My efficiency may not be what I thought it was ...

[Otto Von Blotto]

I'm happy to be proven wrong on this but I believe the mash temp doesn't affect the OG unless as I said, it gets too high and denatures the enzymes before they've finished conversion of the starches in the grains. This doesn't appear to be the case here though. You can do an iodine test to confirm conversion has completed before boiling it if you are unsure.

 

It will affect the FG though as headmaster has explained. The beta amylase works mainly in the low 60s, and it breaks down the starches further than alpha amylase, so the resultant sugars are more fermentable and you get a lower FG. I'm led to believe it is slower to work than alpha too, so these low mashes are usually quite long. Alpha works in the mid-high 60s into the low 70s and creates more dextrins, increasing the FG.

[Waylon]

If you start your mash around 64 degrees and rest for 60-120 minutes before raising you will achieve more efficiency than if doing a standard single infusion mash @ 68 degrees

 

If you want a bigger bodied beer mashed 68-72 you will loose fermentable sugars!

 

If you want a slightly thinner dryer type beer 64 degrees your efficiency will be higher...

 

[Otto Von Blotto]

Nonsense. The temperature won't affect efficiency. It will affect the final gravity, but this has nothing to do with brewhouse efficiency. Yes you will get less fermentable sugars with a higher temp mash, but the OG will be the same.

[Waylon]

I wouldn't say its rubbish Kelsey,

Getting your mash fine tuned as well as sparging correctly plays a big part in efficiency!

The main thing is we make good beer to our limitations!

Its amateur brewing its never going to be perfect... happy days

[Otto Von Blotto]

I wouldn't say its rubbish Kelsey' date='

Getting your mash fine tuned as well as sparging correctly plays a big part in efficiency!

The main thing is we make good beer to our limitations!

Its amateur brewing its never going to be perfect... happy days[/quote']That may be true, but assuming all other factors are the same except for the temperature of the mash itself, the efficiency won't change purely based on that alone.

 

For instance, you don't get a higher efficiency mashing at 64 degrees than you do at 68 degrees; the OG remains the same, it's only the FG that changes, and that has nothing to do with efficiency.

[Waylon]

Personaly I now program my recipes into brewers friend...

 

I make my recipe on then brew my beer as planned, through taking fractometer readings through the run off process and then taking OG I then make note of final volume of finished wort in fermenter and the do a final gravity once fermented!

 

I then get my effinciency based on the above!

[ben 10]

 

If you want a bigger bodied beer mashed 68-72 you will loose fermentable sugars!

 

 

Efficiency is not about fermentables but sugars.

[ben 10]

through taking fractometer readings through the run off process

 

How does a fractometer help?

 

http://www.imlusa.com/html/fractometer.html

[Otto Von Blotto]

I've only said it 59632956 times but again.... brewhouse, or overall efficiency is based on nothing more than the batch volume (what's in the FV), and its gravity reading (being the OG). Nothing else. Not FG or mash temperature; these don't have any effect on it, especially the FG, that's way after the fact. You may as well count the blades of grass in the lawn for all the use it would be. Batch volume and OG is all that is used to calculate it.

 

Obviously the sparging process (if one is used) will ultimately affect the batch volume and OG, however, this is obviously done after the mash itself. It doesn't affect the fermentability, not that that itself has any impact on efficiency either.

 

I record all the other shit too because I like to know the information; I don't sparge doing BIAB but I do record pre-boil volume and its SG to see what my mash efficiency was. It gives me an idea of what OG to expect post-boil as well. Batch volumes are always pretty much the same for each profile (21 or 25 litres). I record FG for ABV calculations but also to see how the mash performed against the predictions and whether or not I want to change it the next time around, either to achieve a lower or higher FG.

[porschemad911]

Well, after much confusion regarding the almost completely useless 'Brewhouse Efficiency' input, and a few batches coming in under the predicted OG, I have worked out a way to get Beersmith to make sense. I say completely useless for that input because because this value takes into account losses to trub, which have nothing to do with how efficiently you extracted sugar from grain.

