Falling short of target OG

[mosto]

I use JW malt as a base for most brews and get a low efficiency of around 60%. I'd read on here claims that JW can cause low efficiencies, however my last brew was a Smoked Scottish Ale using Golden Promise as the base. Still came out around 60%. I'm looking at changing my system soon, so not worried about improving efficiency until I've got my head and processes around the new system and see what figures it throws out, but I don't think the brand of malt will be biggest issue. In saying that, I'm thinking of changing my base to Marris Otter for most styles, but that's more to do with flavour profile than efficiency concerns.

 

[dr K]

I actually do not use JW (in fact never have), but my comment still holds. My personal LHBS only stocks Weyermann, Bairds, Dingemans, Fawcetts and Barrett Burston. At about 10 tonne a year the malts will be quite fresh, if expensive.

K

 

[paulyman]

This was the issue I believe, was a few years ago so surely fixed up by now.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/substandard-malt-by-joe-white-leaves-brewers-bitter/news-story/d872f5ec946a0511744cd61dbd47b2a5

 

[paulyman]

I know that link may or may not work thanks to the dinosaurs in the media and their stupid paywalls.

 

[SBOB]

I know that link may or may not work thanks to the dinosaurs in the media and their stupid paywalls.

an incognito window and a google search link will get you the article though

 

[DigitalGiraffe]

A follow up on my last brew for those who are interested...

Pre-boil gravity was 1045 and post boil was 1060 on my refractometer and 1055 on the hydrometer (a few hours later once wort had chilled). A vast improvement on my previous brews. Efficiency worked out to be about 69%. Pretty happy with that.

What did I change? I stirred and stirred and stirred my mash before covering it up. Used 3 thermometers and discovered the cheap one I was referencing the most was out by 1.3 degrees. Still have to order a decent glass thermometer and will have it calibrated.

Thanks for all the the help and advice from everyone. Fingers crossed I can continue to improve.

 

[claypot]

"I do use beersmith and I noticed that the default temps for grain/mash tun are 22degrees. I took a reading of my grain on Saturday and it was sitting at 14.8 (I live in Hobart), the mash tun was similar. I changed these temps and the mash temp increased by 0.2 of a degrees"

Hey Mate,
Just to be sure, your not mashing at 22 degrees are you?
That would certainly explain the low efficiency and low OG.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

A comment on the Joe White thing:

There is no way in hell that a major maltster could deliver malt with extract that was significantly lower than the analysis certificate level to a major brewer and get away with it. Having worked on both sides of this transaction: every brewery tracks the actual extract achieved from every malt batch, a 1% variation from what was expected would result in complaints to the maltings and an instruction to fix the problem. The maltings would take this very seriously, it's a small industry and everyone knows every one else.

If you are losing 5% on expected extract levels on a particular malt it's exceedingly unlikely to be the maltster, much more likely to be because it's stale or has been stored badly or both. Malt is very hygroscopic, grist even more so and 5% moisture gain is not difficult.

While I'm on the subject of extract: anyone who claims 80% extract on a home brew set up is mismeasuring it: that is simply impossible to achieve. A typical extract FGDB figure for modern malt is about 80 - 81% but that is on dry basis (that's what DB means). You'll lose 3-4% on malt as shipped due to moisture content. You'll lose another percentage due to mill performance: maybe 1-2% on a good 6 roller mill, more like 3-4% on a 2 roller unless you are prepared to accept very long lauter runs. See those whole grains in your spent grain? that's lost extract.

If you've ever seen what comes out of a Buhler Disc mill on the FG (0.2mm) setting you'd know that you could not get it through a lauter tun in a month of Sundays, it mashes to sludge. In the lab the congress mash is filtered through paper, we used to have lunch during the filtration stage because it takes a while..

/rant

 

[GalBrew]

As a home Brewer I have never been privy to a malt analysis certificate so who knows how far off I am? Has anyone here seen a JW analysis? How does it compare to say Gladfield? Maybe JW lets you know that they are a little bit crap on their certificate so you know what you at getting into? I use JW quite a bit and haven't had any efficiency issues (I still get around 75%) on the GF, but have heard firsthand about JW efficiency and consistently issues from pro brewers that are not offset by the fact JW is cheaper.

