Mash Efficiency Study (fly)

[sosman]

This is not a competition it is a study conducted by the university of melbourne brewers.

See sister batch poll in a separate thread. You can vote in both if you do both.

Please try to resist the urge to vote if you haven't mashed enough times to have settled onto a consistent brewhouse efficiency for your regular brew. Lets say you have got the same figure +/- 2% in 3 brews. You also should have measured these figures, not just guessed.

I want to attempt to answer the questions:
- What kind of efficiency distribution do homebrewers get?
- Is there a difference in efficiency between batch and fly sparge?
- How popular is fly sparging.

I am not including losses in the kettle, looking purely at what percentage of sugars as a percentage of the malt bill specs you are getting into the kettle in the first place.

 

[barfridge]

I voted 60-64, as sadly this seems to be all I'm getting. And I would love to know why, so I can improve.

 

[T.D.]

This is definitely worth doing sosman, but you should also try to capture other factors, like lautering method, for example. Whether you use a false bottom, manifold or s/s braid will determine the resulting efficiency, in my opinion, just as much as the sparging method. Other stuff like sparge water temp would also affect the outcome. Really some sort of econometric regression would be best to determine the factors that most affect efficiency and exactly how much they do so. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not criticising your work here - I think its very interesting, but if a definitive conclusion is to be made on sparging methods and efficiency, all contributing factors must be included. :beer:

 

[Gulf Brewery]

Hi sosman

Just to add to the confusion about efficiencies, I get a higher efficiency using some malts. With Weyermann I usually get 73%, but with something like Galaxy, I get closer to 80.

Cheers
Pedro

 

[Duff]

70 - 74% for me, SS false bottom, sparge water between 75 - 80C.

 

[Peter Wadey]

Efficiency into the kettle is typ. 86%

Pete