 

Suppose you are brewing an IPA with all hop flowers for a change. You know you will lose more to trub in this case, which means you need a greater pre-boil volume. But, if you change the 'Loss to trub' value, your OG will remain the same, but your predicted mass efficiency will magically increase to maintain that OG in the now larger volume. Why? Your real mash efficiency wouldn't change?! It stems from the overall 'Brewhouse Efficiency' being the user-driven input, rather than your mash efficiency, which is what you would know in real life. So the end result of this? Your expected mash efficiency is unrealistically high for your system, so you will hit your volume, but come in under OG. Madness! And the cause of about a million confused Beersmith users all over the internet.

 

Anyway, I'm done with that, working backwards from the fermenter volume like that is just crazy. The only measurement you need to measure how efficiently you got sugar out of grain is the mash efficiency, calculated using the pre-boil volume and gravity in your kettle. This is how Brewhouse Efficiency was defined in commercial brewing forever, and was only confused when Beersmith came along and redefined it for homebrewers to use the fermenter volume instead. I've no idea why, just a different take on things I guess, which unfortunately does more harm than good.

 

The good news is I've found that there is a way to get Beersmith to make more sense. In my equipment profile, I've set my 'Lauter Tun Losses' and 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' values both to zero, included the real amount lost to trub in the 'Fermenter Loss' field and increased my batch size to allow for the amount lost to trub.

 

Why did I do this? The end result is that the useless 'Brewhouse Efficiency' input effectively becomes a useful 'Mash Efficiency' input. The volumes will still be correct and now I can at last stop guesstimating what value I should input for efficiency, based on the mash / boil / post-boil losses and use a measured value at the beginning of the boil. And if I brew a big IPA with all hop flowers, I would just increase my batch size to cater for the extra losses to trub, and it hasn't magically increased my mash efficiency unrealistically to compensate.

[Otto Von Blotto]

I've never had any issues with Beersmith like that. But when I design a recipe I'm designing what I want in the fermenter, not what I want in the kettle pre-boil, so it makes more sense to me to take into account all these things that affect that final volume. I know what my losses are and they don't change much. If I'm using more hops such as in my pilsners then I'll instinctively increase the pre-boil volume a little to account for it but I don't change any settings in Beersmith. If I use a bigger grain bill I reduce the total efficiency, which in turn reduces the predicted mash efficiency, because I know that big grain bills will do that. No recipe I've ever read has used the mash efficiency to design it, they always go off the fermenter volume and SG.

 

I've also never heard of Brewhouse Efficiency being used to describe the mash efficiency because it's only half of the brewhouse, if that. The brewhouse includes everything; the mash tun, the lauter tun if one is used, the kettle and any other piece of equipment that is used to get the wort into its final destination being the fermenter tank.

 

The brewhouse efficiency is a measure of how efficiently all that equipment and process turned the raw ingredients into the wort in the fermenter. Calling it useless is a bit of a stretch, because it is the figure used to predict the OG, IBUs etc. and if your processes are consistent then it shouldn't really vary by much batch to batch. If you're having problems then obviously losses aren't being measured properly, because I don't have any issues at all, and while I've seen others a little confused at first, once they get their systems sorted and measurements correct, they have no further problems.

 

I know my trub loss, I know my boil off, I know how much pre-boil volume I need to achieve what I want in the fermenter. And from measuring OG's and fermenter volumes of numerous batches, I know my brewhouse efficiency is always 75%, often slightly higher. All these figures are locked into my two equipment profiles that I use for my two batch sizes, and all numbers are always either hit or slightly exceeded. On rare occasions I'll have maybe a litre less volume but I don't worry about it. It works, if you do it right.

 

I do measure the mash efficiency, but I don't use it for anything except knowing the mash went well and as a guide as to what to expect post boil, and I certainly don't design recipes around it. It makes no sense to me to design a recipe based on half the process. It also is a figure that remains pretty consistent from batch to batch on my system.

 

However, obviously what you're doing works for you and if so then fantastic. It doesn't mean the rest of us who use the brewhouse efficiency are doing it wrong or badly though, because if the brewhouse efficiency is consistent, it works very well for recipe design and confidence that you'll end up with what is desired in the FV at the end of the brew day. I've certainly had no problems using it for recipe design and if I end up a point or two above or below my target, or a half a litre more or less, I really couldn't care less because it doesn't change the beer that drastically, if at all, to worry about it.

