Mash Efficiency

I tend to build my own reipes using the recipe function here. Often they are based on other recipes but modified to suit my ingredients and taste. That said, I have found the recipe builder to be pretty accurate at determining pre-boil gravity, O.G. and ABV with the provision that you "tweak" the efficiency number to suit your system. I found that after I had made three or four recipes I could set my efficiency and get numbers that are pretty close! YMMV.
 
Mike at Bay said:
Thanks everyone. Super helpful. Connecting some of these dots is what I was missing. Leaning too much on other's recipes seems to be much of the issue. I have the beer styles judges book and will look to brew to the style and use the software to get me there. Seems like a 60 min mash should be sufficient most of the time and waiting for the negative iodine test probably threw me off this time.

And yes I added a gallon to 7.3 gallons of wort so I brought my IBU's down a bit.
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I search the style and try to find a bunch of verified(high quality) recipes and go from there. there are frequently a bunch of different opinions on how to achieve the same style so i try to meet it in the middle.

@Limey the software is good, i am just pushing my system to its limits so my boil off is lower then it should be. I usually hit my target OG, but i have yet to dig in and figure out how to adjust the preboil to match the OG.
 
I didn’t read it all so I may be repeating something.

I put the amount a recipe says into the calculator on here. Then adjust to the OG the recipe says.

You probably know your efficiency within a few percentage points either way based on the size of the batch and amount of grain.

A double crush from whoever you buy from or crushing your own will be a better efficiency. I also save a gallon of water for the end to correct OG if needed.
 
Mike at Bay said:
Thanks everyone. Super helpful. Connecting some of these dots is what I was missing. Leaning too much on other's recipes seems to be much of the issue. I have the beer styles judges book and will look to brew to the style and use the software to get me there. Seems like a 60 min mash should be sufficient most of the time and waiting for the negative iodine test probably threw me off this time.

And yes I added a gallon to 7.3 gallons of wort so I brought my IBU's down a bit.
Click to expand...
Being low and have to add DME keeping the volume theoretically is better
But at the end of the day doesn't really matter
I brew for myself and can care less about comps
I very rarely adjust and if I'm adding water it's more to get my target volume
 
ZIZ
Josh Hughes said:
I didn’t read it all so I may be repeating something.

I put the amount a recipe says into the calculator on here. Then adjust to the OG the recipe says.

You probably know your efficiency within a few percentage points either way based on the size of the batch and amount of grain.

A double crush from whoever you buy from or crushing your own will be a better efficiency. I also save a gallon of water for the end to correct OG if needed
Click to expand...
Yes, I crush my own....twice.
 
You get used to whatever mash you decide on too.
My 60 minutes weren't great a couple of times, so I decided to go 70. It worked once, and it stuck. After a little, you just develop a comfort level with what you do.
 
Actually I think he uses one of these
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Mike at Bay said:
OK gang......My point was simply that your comments were worth printing. At 64 I will be lucky if I remember to print them.
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tl;dr
I vote to use less grain and mash until iodine says it is done. Ending sooner is a waste of good malt.

Then (key point!) adjust your efficiency to your actual results.

My efficiency varies by style, but is fairly consistent (plus or minus 5% or so) between same-style beers. It took a few batches to find the average.
 
I vote to brew one of the more typical, 'bigger' beers to the completion as indicated by the "iodine test" and assess those pre-boil numbers.
This is going to be particular to your system and processes. There's a lot of overlap in what all of us do, but we all use different equipment and we all have different tolerances for just how hardheaded we will be when something isn't quite right, like missing the numbers by just a bit or something like that.

I mash to the numbers myself. If I miss because of low efficiency, I can grab some more malt, grind it up and fix it there. Then figure out what happened later. Hopefully. I could just go forward and boil off some overhead wort too. I mash and then sparge to 8.25 gallons, boil to 6.5 and t/f about 6.2 of that. By the time I've harvested yeast, drained out the trub, I typically have about 4.75 gallons of big hop IPA or about 5.75 gallons of lager. Ish.

If I have the 'overshot my numbers' problem by the end of the mash, this is a good problem to have. I can just cut it to the gravity I want and end up with > 5 gallons. I have spare 2.5 gallon kegs around to handle that.
I forget which brew it was but it went something like this:
mash was about .010 low. I'm already 90 minutes in, and have not mashed out!
added a pound of freshly ground 2 row.
mash now about .005 high.
overshot the sparge. DOH! had 9+ gallons
boiled longer / before hop schedule.
kettle heater element overtemp fault.
resume boil
finish
have almost 8 gallons of of beer.

It was a PITA brew day, but I was able to achieve success and the beer was as expected so, I'll call that one a draw.
 
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