Mash Efficiency/ How Finely Milled

[TartanSpecial]

Just got today's brew on (Galaxy Golden Ale) and for the first time this season (I brew October to April) I hit my gravity targets :party: I'm normally out by 5-10 points. The only difference this time was that I was using crushed malt from the Homebrew Company, and it was crushed noticeably finer than the brews I'd made from another supplier....so am assuming this made the difference, though it could also be that the mash temp was about 1 c lower (65.8 vs 66.7 I normally target). Does a finer crush always give better efficiency???....
N.B. this is last time I'm buying crushed grain since will have a mill to crush my own from 25th December.:smile:

 

[clibit]

The crushed grain I got from Geterbrewed have me about 65% efficiency first time, so I crushed it much finer myself second brew and got 85%. Grain sold crushed is milled for mash tuns. With biab you want a much finer crush.

 

[geetee]

Just a quick question re efficiency.. If you are always out by 5 - 10 points then why not recalculate with a lower efficiency which would mean more grain and then you might hit what you expect?
Worth trying milling your own first though and then reassessing your efficiency and calculations.

 

[TartanSpecial]

Just a quick question re efficiency.. If you are always out by 5 - 10 points then why not recalculate with a lower efficiency which would mean more grain and then you might hit what you expect?
Worth trying milling your own first though and then reassessing your efficiency and calculations.

Yes..I effectively did that and always had an extra half kilo or so of base malt in there to make up for the inefficiency versus theoretical set up in my software. Am looking forward to experimenting with grain crushing...initially will try to emulate the HBC crush.