I throttle my pump to X gpm. That way I know how long it takes for the entire mash volume in gallons to recirculate thru the grain bed. Recirculation is one technique to improve efficiency. pH, recipe design, grain crush, and temperature are a few others.
Gotcha on that. The foundry comes with a clamp to throttle the flow but haven't tried to measure the gph. I just make it look close to what Short Circuited Brewers uses on his Foundry video
It's on my todo to address the other efficiency variables. I know they are there and maybe working against me but it seems I should get my boil volumes repeatable with a recipe I like as a baseline and go from there. I learned I'm getting about 55% efficiency right now, judging by what brewersfriend shows me. I didn't realize the recipe I picked is setup for 75%. So, that was the subject of some education last night.
PH and water treatment is something else I need to look at. Not sure the water I use needs a campden tablet, or epsom salts, or other additions. I just haven't dove into it yet. I did check PH because it seemed to be the most important. I have those strips because, well, I just didn't have the spare cash for one of those electric gizmos. The strips seem to always come out at 6. I tried adding a 1/4 cup of lemon juice once to an extract kit to see if it really lowered the PH and it seemed to bring it down from 6 to 5.5. I'm not sure they are meant to be that accurate though. Incidentally, I'll bet the lemon juice should be added to the strike water before mashing because why would the enzymes care about PH afterwards?
Topic: Strike water volume (Read 3103 times)
