My efficiency sucks, can you help?

[GalBrew]

I guarantee you (by looking at the pic of your mash tun) that you are leaving behind quite a bit of good stuff in your mash tun with your current manifold setup. Sure youwill never get a 100% efficient lauter, but if it was my system I would redesign the manifold from scratch or scrap it and go to the biggest falsie (round or rectangular) that will fit your esky.

 

[felten]

Where and how are you measuring the efficiency? I think it would be worthwhile to troubleshoot via this braukaiser article.

 

[dicko]

Over the years I have gone from a manifold, similar to the above pic to a false bottom and on to a BM and I found I could run a smaller gap on my 3 roller Crankenstein for the manifold than I could on the false bottom or the BM.
The FB system had a herms and the mash used to stick until I opened the mill up one notch. Then I had to open it again for the BM.
Take Truman up on his offer and crush a bit smaller, you might be surprised exactly how much you will gain.

Cheers

 

[r055c0]

GalBrew, while I recognise a false bottom will give me better efficiency than a copper manifold, surely 64% is horrendously low?

 

[r055c0]

Felten, I'm using the calculator in beersmith, will have a look at the article you linked.

Dicko, a finer crush will absolutley be a part of my next brew.

 

[GalBrew]

GalBrew, while I recognise a false bottom will give me better efficiency than a copper manifold, surely 64% is horrendously low?

I think it you increased the size of your manifold, made it as low as possible with the slits on the bottom you will improve lautering without switching to a falsie. Perhaps you need to start measuring how much wort you leave behind to get an idea of how efficient your lautering is? It's all guesses until you have some hard data. Also 64% is not great, but its not THAT bad either. Start off with a finer crush (seems to be the easiest to implement) and just keep an eye on how much wort you leave behind, make a descision based on that.

 

[WarmBeer]

I've found 3 things that have contributed to a low, or inconsistent, efficiency on my system. Like you, I mash in an esky, but use a Beerbelly triangular false bottom.

These were; water chemistry, performing a double batch sparge rather than a single sparge, and grain crush size.

You seem to have your chemicals under control, and Core Brewing should be doing a fairly accurate grain crush.

Try swapping your Mash Out for a second sparge batch? If you're transferring straight into the kettle and hitting it with heat, the wort is going to be above mash out temps pretty quickly regardless. It helped me get a pretty consistent ~75% efficiency.

 

[peter.brandon]

Maybe be a silly question but have your recipes for last 5 or 6 brews been any different to the last 20?
- Higher gravity planned? therefore lower eff
- different grain?
- different mash water levels?

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Ducatiboy Stu, what do you mean by recirculating? I currently draw off around 4L (more if I don't feel the liquor has cleared enough) and add it back to the top of the mash, is that what you mean?

Yep

 

[r055c0]

GalBrew, since I'm such a dab-hand with a hacksaw (refer to the craftsmanship in the pic of my manifold) I'll definetley be pimping my manifold with extra bars. I did measure how much fluid sits in the bottom of the esky before it can drain into the manifold and its around 1L, less with grain mixed in, but there is a rise of about 1cm from the manifold to the tap which I havent accounted for. Will definetley take this measurement in my next brew.

Warmbeer I added the Mash Out step because my understanding is raising the temperature increases the solubility of sugars in the water, I think the word fluidity was used too but I can't remember exactly how so I will say it also makes it more fluidity. I'll try the stirring again before draining frst and if that doesnt work I'll give a second sparge a go.

Plyers I brew all sorts of different stuff but always come back to pretty standard american pale ales, I've only raised my grain bill from 6 to 7kg in reaction to my decreased efficiency (so I don't brew midstrength)

Ducatiboy Stu, sweet

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

You dont need a mashout step if you sparge with boilng water as this essentially is a mashout

 

[WarmBeer]

You dont need a mashout step.

FTFY

 

[r055c0]

Haven't got time to type up everything I just learned but wanted to take a moment to say thanks to Ross at Craftbrewer who just spent 45 minutes on the phone patiently explaining everything to me and showing me where I can improve. It's attitudes like this that make the homebrewing world such an awesome place. Thanks Ross, you have made my week!

