[redrocker652002]

So disappointed.  My preboil gravity was supposed to be at 1.075 and it was a 1.045.  But, what the heck, I am already in it, so might as well finish.  The good thing is that my preboil amount of 6.25 gallons was spot on.  Sparged at 170 to get to the preboil volume.  Now, we wait.  Maybe I am just not built for this?  I am very disappointed.  But I am going to see it to the end and see what I end up with.  The good thing is, I kept my mash temp damn near at 150 the whole time, so I am pretty happy there.  Keep a prayer out there for a novice who is very disappointed and thinking maybe I am just not built for this.  Darn it.  RR

[tommymorris]

So disappointed.  My preboil gravity was supposed to be at 1.075 and it was a 1.045.  But, what the heck, I am already in it, so might as well finish.  The good thing is that my preboil amount of 6.25 gallons was spot on.  Sparged at 170 to get to the preboil volume.  Now, we wait.  Maybe I am just not built for this?  I am very disappointed.  But I am going to see it to the end and see what I end up with.  The good thing is, I kept my mash temp damn near at 150 the whole time, so I am pretty happy there.  Keep a prayer out there for a novice who is very disappointed and thinking maybe I am just not built for this.  Darn it.  RR

Edit: I read your post wrong. I thought you measured 1070 when expecting 1045. I see it’s the other way around. You probably need to get a handle on your efficiency and then scale recipes accordingly. Hang in there. You’ll be coasting along very soon. Plus, 1052 post boil will make a nice beer. I’m sure it will be good.

[redrocker652002]

It was a IPA Clone.  I measured 1.052 into the fermenter.  I put everything into Brewfather and the liquid amounts were right on.  6.5 pre-boil and a little more than 5 gallons in the fermenter.  Who knows, but maybe you are right.  I will try it and see if I like it and go from there.  Gonna let it do it's thing for a few days, then I have an dry hop addition that I need to put in.  Probably do that after most of the bubbling stops.  Also, another positive takeaway is the starter I did seemed to work out well.  I was  bit nervous because the yeast package was very inflated, if that makes sense.  I had to open it and pop the nutrient pack with a pair of sanitized scissors, so I was not sure the yeast was good.  It smelled good though  LOL   Anyway, It is bubbling away, so we shall see.  This was my first try with all new stuff.  I was pretty happy though to keep my mash temp right at about 150.  This is the recipe i used, minus the Melaniod stuff.  LOL.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/408434/elysian-space-dust-variant

[denny]

Keep in mind that any recipe needs to be adjusted to fit the efficient of your system. You can seldom use a recipe as is.  You have a new system, so it will take a few brews to establish your efficiency.

[Richard]

Pre-boil gravity of 1.045 instead of 1.075 is a huge difference. Check your grain crush and check your mash pH. Something is very wrong. You can do some test mashes with just a cheap base malt to measure and improve your efficiency. You don't even need to do a boil and make beer. Just do the mash and measure it.

[redrocker652002]

Thanks guys.  I am not sure what happened, but there were a few things I need to figure out.  I'll get it though, just need to understand what it all means. 

Something I just thought about that might have something to do with it.  I used Xtra Pale Malt instead of Pale malt and eliminated the Melanoid malt altogether.  I wonder if that may have had something to do with my numbers not matching what the recipe said in a small way?  I am sure the efficiency you are all talking about is a big part, so that I understand I need to work out.  I might try again and use the Melanoid malt and use pale instead of xtra pale. 

Even if I use cheap base malt and do a mash, how would I know what numbers I a supposed to get?  I have no idea how to even check PH, so that is something even more out there for me.  I will work it out, but the grain did seem a bit course, so maybe asking Morebeer or whomever to grind it a bit finer might help.  Who knows, I am still trying to figure it out myself.  The fermentation is going well though, so I a holding hope that even though the numbers are off, the beer itself will be good.  Who knows.  Maybe I should stick with premade kits for now. 

[denny]

Thanks guys.  I am not sure what happened, but there were a few things I need to figure out.  I'll get it though, just need to understand what it all means. 

