Efficiency

[lewis1981]

How do i up my overall efficiency as i am on my third AG and achieved an overall efficiency of 72%. I would like to be spot on or thereabouts when doing the receipes out of grahams book. I have just done a Witches Pendle brew and got a gravity of 1.044, i know this is close but this results in the brew not being as strong. I dont want to increase the quantities of grain as i would like to brew at 75% efficiency and possibly above in the future. graham states this is easily achieveable, what am i doing wrong?

[danielzieba]

i was getting 70% efficiency when i was using a grain bag in my mash tun. I was also sparging just using a syphon tube and it was taking 15 mins.....too fast!

I then built a little copper manifold out of 15mm pipe and now use a sparge arm and sparge over about 1 hours (i make 25l batches)

now my efficiency is 85% upwards....

i keep the sparge water at about 80 deg c brewed old tom the other day and my HLT was at 90 deg c and that made my effiency go down a bit.

you need to get the temperatures right.

i treat my water with some burton water crystals. I mash anywhere between 60 and 70 deg c. i find it always work within these limits...

[lewis1981]

I use a false bottom mash tun and had a mash ph of 5.5 on my last brew. i also batch sparge. when i put my second batch of water in i stir it and leave for 15mins until i run off again. am i better off fly sparging and how is this best done?

[danielzieba]

i have always fly sparged. never batch sparged.

You wont fit a revolving sparge arm nowadays so the best thing to do perhaps is get something which the grain suck as tin foil, pierce holes in it say every 10cm apart and then pour water on top. this way it will trickle through slowly. Obviously put the water on slow as well. The slower the better i find.

or if you dont want to use foil. get a lid you can cut down to size and sit it on the grain and drill loads of 2mm holes in it....you get the idea..



Dont forget to put the first running back into the mash tun!

[lewis1981]

i have collected a litre over so that is where my efficiency dropped. if i was to fly sparge how long is normal to complete this.

[dcq1974]

I always try and fly sparge with a flow rate of around a pint a minute coming out of the Mash Tun to the boiler. Do you think this flow rate is too fast?

[dcq1974]

I must also try batch sparging with my setup. I use the systems as built by http://www.Brewd00d.com and the sparge manifolds just spinkle water though small holes drilled into the manifold that sits in the igloo ice cube cool box lid. May not be that efficient and I'm assuming batch sparging is actually quicker than my system of fly sparging (takes a good hour).

Do you still use water at 80 degrees C for batch sparging?

[dcq1974]

Cheers Chris
45 mins for a 23 litre batch sounds right to me as I was quoted around the same iirc (0.5 L to a pint per min).

Wow a Valentine! Used extensively in designs by David Porter (Porter Brewing Installations) - I've seen a fair few on microbrewery setups (The Magpie Brewery has one in Nottingham) and also Hoggleys near me in Northants.

I think I may have a look at building one of those!