 

Cheers

 

Kelsey

[headmaster]

porschemad911,

 

Glad to hear there's someone else who shares this view. As I mentioned in earlier posts on this thread, using mash efficiency makes a lot more sense for all the reasons you mentioned.

 

I don’t really care what the history, what it is named or how the commercial breweries do it, I want to know what the baseline efficiency is so that I have a benchmark for my practices that removes the trub/break variable. What if I wanted to change my mill settings to observe the difference, but for that brew didn’t manage to tap out as much wort due to the break/trub wanting to exit the tap earlier due to the way it settled or variation in amounts of break/trub.

 

[Mark D Pirate]

So leaning towards what brewers friend call conversion ?

last few brews have come in showing high 80% conversion but overall brewhouse at about 72-73%

i am putting max 4kg of grain into a 21 L pot , batch size at full strength 4.5-5% ABV is 19L into FV .

I do mash out , sparge and squeeze the bag so this no doubt helps a bit

i follow OVB advice about keeping crap out of FV so could get more into FV but it'd be the cold break and assorted hop matter and proteins , which would give me better numbers but maybe not better beer .

 

same as in almost everything i do i'm looking for predictable /repeatable results and am prepared to spend the extra cents on more grain to consistently hit OG within a point or two .

 

When i started i thought brewing at home would be just about cheap beer ,Quality of beers has improved exponentially but still room to improve and still so bloody much to learn

 

[porschemad911]

Kelsey, translate 'useless' as 'problematic' ... I couldn't think of the exact word at the time and that seemed to be the closest fit! Designing recipes for your system requires the application of a 'system efficiency constant' if you will. I believe that the start of the boil is the best place to both derive and apply this constant. Why? Because efficiency is a proportional unit of measure, and it is in the mash and lauter processes that you are extracting a portion of the potential extract. You don't lose gravity points during the boil and losses after the boil are not proportional to grain potential and therefore don't really belong in such a measurement.

 

So to design a recipe for or translate a recipe to your system in Beersmith using 'mash efficiency' rather than 'brewhouse efficiency', you would fill in the grain percentages, apply the mash efficiency you would expect to achieve (estimated based on past results with similar OG and grain bill), set your batch size to allow for expected trub losses, then scale your grain bill until the predicted OG (SG of the post-boil, cooled wort) matches the OG you're after. I believe that doing it this way will have a higher probability of producing the desired outcome, and would definitely recommend it over using the 'brewhouse efficiency'. In practice, if you brew a few styles repeatedly with fairly similar OGs, it won't make much difference. If your recipes are all over the place style and gravity-wise however, I do think this method gives greater confidence in the predicted results.

 

Agreed headmaster, the 'mash efficiency' (efficiency as measured pre-boil) is a much better baseline for tracking over time. How much of that liquid you discard later has no bearing on how much sugar you managed to extract from your grain bill relative to its potential. I believe that when brewing a new recipe for the first time, using past measurements of the measured 'mash efficiency' value for batches with a similar OG will allow you to estimate a 'mash efficiency' with a greater degree of confidence in its accuracy, compared to Beersmith's 'brewhouse efficiency', aka 'efficiency into the fermenter'.

 

Markoman, if conversion efficiency is as per this Brewer's Friend article, then I am talking about what it defines as 'efficiency into kettle' or 'mash efficiency' which takes into account conversion efficiency + lautering efficiency.

 

Cheers,

 

John

[Otto Von Blotto]

I think your confusion is stemming from a misunderstanding of what brewhouse efficiency actually is. You seem to be treating it like a measurement of sugar extraction from the grains, but that's not what it is. It is a part of it, but as already stated it takes into account all the losses through the entire brewing process. It is a measure of the efficiency of the brewing process as a whole, not simply sugar extraction which obviously is mash efficiency.

 

If recipes are all over the place in regards to OGs then the mash efficiency will also be all over the place as will the brewhouse efficiency so I don't really see what difference it makes.

 

At the end of the day, I design recipes using what I'm used to and what makes the most sense to me, and you guys do the same thing. I still hit my targets every batch. The only difference is what efficiency number we use to do this.

[Mark D Pirate]

As long as i'm getting consistent results i'll be happy !

Yes John that's the same article i read but seemed to be more geared to 3V brewers .

I've been measuring my pre boil SG / Vol to see what effect my running a thicker mash has on extraction of sugars from grain , not quite bothered to measure sparge runoff SG yet as i sparge / squeeze until kettle is up to boil vol .

If i move to no chill brewing i'll probably find my brewhouse numbers go up as i'm leaving a bit in kettle to avoid crap in FV but at this stage rather get predictable results than chasing numbers

 

[Otto Von Blotto]

If i move to no chill brewing i'll probably find my brewhouse numbers go up as i'm leaving a bit in kettle to avoid crap in FV but at this stage rather get predictable results than chasing numbers

And you'll still be leaving a bit in the kettle with no-chill as well

 

Take it from me, you don't want that crap in the cube either because it is very easily disturbed when picking the cube up to transfer it to the FV, which of course sees it all end up in the FV anyway. Leave the crud in the kettle where it belongs. You will find you'll need a few litres extra volume than the cube is rated for in the kettle post boil in order to transfer only clean wort. For example, for a 20L cube I need to have about 25-26 litres of wort in the urn post boil to account for the trub, and the cube holding more like 22L.

[Mark D Pirate]

What about the cold break ? im losing plenty of volume into FV by keeping that out ( i use ice bath to bring entire boil kettle down to near pitching temp)

if i was no chilling the cold break would have time to settle / compact in cube wouldn't it?

[porschemad911]

G'day Markoman,

 

Yes in a cube it will slowly settle ... at least it does in my cubes. However, because they don't have a vent, cubes aren't the best for pouring without disturbing sediment at the bottom, so you will get a fair bit of it mixing. Unless you pour really, really slowly I suppose, but then you would be getting less aeration.

 

Cheers,

 

John

[porschemad911]

It is a measure of the efficiency of the brewing process as a whole' date=' not simply sugar extraction which obviously is mash efficiency.[/quote']

Hmmm, shouldn't it be based on the final packaged volume then? I would have thought that's the end of this whole brewing process ... ie how much finished, packaged beer did you get out of the batch in the end?

 

If recipes are all over the place in regards to OGs then the mash efficiency will also be all over the place as will the brewhouse efficiency so I don't really see what difference it makes.

Yes' date=' but the 2 different measurements mean that the efficiency value for the new recipe is estimated in 2 different ways:

 

[b']1) Brewhouse Efficiency[/b]

Ok, for this new recipe it's similar to these other 3 in gravity, so I'll estimate a similar brewhouse efficiency number. Oh wait, I'm using whole hops this time, that will give me more trub losses. But how much more? Let's say 3 litres extra, which is what happed in a different gravity batch with the same amount of hops, so I'd better add 3 more litres into my 'Losses to trub' setting. Oh wait, that kept my brewhouse efficiency and OG the same. That can't be right, my brewhouse efficiency should be lower because I've got more volume losses. Ok well what should my new brewhouse efficiency value be? Hmmm oh crap, now I have to convert a fixed volume number into a portion of a percentage covering all process up until the fermenter. Is there a formula for that? I haven't seen one ... let's drop it by say 3%. Is that right? I'm not sure, but it's worth a try right?

 

2) Mash Efficiency

Ok, for this new recipe it's similar to these other 3 in gravity, so I'll estimate a similar mash efficiency number. Oh wait, I'm using whole hops this time, that will give me more trub losses. But how much more? Let's say 3 litres extra, which is what happed in a different gravity batch with the same amount of hops. So I'd better increase my batch size by 3 litres. Well that dropped my OG and IBUs as I'd expect, so I'd better scale those back up. Ok done, I'm pretty confident that the predicted results are fairly accurate

 

You get the idea, they can both work, but one's easier and gives more confidence in the estimate than the other.

 

Cheers,

 

John

[Mark D Pirate]

G'day Markoman' date='

 

Yes in a cube it will slowly settle ... at least it does in my cubes. However, because they don't have a vent, cubes aren't the best for pouring without disturbing sediment at the bottom, so you will get a fair bit of it mixing. Unless you pour really, really slowly I suppose, but then you would be getting less aeration.

 

Cheers,

 

John[/quote']

Thanks John , so you pour out of the large hole at top ?

I had assumed you'd fill cube from there then lay on its back , unscrew bung at front to purge air while using knee or foot then tighten bung and leave it on its back so any hop material /break would stay as far from tap as possible ideally trapped behind the bulge on the base

[headmaster]

Another variable I find hard to predict is the amount of trub, changes with % wheat I might use for eg.

 

One thing I have noticed is that when I route my re-circ through the stainless hop spider thing I use, there is less trub when transferring to cube, but I do have to take out the hop spider and rinse it out during the boil, as it clogs up with trub/break then overflows. I can only do this after the hops being boiled in there have been in there long enough to release their oils and flavors.

 

Anyway, I try and leave most of the trub behind when racking to cube. I still transfer some in the process though, not too worried about that. I usually leave behind 1.5 litres of trub/wort, and rack about 22 to 24 litres to cube.

 

Sure there is a whole bunch of break/trub at the bottom when cool. I just pour the whole lot in the FV. I don't like to waste any of that precious liquid! I think a couple of Exbeeriments on Brulosohphy seemed to indicate this stuff doesn't hurt your beer, and may even be beneficial in some way possibly, can't quite remember.

 

All I know is using this this process seems works well, and looking at some of the tasting notes from the BJCP certified judges who tasted my beers at the NSW Comp recently, they would tend to agree with a first in the strong ale category, highest score for a witbier in the comp.

 

At the end of fermentation, this trub must settle down to very little mass as there's not much to speak of, certainly more yeast than trub when I perform Phils ' yeast harvesting for dummies' method.

[Otto Von Blotto]

What about the cold break ? im losing plenty of volume into FV by keeping that out ( i use ice bath to bring entire boil kettle down to near pitching temp)

if i was no chilling the cold break would have time to settle / compact in cube wouldn't it?

Yes, but cold break is nowhere near as much of an issue being in the fermenter as hot break is.

 

Yes you just open the lid and pour it out through there. They always get stored upright because otherwise you can't stack them on top of each other. The air purging through the bung idea would work of course but two issues with storing the cube on its back are that it's pointless unless you're using a tap on the cube and even then, turning the cube back upright to use the tap to transfer the wort would just see all the shit stirred up again anyway. When I used to use taps on my cubes I would store them upright, and the rubbish would settle below the tap level so I got very little of it into the FV, and what I did get in there was mostly cold break anyway.

[Otto Von Blotto]

I think a couple of Exbeeriments on Brulosohphy seemed to indicate this stuff doesn't hurt your beer' date=' and may even be beneficial in some way possibly, can't quite remember.

[/quote']He was talking about hot break, not cold break, and to be honest he's flat out wrong. There is NO benefit whatsoever in allowing hot break into the fermenter, but there are plenty of very good reasons to keep it out, a big one being premature staling of the beer. I guess he drank his beer fast enough that it didn't occur.

[headmaster]

I think a couple of Exbeeriments on Brulosohphy seemed to indicate this stuff doesn't hurt your beer' date=' and may even be beneficial in some way possibly, can't quite remember.

[/quote']He was talking about hot break, not cold break, and to be honest he's flat out wrong. There is NO benefit whatsoever in allowing hot break into the fermenter, but there are plenty of very good reasons to keep it out, a big one being premature staling of the beer. I guess he drank his beer fast enough that it didn't occur.

 

Point taken, and doing a quick google, this article has some good info about this: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/beer-haze-cloudy-homebrew/

 

I have had issues with chill haze in a couple of early batches, one was bloody awful, but since I've started running a protein rest 30 mins at 50c, my beers are chill haze free, and come out pretty clear in most cases using no finings, using my process described above. So the clarity would indicate that my beers are stable and likely not to have an impacted shelf life, using my methods.