Something I just thought about that might have something to do with it.  I used Xtra Pale Malt instead of Pale malt and eliminated the Melanoid malt altogether.  I wonder if that may have had something to do with my numbers not matching what the recipe said in a small way?  I am sure the efficiency you are all talking about is a big part, so that I understand I need to work out.  I might try again and use the Melanoid malt and use pale instead of xtra pale. 

Even if I use cheap base malt and do a mash, how would I know what numbers I a supposed to get?  I have no idea how to even check PH, so that is something even more out there for me.  I will work it out, but the grain did seem a bit course, so maybe asking Morebeer or whomever to grind it a bit finer might help.  Who knows, I am still trying to figure it out myself.  The fermentation is going well though, so I a holding hope that even though the numbers are off, the beer itself will be good.  Who knows.  Maybe I should stick with premade kits for now.

I really doubt the malt change made any difference to OG.

pH would have to be way, way off to cause that much difference.

OK, here's the deal with efficiency...each grain has a maximum amount of sugar you can get from it.  Efficiency is a way to look at how much of that sugar you get out, or how efficient your system is. Most grain has a maximum of about 36 ppg.  That means gravity points per pound of grain per gal. of water. In a 100% efficient system, one lb. of grain in one gal. of water would give you a gravity of 1.036.  Make sense so far? If you get 75% efficiency, you'd get more like 1.025 out of that same lb. of grain and gal. of water.  So the thing to do it add up how many lb. of grain you used, multiply by 36, and divide by the number of gal. of wort you end up with.  That's called brewhouse efficiency.  There are other efficiency measures, but that's the important one to understand first.

Here's an example....let's say you use 10 lb. of grain.  At 100% efficiency, you'd have 10x36 or 360 gravity points.  If you ended up with 5 gal., that would mean an OG of 1.072.  But that's 100% and that never happens.  If your actual OG was 1.050, you'd divide 72 by 50 (50/72) which would give you an efficiency of around 69%.

[Shmello]

I’m a novice brewer too.

If you look at my thread about BIAB water volume, you can see that Kevin tried to disabuse me of the notion that a recipe “should have” the printed amounts. As I understand, by learning how your system performs you can then plug those numbers into a recipe and then you will get what the recipe “will have.”

When I plug your numbers into BeerSmith, I get an efficiency of 43%. If that turns out to be consistent, you use that number to calculate what a recipe will produce going forward.

FWIW, my efficiency improved a lot from my first BIAB try to my second. I’m guessing that the improvement probably came from milling the grain to a much finer consistency. I think when you buy the grain pre-milled it is about 0.038” and I milled mine at 0.020” for my BIAB.

Edit: I entered the full recipe into BeerSmith but you left out the melanoidin so the calculation isn’t precise.

[Richard]

I agree that everybody's system is different and you need to understand yours, but there are some targets. You could just settle for 40% efficiency, but that would be wasting a lot of malt. You should try to get efficiency in the range of 70% - 90%. My first mashes had efficiency similar to yours, but now I get 80% - 90%. Mostly due to the crush, but I have the same water as you and I know it needs to be acidified except for dark beers with a lot of roasted malt. You could try adding 4-8 oz of acidulated malt. There are cheap pH meters for use with aquariums. Go to a pet store or Amazon. You will also need to add some campden (MoreBeer sells it) to get rid of the chloramine. That doesn't affect efficiency but it does affect the taste.

[ynotbrusum]

Another wild thought - could your mash have stratified a bit going into the boil kettle?  Just guessing.  I stir my mash several times to coax good conversion and to assure a good mixing for measuring gravity.  Keep at it.  Persistence prevails for all of us eventually.  Cheers to learning your system and dialing in the process.

[redrocker652002]

Thanks guys.  I am not sure what happened, but there were a few things I need to figure out.  I'll get it though, just need to understand what it all means. 

