Ooops I did it again... Why do I always get 1.060?

[lancsSteve]

Brewing yesterday an alt bier, 5kg Munich, 70g melanoidin, 50g carafa 3 aiming for 1.048 at 75% estimated efficiency.

Got 1.060! (post boil)

that gives me an apparent efficiency of 95%!!!!!!!

On previous occasions my efficiency seemed high but once I accounted for loss in probs and boil off it was at 75-80 nut this is nuts

have switched from batch to fly sparging and not mashing out (run off and start sparging once water at grain bed level)

shorter boil this tome only 70 minutes

thing is this is inconsistent and makes recipe formulation or balance a mare as I can't really water down as fv is full at 23 litres, sure I should be happy but means another beer is destined to be stronger and less balanced by bitterness than planned and don't know what to do to adapt recipes as hitting 95 seems aberatuin not mastery of the art

steve

[coatesg]

Measure the gravity at the start of the boil, (or while it's heating) and work out what you'll land up with post boil (post boil gravity = pre boil gravity x pre boil volume/post boil volume in boiler). Then you can adjust the hops to suit the expected result as you go.

Hope it turns out well!

[lancsSteve]

Thanks coatesg...

Yeah, DEF should have taken the gravity at start of boil and upped my hopping rate a lot more - I don't think it's going to be a bad beer but it's not going to be balanced in the way I'd hoped and should have upped from 27IBUs to nearer 40 I recon...

Ah well - one to chalk down to experience and to check for in the future - fermenting away like crazy at the moment.

Steve

[steve_flack]

Check your hydrometer - does it read 1.000 in tap water at 20C?

[lancsSteve]

How many litres at 1060. I don't know whether you have taken the volume into account but you can't calculate efficiency without factoring volume.

Volume taken into account - this is where I'd had probs before with a diastster brew or long boil and high boiloff rate but this time boiler filled to the brim (25litres) and drained fully with 2 litres left behind.

Likewise, 23L at 1060 in the boiler is not the same as 23L in the fermenter as there are losses between the fermenter and boiler which effect efficiency, partly liquid contraction but mainly wort absorbed by the hops, trub and wort lost to the dead space in the boiler.

23 litres in the FV!!!

Ideally you would top up the wort in the boiler at the start of the boil to produce a volume that when boiled down and racked to the fv gives you your target final volume and gravity to keep your hop utilisation and calculations on track and more importantly, consistent.

Boiler filled to the brim so no possibility of watering it down Well I could of course have sparged less and watered it down though final sparging was still at 1.014 and no astringency coming through.


Could no mashj out affect it? As I say I started runnign off and then fly sparging immediately rather than either infusing hot water to mash out at 76 or running it all off and then starting to sparge - so I guess mash ontinued a while longer. Am kind of half way between batch sparging (which I started off doing on first few brews) and fly sparging.

(adding water at the start avoids the need to preboil water to add to the fermenter, it also keeps your hop utilsation consistent with your target OG but it will increase the time it takes to bring the wort to the boil slightly and therefore increase amount of electricity you use by a few pence although with the price off hops these days that's probably offset by the increased utilisation of a lower boil gravity)

Yup next time I def need to take a pre-boil reading before filling fermenter, water down and get it to target pre-boil gravity then go from there.

If you are still ending up with your target volume of wort in the fv at a higher gravity you need to start adjusting your recipes based on the efficiency you are getting so you can produce the same results predictably and consistently.

Have upped efficiency in calcs to 85% in hope that'#s more accurate - consistency is a distant dream after this one though!

Check your hydrometer - does it read 1.000 in tap water at 20C?

Will re-test think it's calibrated at 15C as reads 1.000 at that tempp, my OG reading was taken at 17C so either bang on or 1.059

[lancsSteve]

Just re-checked hydrometer - reads 1.002 at 20c so that gives me 1.058 not 1.060 I guess - still WAY over my intention/estimation.

There is a little space in the boiler by the end of the boil - but Iif I used it i wouldn't be able to fit it all in the FV (already had a yeast head overflow as WLP1007 is pretty lively...

Get a balance of 0.96 and wanted more like 1.2 according to the balance calcs at http://beercolor.netfirms.com/balance.html which are included in BrewPal.