Can any industry people comment on this?

 

[MHB]

While I'm on the subject of extract: anyone who claims 80% extract on a home brew set up is mismeasuring it: that is simply impossible to achieve. A typical extract FGDB figure for modern malt is about 80 - 81% but that is on dry basis (that's what DB means). You'll lose 3-4% on malt as shipped due to moisture content. You'll lose another percentage due to mill performance: maybe 1-2% on a good 6 roller mill, more like 3-4% on a 2 roller unless you are prepared to accept very long lauter runs. See those whole grains in your spent grain? that's lost extract.
Snip

I think we might be talking at cross purposes, clearly we can never get 80% of the malt weight into solution.
Following is an old COA for Weyermann Pilsner, just so we are all on the same page.View attachment WM435MEL_Pilsner.pdf
The Fine Dry potential is 81.9%, Moisture is 4.5%, knock off another 1-1.5% for coarse/fine Leaving 75.9-76.4% Lets call it 76%
If we took a sample of the malt and mashed it so well we got 760g/kg into solution we would be doing 100% as well as the congress mash test.
Getting 80% of the test value isn't all that hard, if we got 608g of extract from each kg of malt that would be an 80% brewhouse yield, but just a touch over 60% of the malt.

Same same just where you start measuring from.
Mark

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Has anyone here seen a JW analysis? How does it compare to say Gladfield?

They'll both be around 80 - 81 % extract FGDB for pale.

Figure 11-12% for protein, 2% for lipids and about 5% for bran and other insoluble fibre and there's not much room to move.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

I think we might be talking at cross purposes, clearly we can never get 80% of the malt weight into solution.

Agreed, but reading the comments on extract above people are talking about extract as wort dissolved solids x volume / mass of malt, also this is the figure that is commonly used in the industry.

 

[GalBrew]

They'll both be around 80 - 81 % extract FGDB for pale.

Figure 11-12% for protein, 2% for lipids and about 5% for bran and other insoluble fibre and there's not much room to move.

So where does the problem lie? Are JW malts harder to get a uniform crush due to inconsistent grain size in a brewery rather than lab setting where it is ground to dust?

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

I don't know, I've never personally had a problem with them as I wasn't using their malt in the period concerned.

With that caveat here's my take on the info in the article above: it sounds like they were cheaping out by salting feed grade barley into the malting grade and using GA to cover it up. They wouldn't be the only maltings to do this, just the only ones caught. That gels with the timing too: the premium for malting grade barley was at an historic high around 2014 due to poor conditions in the east coast barley areas (largely Victoria's Wimmera).

One of the things that happens when you do that is inconsistent germination (there's only so much the GA can do) which leads to high variability within the malt: some of it will be undermodified, some over modified. This in turn causes milling problems: the overmodified malt will be shattered to dust while the undermodified will be difficult to crack.

A decent 4 or 6 roller mill will cope fairly well with this, you just open out the first rollers so they barely crack the overmodified grains and rely on the later rollers to deal with the undermodified ones*. A 2 roller feed mill as used by many smaller breweries and almost all amateurs will cope badly. That's one of the reasons for using proper malt mills, the figure of merit given by dividing extract by lauter time is maximised. There's also an uptick in quality but that is in part a consequence of the above.

* While I'm on a rant, I read recently about a 2 roller mill with tapered gap which the maker claims is equivalent to a 6 roller mill. Biggest load of crap I've read in years: one of the things you watch very carefully on a real malt mill is consistency of gap across the rollers, performance degrades badly when the gap is inconsistent. Factoid: the way to check this is to feed soft wire like unleaded solder through the mill while it's grinding malt then measure the thickness to which the wire is squished. It should be the same across the each set of rollers (but obviously different between the sets).

 

[Ollieb]

Hey guys,

Came across this thread and hoping I can get some advice.

I am having the exact same issue as the original poster who started this conversation.

Some facts:
I am BIAB.
I use beersmith.
I have read all of the comments and I know need test if my thermometers are calibrated. I am very confident they are because I tested the about 6 months ago but will do it again.
My Kettle is 40L

I was wondering if my volumes are out? I think they might be? I am really confused!

