Poor efficiency during first all grain brew, need an fail safe for next brew

Question

Poor efficiency during first all grain brew, need an fail safe for next brew

kenyabob

2013年10月24日 16:16

For my first all grain brew I bought an octoberfest all grain kit from morebeer. Before brewing with it, however, I decided to try a very cheap smash recipe. I ended up with a very low efficiency (about 65 percent), and threw in some DME I had on hand to try and raise my gravity by a few points.

I'd like to brew again in the coming weekend, and while I've made notes on how I can increase my efficiency, I'd like to have a backup plan to turn it into a partial mash if need be.

When correcting for a poor mash, how do you decide what grade of DME to get? I'm assuming its based of SRM, so an SRM of 10 would probably mean an amber DME. Im also assuming I should introduce it right after I've collected and measure my wort?

Topic partial-mash mash homebrew efficiency

Category Mac

Denny Conn · Accepted Answer · 2013年10月24日 16:16

1

Denny Conn answered at 2013年10月24日 16:16

99% of the time, efficiency is tied to the quality of the crush. Unless you crush the grain yourself, you have no control over it.

Wyrmwood · Accepted Answer · 2013年10月23日 23:26

65% is not bad. Most recipes only expect 70%, so you're not going to be that far off to begin with if you are getting 65%. I wouldn't do partial mash unless you want to. Use Beer Smith or BrewTarget and just adjust your recipe for your efficiency. Read up on how to calculate efficiency first. Understanding your volumes and gravities at each step will help you improve. If you really want to adjust your gravity, 1 lb of DME will add 9 gravity points to a 5 gallon batch. I would just use pale DME; it's not going to affect it much, but if you use amber or dark it may.

EDIT: I should add.. the simple technique of adding grains to water (instead of water to grains) will make it easier to avoid clumps and dry spots. Stir the crap out of your sparge as well as your mash, and vorlauf both the mash and the sparge. Those techniques added about 2-3% each to my efficiency, and I'm getting somewhere around 75-80 pretty consistently with a very rudimentary batch sparge setup. I use brewtarget and pretty consistent with volumes and efficiency, with the caveat; lower water to grain ratios and higher gravity beers reduce efficiency and vice versa.

Also, lower water to grain ratio will hurt your efficiency, but may be required for style (mouthfeel and maltiness), so better to anticipate a bit lower efficiency in that case and adjust accordingly, rather than sacrifice style for efficiency. Higher ratios, like 1.5 will improve efficiency, but will make for thinner beer.

FishesCycle · Accepted Answer · 2013年10月16日 14:37

Don't worry too much about increasing your efficiency. The important thing is is have an accurate measure of it. Your first mash showed an efficiency of 65%, so go with that until you've done more brews and narrowed it down. I don't know much about all grain kits, but they must make some assumption about efficiency and include the corresponding amount of grain. What you need to do is add enough base grain (pale, pilsner, or 2-row, depending on the style) to bring the gravity up to the target.

Brewing software can really help with this. You enter the amount of each grain and your measured efficiency, and the software will estimate he starting gravity. If the estimate is low, add base malt until it reaches the target.

Poor efficiency during first all grain brew, need an fail safe for next brew

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