Efficiency Bump!

[Surfingobo]

I have been brewing for over a year now, about 30 all grain batches under my belt and feel like I have a good grasp of the basics. I have been purposefully ignoring 'water' as I have been making good beer and felt that I had other areas to improve on before starting to learn a whole new area of brewing. I brew full volume BIAB in a 15L wilko stock pot for reference.

I have really struggled for mash efficiency, achieving approximately 50% after an hour with regular stirring, 60% after two hours and 60-65% for an overnight mash. While this hasn't really been too much of an issue it does make planning very difficult as it is very hard to hit the numbers. For example sometimes for an hour mash I will have 45% efficiency. Sometimes for a 2 hour mash I will have 50% efficiency and I just haven't been able to work out why!

According to my local water authority I have almost RO water with very low concentrations of everything. Using a combination of Bru'n water and Brewfather I made my first water additions yesterday in the form of Acidulated Malt, Gypsum and Calcium Chloride to bring my water up to 70ppm Calcium, 50ppm Cl and 97ppm SO4. Not really expecting a difference I left my efficiency at 60% for a 2 hour mash. Well... I achieved an 81% mash efficiency which is 16% higher than my best ever overnight mash!

i've got more batches to do to understand and achieve consistency but for anybody else with very soft tap water, I can confirm that water additions are worth getting your head around!

A 2L top up of the FV brought me back to my target OG. This is my first attempt at a Philly Sour recipe using a pale ale grist and hopping with Mosaic and Talus so I don't think that the resultant drop in IBU (25 to 20) is going to negatively affect the outcome to much.

 

[DocAnna]

It's most likely that the improvement came from the addition of the acidulated malt which will have brought the pH down to where the enzymes are more effective in the mash. We have very few salts in our water here too and the acidity typically requires some adjustment either with an added acid or an acidulated malt.

 

[Surfingobo]

You may be right and I plan on trying it both with acid/without minerals and the other way around to compare.

I understand lager is often brewed with a mineral profile very close to my tap water so if I can make the mash work with just acid additions that would be ideal

 

[foxy]

I have been brewing for over a year now, about 30 all grain batches under my belt and feel like I have a good grasp of the basics. I have been purposefully ignoring 'water' as I have been making good beer and felt that I had other areas to improve on before starting to learn a whole new area of brewing. I brew full volume BIAB in a 15L wilko stock pot for reference.

I have really struggled for mash efficiency, achieving approximately 50% after an hour with regular stirring, 60% after two hours and 60-65% for an overnight mash. While this hasn't really been too much of an issue it does make planning very difficult as it is very hard to hit the numbers. For example sometimes for an hour mash I will have 45% efficiency. Sometimes for a 2 hour mash I will have 50% efficiency and I just haven't been able to work out why!

According to my local water authority I have almost RO water with very low concentrations of everything. Using a combination of Bru'n water and Brewfather I made my first water additions yesterday in the form of Acidulated Malt, Gypsum and Calcium Chloride to bring my water up to 70ppm Calcium, 50ppm Cl and 97ppm SO4. Not really expecting a difference I left my efficiency at 60% for a 2 hour mash. Well... I achieved an 81% mash efficiency which is 16% higher than my best ever overnight mash!

i've got more batches to do to understand and achieve consistency but for anybody else with very soft tap water, I can confirm that water additions are worth getting your head around!

A 2L top up of the FV brought me back to my target OG. This is my first attempt at a Philly Sour recipe using a pale ale grist and hopping with Mosaic and Talus so I don't think that the resultant drop in IBU (25 to 20) is going to negatively affect the outcome to much.

I don't need to use any acid, the gypsum and chloride in a small quantity fixes my water. Keep the none fermentables out until mashout and you will have a constant addition throughout.

 

[Surfingobo]

I don't need to use any acid, the gypsum and chloride in a small quantity fixes my water. Keep the none fermentables out until mashout and you will have a constant addition throughout.

No real mash out with Biab!

 

[Northern_Brewer]

This is my first attempt at a Philly Sour recipe using a pale ale grist and hopping with Mosaic and Talus so I don't think that the resultant drop in IBU (25 to 20) is going to negatively affect the outcome to much.

Have a read of this thread if you haven't already :

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...-sour-feedback-or-experience-to-share.682096/
and in particular the Sui Generis articles I link to in post #263 of that thread.

But yeah, calcium always helps the mash enzymes.

 

[Slid]

I did AG with the same pot and cannot get my head around the fact that you try to do FV BIAB.
My method was to do up to 2.75kg of grain with 2.7L/kg of water, strike temp 75C and bung the pot in the oven at 50C and stir it maybe twice in a 60m mash.

Then you bring it up to mash out 75C, should that seem important, stirring the whole time and then pour the whole lot into the Bag, which lines the FV.

Then you transfer the available wort from the FV back into the Pot and start heating to boiling, with the bittering hops. In the meantime, you add the sparge water, at ~ 75C to the Bag, still in the FV and leave that for a while, also stirring that to extract the sugars from the grain. The "dunk sparge" can even be repeated.

