Hopefully efficiency will improve

[Oh Crap]

After a brutal brew day 2 was ago, efficiency at 50%.
I'm brewing next week so a few changes to hopefully bring efficiency back on track.
Mash tun is a converted keg, heavily insulated
I'm going to weigh and leave grain, in mash tun, in fermetation chamber at 20c, hopefully of set heat loss.
Also I'm using an stc controller  as a digital thermometer (I can't adjust the functions anymore)
And lastly I'll have the mass tun on its own gas ring if heat required.
Any other ideas welcome
🍺🍺🍺

[Ozbrewer]

What are you brewing? Mash step temp?

Make sure you measure your ph, a little acid malt keeps the ph down.

Sparging will be one of your more important aspects of mash efficiency. Get your sparge water up to 78c and take an hour to sparge. A slow sparge will increase mash efficiency.

[nigel_c]

The crush of your grains will also make a huge difference to efficiency.

[Oh Crap]

Brewing a Sierra nevada clone
Crush is ok nigel_c,
drink was involved leading to "it'll be fine" syndrome when strike water added and sparging
Problems occurred when strike temp dropped from 78c to well below mash temp.  After checking it turned out grain temp and mash tun temp were f'ing cold. ALSO sparge was way to fast, cheers ozbrewer.

[Ozbrewer]

Although the below link is about a rims system, it has validity to getting better efficiency. A fine crush is not always the way to go.  I crush at 0.05" for my herms setup and get 90% to 95% mash efficiency.

https://www.brewmagic.com/blog/follow-me-to-higher-efficiencies/


But here is the thing - efficiency is about saving money. What is more important is consistent efficiency. Work on that as a priority.

[Adam]

For the brews I've done so far, I've batch sparged following the instructions I get in the HBC Mash kits.
I'll mash in a given volume of water for an hour and then 15 mins before beginning the sparge I'll top up the mash tun with another given volume of water to bring it to 80degrees C.
If, for whatever reason, the initial strikewater doesn't bring my mash to the right temperature I'll add boiling water to the mash until the temp is right, then deduct the volume of added water from the amount that is supposed to go in at the top up stage.
It's not ideal, but at least I'm certain that my mash hit the right temperature for the hour and I'm certain of getting the correct volume of water into my boiler.
I'm getting good efficiency doing this, and more often than not my OG is greater than the target OG given for the mash kits.

[biertourist]

50% efficiency doesn't even make sense its so low.  How exactly are you calculating your efficiency?

Provide us some more insight because something is really wrong with 50%....


Adam

[Oh Crap]

50% efficiency doesn't even make sense its so low.  How exactly are you calculating your efficiency?

Provide us some more insight because something is really wrong with 50%....


Adam

I didn't calculate it, it's in one of the first replies,
After piecing together all the errors of the night it became obvious as to what happened....too much drink and not enough attention to detail before and during mash (drink again) I've rectified sone of the problem areas and will be at it again next week...