Time for a bigger boiler maybe! Definitely a smaller grain bill - but that's great really, means I've got supplies for 4 not 3 brews

[nobby]

I am getting 85% post boil Efficency, but 90% is going some.

Nice to know there is someone else near to me

[lancsSteve]

Nice to know there is someone else near to me

There's a wee little group of us here in Lancaster - all relative noobs (me and the mumbler and I think Paul's here somewhere too) - trying to get a bit of a bottle and kit swap/co-op going between us. If you;re ever up for splitting sacks of malt from leyland let us know!

Also - if you're runnign cornies and you need CO2 cannisters there's a place in Lancaster whch sells for £13 and refills for £6

[lancsSteve]

I was having a chat with my mate ben (aka 'The mumbler') earlier this evening who helped apply Occam's Razor to this here conundrum.

SOME BACKGROUND:
One piece of equipment/proces I failed to mention was that I only have kitchen scales and use a large mixing bowl/measuring jug to scoop up, weigh and add grain to a container to then be added to the mash liquor.

So we have two competing hypotheses:

1 - I achieved a semi-mythical level of efficiency of 95%

OR

2 - I weighed the grain wrong

Let's apply occam's razor:
"When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question."

So that'd be: I put 6kg in not 5kg then...

Hmmmm, where's the 'rock to crawl under' thread?

[WHL]

Hmmmm, where's the 'rock to crawl under' thread?

I leave mine all about the internet.

[Trefoyl]

Ha ha! I did the same thing recently. It's easy to lose count as you fill the bowl on the scale. What was weird is that I was taking pictures of the process, and found the proof of my mysteriously high efficiency when I enlarged the photo.
Thanks for your concise quote explaining Occam's Razor. Always learning something fascinating on this forum.

[lancsSteve]

Stuck at 10.22 and got infected



Decorators in so dust and problems - hardly a suprise but not a winner...

[kay-jay]

hi all,

semi-mythical level of efficiency of 95%

i am lucky to have found my grandads brewing recipes and journal from the 1970s, in it he describes 85% efficiency as very poor. he regularly achieved 95%.

the only reason i can suppose for this from reading his journal is that he mashed overnight from midnight til 9.30 am.

if anyone can shed any light on this i would be very grateful for the info.

KJ

[steve_flack]

High Mash efficiency isn't necessarily a good thing...unless you're a brewery accountant.

[Graham]

hi all,

i am lucky to have found my grandads brewing recipes and journal from the 1970s, in it he describes 85% efficiency as very poor. he regularly achieved 95%.

the only reason i can suppose for this from reading his journal is that he mashed overnight from midnight til 9.30 am.

if anyone can shed any light on this i would be very grateful for the info.

KJ

He is using a fixed extract of 30 points per pound for the grains and 37 points for the sugar; which is fair enough. That gives a total of 247 points. One assumes that he collected 5.75 gallons @ 1.038 which gives 218.5 points, so his mash efficiency 218.5 / 247 = 88%. That is still high, particularly when using a grain bag (love to know what the perforated insert was). His maximum possible efficiency would be 97% with an all pale malt grist because the lab extract is given 'dry' but pale malt contains a minimum 3% moisture. The flakes contain 9% moisture minimum, reducing it further. So 88% is not to be sniffed at if it was for real. He could have been relying on the calibrations on the side of his collection bin for volume, which are notoriously inaccurate. If the volume is not accurate. nor will be the efficiency calculation.

Interestingly, he is using the traditional commercial brewers method of mashing in at 140°F and then raising the temperature to 150°F, which is exactly what I do, except that I raise the temperature by underlet. Less chance of knackering enzymes by too high a strike heat that way. His use of an immersion heater to raise the temperature is interesting. I assume that it was a fish tank heater. I have tried various ways of raising mash temperature, mostly failures or too expensive, which is why I stick with underletting. I had never considered a fish tank heater, probably because I am surprised that it is up to the job. It is, nevertheless a good way. Because the thermostat is inside the tube, the external surface temperature of the tube can not get up to dangerous levels and knacker the enzymes. See I learned something today. Proves that thirty-six year-old technology is still the best (except, perhaps, at playing records)

Whoops - hit the wrong button

This recipe was brewed in the same year that Dave Line's first book came out, and the chap was brewing for a few years previously. It does go to show that, contrary to popular belief, there was all-grain life before Dave Line.