After you finish squeezing the bag, the second lot of wort goes into the big pan and any surplus goes into other, smaller pans, to get boiling and top up the big pan as the liquid evaporates.

That way you get 10-12L at decent enough efficiencies. Adding a one can kit obviates the need for bittering hops and gives you a full length brew that can be pimped up quite nicely with the fashionable American etc hop additions.

 

[Alan_Reginato]

It's most likely that the improvement came from the addition of the acidulated malt which will have brought the pH down to where the enzymes are more effective in the mash. We have very few salts in our water here too and the acidity typically requires some adjustment either with an added acid or an acidulated malt.

The tap water here is pretty low in everything too. I do full mash biab, so while brewing, I add the base malts and after 30 min do an iodine test. Just after that, the specials go in. Once I got a high pH and had to add citric acid, through some lemon juice addition. I don't have a phmeter, neither though in buy one. So, this method is a way to go on.
Another time, I added too much carafa, and the pH probably drops a lot. In that case, the efficiency suffered. But the beer turned out somewhat drinkable.

 

[Surfingobo]

I did AG with the same pot and cannot get my head around the fact that you try to do FV BIAB.
My method was to do up to 2.75kg of grain with 2.7L/kg of water, strike temp 75C and bung the pot in the oven at 50C and stir it maybe twice in a 60m mash.

Then you bring it up to mash out 75C, should that seem important, stirring the whole time and then pour the whole lot into the Bag, which lines the FV.

Then you transfer the available wort from the FV back into the Pot and start heating to boiling, with the bittering hops. In the meantime, you add the sparge water, at ~ 75C to the Bag, still in the FV and leave that for a while, also stirring that to extract the sugars from the grain. The "dunk sparge" can even be repeated.

After you finish squeezing the bag, the second lot of wort goes into the big pan and any surplus goes into other, smaller pans, to get boiling and top up the big pan as the liquid evaporates.

That way you get 10-12L at decent enough efficiencies. Adding a one can kit obviates the need for bittering hops and gives you a full length brew that can be pimped up quite nicely with the fashionable American etc hop additions.

I like 8L batches, i tend to drink maybe 6 beers a week and buy some in so I brew more than I drink!

 

[Maxonian]

I have been brewing for over a year now, about 30 all grain batches under my belt and feel like I have a good grasp of the basics. I have been purposefully ignoring 'water' as I have been making good beer and felt that I had other areas to improve on before starting to learn a whole new area of brewing. I brew full volume BIAB in a 15L wilko stock pot for reference.

I have really struggled for mash efficiency, achieving approximately 50% after an hour with regular stirring, 60% after two hours and 60-65% for an overnight mash. While this hasn't really been too much of an issue it does make planning very difficult as it is very hard to hit the numbers. For example sometimes for an hour mash I will have 45% efficiency. Sometimes for a 2 hour mash I will have 50% efficiency and I just haven't been able to work out why!

According to my local water authority I have almost RO water with very low concentrations of everything. Using a combination of Bru'n water and Brewfather I made my first water additions yesterday in the form of Acidulated Malt, Gypsum and Calcium Chloride to bring my water up to 70ppm Calcium, 50ppm Cl and 97ppm SO4. Not really expecting a difference I left my efficiency at 60% for a 2 hour mash. Well... I achieved an 81% mash efficiency which is 16% higher than my best ever overnight mash!

i've got more batches to do to understand and achieve consistency but for anybody else with very soft tap water, I can confirm that water additions are worth getting your head around!

A 2L top up of the FV brought me back to my target OG. This is my first attempt at a Philly Sour recipe using a pale ale grist and hopping with Mosaic and Talus so I don't think that the resultant drop in IBU (25 to 20) is going to negatively affect the outcome to much.

How fine was your grain crushed for this batch? I buy my grain crushed and my mash efficiency was consistently between 60 and 65%. On a brew day about 18 months ago I noticed some of the grains weren’t really crushed at all so I gave the entire grain bill a few pulses in my food processor and the resulting efficiency was 80%. Total game changer. I’ve done this ever since and never have less than 80% mash efficiency. It’s a fairly consistent 83% so that’s what I calculate all my recipes to.

On a side note, I absolutely love the Philly Sour yeast. A friend of mine said it tastes like kombucha which is a pretty good description. For me it tastes like how a hay barn smells (if that makes sense) but with a load of apple, pear and apricot vibes. Great yeast.

 

[The Baron]

It's most likely that the improvement came from the addition of the acidulated malt which will have brought the pH down to where the enzymes are more effective in the mash. We have very few salts in our water here too and the acidity typically requires some adjustment either with an added acid or an acidulated malt.

I think you are spot on with that Doc, PH in the mash is very important

 

[Surfingobo]

It was crushed by GEB and was a bag of pale malt that I had already brewed with so I don’t believe the crush is relevant in this case. I have ordered some fine crush from malt Miller so will see how that goes