 

[Phillo]

Interested to hear how you go mate. I just switched from BIAB to 3V (3 brews ago) and am trying to sort out my lousy efficiency. I went from ~75% efficiency with BIAB to 66% 3V. I'm sure I'll get there, but more advice is always good.

This weekend just gone, I tried the following.

• Finer crush (BIAB style, plenty of flour)
• Stirred the mash halfway through, adding boiling water to bring temps back up
• Did two sparges, stirring the crap out of the mash each time

Still only got 66%.

Not overly bothered, as long as the numbers are consistent each time, but I think there's a small matter of pride in there somewhere. :lol:

 

[r055c0]

Phillo, pride is a big part of why I want to improve my efficiency

I'll just summarize what Ross went through with me, hope I got it close to right, my apologies if I've buggered it up, Ross went into a heap more detail than this and I was a little worried about posting the info in case I get a part of it wrong and dilute his message, however I know I would want to see the info if I was reading this post.

1 - Turn my manifold the right way around, slots to the bottom. Redesign if possible, drill holes instead of slots as the size of the gap between the bottom of your mash tun and the top of the highest hole will be the place where air is sucked in first and as soon as air is sucked in the siphon effect is lost and no more wort will be drained from the mash.

2 - Mash in volume - aim for 2.3L to 2.5L of water per kg of grain

3 - Mash out volume & temp - Mash out water should be close to boiling. Calculate the additional volume as Mash in + Mash out - liquid lost to grain soaking it up (around 1L per kg of grain) should come to 50% of your target preboil volume

4 - There is no point draining slowly for batch sparging, as long as the grain bed is set drain as fast as you like, can always stir the mash again if you get a stuck sparge.

5 - Sparge volume & temperature - sparge volume should be 50% of the pre boil target and temperature should be hot, use the water that was brought to boiling for the mash out step (turn off the heat at mash out, the temp should drop a couple of degrees but will be fine for sparge), aim for a temp of about 80C once sparge water has been added to grain.

I can't stress enough how helpful Ross was, he didn't make me feel silly at all and showed none of the brewer elitism that can discourage new brewers from asking questions. If I'm ever in QLD I'll be sure to drop by the store

 

[Phillo]

Nice one. Thanks mate And thanks to Ross as well. :beerbang:

 

[Bizier]

I would switch to ghetto version of a fly sparge after a good runoff, it is not that hard and you should be able to get good eff.

If you are happy with infusion and batch sparge, I have a couple of suggestions:

I don't know if it would work, but if you do a little first wort runoff BEFORE mashout, you might get some "free" undiluted sugar straight off the bat, with the mashout liquor having to pull more from the grain. Just run off what is easy.

I don't know if you mentioned stand times, but ensure you are allowing time for any additional liquor added to osmotically balance sugar contents with the mash solids. I would also stir the crap outta these to ensure homogeneity. If you were hell bent on efficiency, then you could divide your sparging into more than one (obviously smaller volume) steps.

At the end of the day it is just homebrew, more science and technique allows me better efficiency, but I hardly measure anything. It will be beer, potentially award winning, but no-one lives or dies by our decisions to alter our mash schedule.

 

[r055c0]

Installed my new manifold last night (same style but drilled 2mm holes and turned it so the holes were facing downwards) and tried it out with some plain water to see how much got left behind. The manifold sucked it pretty much dry, there was only 330ml left and probably half of that was from the little well under the tap. Cant wait to try it out with a brew next weekend

 

[jdooley]

Mash overnight. Problem will be solved.

 

[431neb]

From my experience in chasing better efficiency(BIAB) - which has met with only limited success - I got better results from a finer crush than I did from a three hour mash. I'm still sitting on around 70 % with no sparge so I have a way to go.

There could be other factors at work, water chemistry, mash temperature, the composition of the grist etc so all I can offer is a little more anecdotal evidence that might be useful to someone.