Something I just thought about that might have something to do with it.  I used Xtra Pale Malt instead of Pale malt and eliminated the Melanoid malt altogether.  I wonder if that may have had something to do with my numbers not matching what the recipe said in a small way?  I am sure the efficiency you are all talking about is a big part, so that I understand I need to work out.  I might try again and use the Melanoid malt and use pale instead of xtra pale. 

Even if I use cheap base malt and do a mash, how would I know what numbers I a supposed to get?  I have no idea how to even check PH, so that is something even more out there for me.  I will work it out, but the grain did seem a bit course, so maybe asking Morebeer or whomever to grind it a bit finer might help.  Who knows, I am still trying to figure it out myself.  The fermentation is going well though, so I a holding hope that even though the numbers are off, the beer itself will be good.  Who knows.  Maybe I should stick with premade kits for now.

I really doubt the malt change made any difference to OG.

pH would have to be way, way off to cause that much difference.

OK, here's the deal with efficiency...each grain has a maximum amount of sugar you can get from it.  Efficiency is a way to look at how much of that sugar you get out, or how efficient your system is. Most grain has a maximum of about 36 ppg.  That means gravity points per pound of grain per gal. of water. In a 100% efficient system, one lb. of grain in one gal. of water would give you a gravity of 1.036.  Make sense so far? If you get 75% efficiency, you'd get more like 1.025 out of that same lb. of grain and gal. of water.  So the thing to do it add up how many lb. of grain you used, multiply by 36, and divide by the number of gal. of wort you end up with.  That's called brewhouse efficiency.  There are other efficiency measures, but that's the important one to understand first.

Here's an example....let's say you use 10 lb. of grain.  At 100% efficiency, you'd have 10x36 or 360 gravity points.  If you ended up with 5 gal., that would mean an OG of 1.072.  But that's 100% and that never happens.  If your actual OG was 1.050, you'd divide 72 by 50 (50/72) which would give you an efficiency of around 69%.

Ok, it is 3AM and I am at work, so I have time.  LOL.  So, taking my OG of 1.052 and using the 100% number of 1.072, 52/72) gets me about 72% if I am reading what you are saying right.  I am very much ok with that.  I then take the 15.5 pounds of grain and multiply it by 25, which is the adjusted number to my efficiency and divide it by the 5 gallons that went into the fermenter (15.5x25=387.5/5=77.5).  Again, not a bad number I don't think.  I know you are probably tired of explaining the same stuff, but I really want to understand it.  Am I on the right track?  If so, that would mean maybe the grain milling was a bit course and maybe I needed to mash a bit longer?  I am going to try this again and adjust a few things and see what happens, but i think I am starting to understand this a bit more.  Thank you do all.

[Richard]

That's not quite right. You need to use the post-mash (or pre-boil) volume and gravity to figure the mash efficiency, not the amount post-boil. The efficiency into the fermenter is the so-called brewhouse efficiency, but you should be looking at your mash efficiency. 15.5 lbs of grain at 37 points per pound per gallon would have 15.5*37 = 573.5 points per gallon. Divide by 6.5 for the volume and get 88.2 points for 100% efficiency. If you had 45 points pre-boil (SG=1.045) then your mash efficiency was 45/88.2 = 51%.

[denny]

That's not quite right. You need to use the post-mash (or pre-boil) volume and gravity to figure the mash efficiency, not the amount post-boil. The efficiency into the fermenter is the so-called brewhouse efficiency, but you should be looking at your mash efficiency. 15.5 lbs of grain at 37 points per pound per gallon would have 15.5*37 = 573.5 points per gallon. Divide by 6.5 for the volume and get 88.2 points for 100% efficiency. If you had 45 points pre-boil (SG=1.045) then your mash efficiency was 45/88.2 = 51%.

Except that I directed him to calculate brewhiuse efficiency. I feel like that's the first step to get a handle on overall system efficiency.

[BrewBama]

I use this as my benchmark for mash efficiency.

From How to Brew Chap 18: Calculate how efficient your extraction was. Measure the gravity in the boiling pot and multiply the points by the number of gallons you collected. Then divide by the number of pounds of grain you used.