This is the grain bill I was using today for my brew.
4.25kg of pale malt
0.75kg of pilsner malt
my original volume in the kettle was 38.8L of water.
My target OG was meant to be1.050 according to beer smith
my actual OG was 1.030.

This is the third time in a row I have missed my OG but never by this much. the first two brews were by 10 points but 20 points...

I have been brewing for a few years using BIAB. but last year took a break. I have no idea what I am missing! I hope it is something obvious I just cannot work it out!

Any input from anyone would be awesome.
Thanks very much.
Ollie

 

[yum beer]

Ollie, there is clearly something very wrong with your numbers. 1030 with those ingredients and water sounds about right. No way you were gonna get 1050.
Check over your Beersmith and double check your settings.
As with many posts above your efficiency setting may be the issue.
When doing BIAB I was getting low 50's, not the 72 the beersmith defaults at.

 

[Rocker1986]

Strike water was 38.8 litres, not the batch size. What batch size were you aiming for Ollie?

Efficiency is obviously an issue here, but working out why is the hard part. A total breakdown of the brewing process used would help. 5kg of grain in my BIAB system would get me around 1.048-1.050 OG in a 25 litre batch. Usually I get mid-high 70s total efficiency.

 

[Ollieb]

Ollie, there is clearly something very wrong with your numbers. 1030 with those ingredients and water sounds about right. No way you were gonna get 1050.
Check over your Beersmith and double check your settings.
As with many posts above your efficiency setting may be the issue.
When doing BIAB I was getting low 50's, not the 72 the beersmith defaults at.

Hey Yum Beer... thanks for the reply.
So I checked my BeerSmith setting as stated in the posts above and I changed my Brew House efficiency but I could not see it make an impact anywhere?
Are you suggesting if I change it from 70% down to 50% it will re-calculate the quantities and volumes I need? I thought this is what would happen but when I dropped my efficiency down it did not suggest using more/less grain or water respectively?
Thanks again for the input.

 

[Ollieb]

Strike water was 38.8 litres, not the batch size. What batch size were you aiming for Ollie?

Efficiency is obviously an issue here, but working out why is the hard part. A total breakdown of the brewing process used would help. 5kg of grain in my BIAB system would get me around 1.048-1.050 OG in a 25 litre batch. Usually I get mid-high 70s total efficiency.

Hi Rocker1986
Correct, strike volume was 38.8L.
Batch size I was aiming for was 22L. However I ended up with more like 24/26L (I put 24L into the fermenter but there was at least another 2L left before I started to get into the dead space under the tap in the kettle)
Breakdown of brew process is as follows:
- Heat 38.8L of water to 72 deg
- Add grain
- Steeped at 68 deg for 60 mins
- Began to raise temp to 75 deg which took me about 15 mins.
- Mash out at 75 deg for 10 mins
- Removed grains began to raise temp to boiling (took 35 mins)
- Began boil and first hop addition...
- Over one hour did my 4 hop additions
- Finished and began to chill my wort down to mid 20's which took me about 40 mins
- Dumped wort into fermenter and sealed
- Left for a few hours to wait for temp to hit about 20-22 degs before pitching yeast.
- Note: I took the OG sample from the kettle when I was transferring the wort from kettle to fermenter. I waited a few hours before testing the reading.

Also note: I have tested my specific gravity reader and it balances out at an even 1000 in water that is approx 18 deg.

Anything I have missed for you?

This is great guys I really appreciate the help.
I think the issue lies with my BeerSmith Settings I just dont know where or how it should be set up. I have bene following the wizard to set it up and thought I had it bang on but clearly not!
Thanks again!

 

[Ollieb]

...Also I have just noticed in BeerSmith...

That if I change my efficiency down to 50% and then look at my estimated OG it does state 1.030. But that is not where I am confused

If I then go into the Estimated OG and increase it to match the recipe estimate of 1.050 the grain bill goes up to 6.6KG of pale and 1.2kg of pilsner AND the water volume goes up to 41.86L.

I thought if I wanted the OG to come up it would have left the grain bill as was and reduced the initial water volume down?
Wow I am so confused with BeerSmith right now! :blink: :huh: :unsure: