Has anyone done a few brews with Loughran pale ale malt yet? Just wondering if anyone else is getting lower than usual mash efficiency from it?
It might just be that im getting a lot of grain husks at the top of the bag and a lot of the flour has dropped to the bottom as i bought the bag crushed. My last brew was a single malt ipa with 6 KG of Loughran malt and I ended up with 22 L at 1.052. I've done the same with 6 kg of marris otter and simpsons extra pale spring barley, using the same mash volume and temps (basically the max my mash tun can hold and aiming for a mash temp of 64 C) and ended up with the same volume at 1.060 both times.
That's a good question. My last eight brews have been with Loughran pale malt. I'd been using Weyermann's previously and actually found the Loughran malt gave me a few extra gravity points, even though the colour was slightly darker.
You could be right in what you say about an uneven crush. A lot of flour will give you a greater efficiency, but can cause a slow (or stuck) sparge, so the increased efficiency may not be translated into higher gravity wort.
I would certainly give the Loughran malt another go, as I've been fairly happy with it, and this may have been just a one off.
I got a bag of crushed aswell and started biab. I can't compare it to anything else but i thought that i'd share my results. My efficiencies have been 55% (first biab learning curve), 64%, 66% and 79% - from first brew to last brew. The last one i changed my sparged technique from pouring water over the grains to actually dunking the bag into the sparge water and properly squeezing it.
BIAB hit my numbers, mash tun went a bit over. Got 1060 and aiming for 1051