith numbers to review? There might be some weird values in fields that I'm not realising.

First of all I ran your numbers:
Your total extract for that malt is 1698 gravity points. You got 44x24.5=1078 into the FV.

That's 63% brewhouse efficiency meaning your mash efficiency is probably closer to 70% or higher

Basically you don't have an extraction problem. You have a hitting your numbers problem. Work on your liquor ratios your mash is good.

If you boiled off down to 20L you would have had 20x 1.054 wort

Thanks for the calculations. Do you suspect its an issue with my water volumes?

 

[Schikitar]

Without using a Lauter Helix, is there any way to limit the hop/trub in the bottom of the kettle to get down to 1-2 litres lost?

I don't know if this exactly fits the bill but I've started racking all the trub from my kettle to my 5L flask, cold crash it and then pour off the separated wort to the fermenter the next day (or make a starter from it as I no-chill). This usually nets me an additional ~2L..

 

[NzBrewerMatt]

I don't know if this exactly fits the bill but I've started racking all the trub from my kettle to my 5L flask, cold crash it and then pour off the separated wort to the fermenter the next day (or make a starter from it as I no-chill). This usually nets me an additional ~2L..

Oh yeah that's not a bad idea on the starter front. I probably can't cold crash it because I'm chilling my wort with an immersion chiller and don't want to risk more contamination.

 

[Schikitar]

That's fair enough, I boil some water to sanitise my flask (also, give it some starsan treatment for extra safety) before i transfer from the kettle to it, so I'm not worried about infection but yeah, it's a good way to retrieve a good couple more litres from what would otherwise go down the drain. If you do pour it off into another vessel and you're worried about infection you can always reboil the wort on the stovetop as well.

I've got a new mill so I'm going to see if this improves my efficiency - I've suspected that my LHBS hasn't been doing a great job of milling my grains or that the grains they supply aren't as fresh as perhaps they should be (they also substitute grains without asking, grrrr). Will try and get another brew on this weekend to see.. hopefully you get to bottom of your problem!

 

[Lionman]

Yeah so Kettle loss is the loss of the wort to trub and the likes right?

Pretty much.

Without using a Lauter Helix, is there any way to limit the hop/trub in the bottom of the kettle to get down to 1-2 litres lost?

You can use a bazooka screen, the trick with these (as well as a helix) is to drain the wort slowly, only crack the valve open half way or so to limit the amount of suction.

you can simply draw from the edge and combined with a good whirlpool you should be able to get pretty much all the wort

hop screen

lauter helix

all images shamelessly stolen off the internet....

@Lionman could i send you my Beersmith numbers to review? There might be some weird values in fields that I'm not realising.

I think the first thing you need to do is sort out your measurements. You are relying on software that will only be able to predict accurate brew numbers if you feed it accurate data. This means accounting correctly for boil off and kettle loss and getting your pre boil volume right so you know how much usable wort you will get at the end of a boil.

Your numbers you are quoting don't seem to be lining up right. From what I can work out, your not having that much of a problem with mashing, could maybe improve its efficiency a few points but your not way off target.

 

[Jack of all biers]

Sorry if I missed it - are you measuring preboil numbers (first runnings and total kettle volume)? Will help iron out the issue if you can pinpoint where it is in the process. Also test and calibrate all measuring equipment - scales, volume measure, thermometer, hydro/ refrac, etc and ensure you are using them correctly.

Do what Manticle said. Problems tend to compound and are often more than one.

 

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Thanks for the calculations. Do you suspect its an issue with my water volumes?

It's more of a recipe planning issue - you are putting too much water through your process, or you are expecting too much from your system.

You planned for 23L x 55 gravity wort with the grist you used your system can only get 19/20 L

It's possible that you have entered your system details wrong in your recipe software. You should fix that problem instead of trying to magic a 15% jump in BH efficiency out of thin air (not going to happen)

The key to making a recipe work is to target a specific volume into FV and hit it within 1 L.

It removes one variable from the OG: final volume : efficiency relationship.

Once you know your mash efficiency, then hitting your OG is a matter of using enough grain

 

[mxd]

A hop sock will help with your trub, more importantly if you’re getting 60% then use that in your recipe, then you can produce the beer you’re trying with the correct bitterness /malt ratio.it may be an extra couple of dollars but you’re making good beer

 

[claypot]

I was having drama with crap efficiency (60%) on my home made braumiser clone.
I wanted to do full volume mash to make things quicker / simpler.
I chased everything I could think of to find the loss. Even tried mashing with 20lt and sparging but the negligible increase wasn't work the hassle.
For a while I was happy to just add more grain, until I brewed a dark ale, and my efficiency shot up!

For simple reference:
Pale beer: 5.2 kg of pale grain in 30lt mash = 19lt finished beer @ 4.3 - 4.8% ABV (FG 1.006 - 1.008)
Dark Beer: 5.2 kg of pale grain including 300gm of dark grains = 19lt finished beer @ 5.8% ABV (FG 1.012)
Same trub volume and process variables for both.

Had never bothered to measure / monitor PH. So it turns out I'm not achieving optimum mash PH on my pale brews. I've found PH metres and PH strips problematic so done away with them. I'm now adding acid to the mash water and now starting to see my efficiency rise towards what I was seeing for the dark beer.
*** about way of doing it I know but measuring the PH was giving me the *****. I'm going to try acidulated malt at 2% next brew.

If anyone can recommend a decent brand of PH strips that are targeted for the brewing range that would be grate.

 

[peteru]

I looked into pH strips and quite simply could not find anything that seemed accurate and cost effective.

In the end I ended up getting a cheap electronic meter from China. One of the newer ones, with 3 point electronic calibration and 0.01 pH resolution. Not the older ones with a screwdriver adjustment. For under $10 delivered, it came with batteries and three calibration buffers that should last a year. So far I used it on three brews and am happy with it.

I was surprised that my mash pH was much higher than expected (5.6 pH) for a red beer. Dropping sparge water pH from 7.6 to 5.2 pH took a miniscule amount of lactic acid when compared to the amount needed to take the mash from 5.6 to 5.2 pH. I can't say that it has improved my efficiency dramatically, maybe 2-3% better, but that could be down to any other factor. However, I did notice that the lower pH resulted in less astringency and more character in the beer.

Better grain crush has made a much bigger difference to my efficiency. That one was noticeable straight away, going from low 70% to mid-80%.