For example my recent brew Fri:

1.032 pre boil
6 gal pre boil
6.375 lbs grain

32 x 6 = 192. 192 / 6.375 = 30.1

Palmer continues: The result should be somewhere around 30 ppg. 27 is okay, 29 is good, and over 30 is great. If it is 25 or below, you are lautering too fast or you are not getting good conversion in the mash, which could be caused by having too coarse a grist, the wrong temperature, not enough time, it got cold, or a pH factor, et cetera.

For me, in my brewery, for my mill setting, I like a 90 min mash. That 90 min includes mash in (usually below mash temp), mash, and mash out (usually above mash temp).  When I follow my personal processes I routinely hit 30+.

[Shmello]

Thanks guys.  I am not sure what happened, but there were a few things I need to figure out.  I'll get it though, just need to understand what it all means. 

Something I just thought about that might have something to do with it.  I used Xtra Pale Malt instead of Pale malt and eliminated the Melanoid malt altogether.  I wonder if that may have had something to do with my numbers not matching what the recipe said in a small way?  I am sure the efficiency you are all talking about is a big part, so that I understand I need to work out.  I might try again and use the Melanoid malt and use pale instead of xtra pale. 

Even if I use cheap base malt and do a mash, how would I know what numbers I a supposed to get?  I have no idea how to even check PH, so that is something even more out there for me.  I will work it out, but the grain did seem a bit course, so maybe asking Morebeer or whomever to grind it a bit finer might help.  Who knows, I am still trying to figure it out myself.  The fermentation is going well though, so I a holding hope that even though the numbers are off, the beer itself will be good.  Who knows.  Maybe I should stick with premade kits for now.

I really doubt the malt change made any difference to OG.

pH would have to be way, way off to cause that much difference.

OK, here's the deal with efficiency...each grain has a maximum amount of sugar you can get from it.  Efficiency is a way to look at how much of that sugar you get out, or how efficient your system is. Most grain has a maximum of about 36 ppg.  That means gravity points per pound of grain per gal. of water. In a 100% efficient system, one lb. of grain in one gal. of water would give you a gravity of 1.036.  Make sense so far? If you get 75% efficiency, you'd get more like 1.025 out of that same lb. of grain and gal. of water.  So the thing to do it add up how many lb. of grain you used, multiply by 36, and divide by the number of gal. of wort you end up with.  That's called brewhouse efficiency.  There are other efficiency measures, but that's the important one to understand first.

Here's an example....let's say you use 10 lb. of grain.  At 100% efficiency, you'd have 10x36 or 360 gravity points.  If you ended up with 5 gal., that would mean an OG of 1.072.  But that's 100% and that never happens.  If your actual OG was 1.050, you'd divide 72 by 50 (50/72) which would give you an efficiency of around 69%.

Ok, it is 3AM and I am at work, so I have time.  LOL.  So, taking my OG of 1.052 and using the 100% number of 1.072, 52/72) gets me about 72% if I am reading what you are saying right.  I am very much ok with that.  I then take the 15.5 pounds of grain and multiply it by 25, which is the adjusted number to my efficiency and divide it by the 5 gallons that went into the fermenter (15.5x25=387.5/5=77.5).  Again, not a bad number I don't think.  I know you are probably tired of explaining the same stuff, but I really want to understand it.  Am I on the right track?  If so, that would mean maybe the grain milling was a bit course and maybe I needed to mash a bit longer?  I am going to try this again and adjust a few things and see what happens, but i think I am starting to understand this a bit more.  Thank you do all.

Ok, I’m the other novice here so take what I say with a grain of salt but I think you have a few false assumptions going on here.

First, Denny’s example showing 100% efficiency yielding 1.072 was based on using 10 pounds of barley. You used 15.5 pounds, so you weren’t close to 72%. Using Denny’s formula for your session would result in (15.5 X 36/5 = 111.6) and your efficiency would be 52/111.6 = 46.6%.

Next, the figure of 25 you used as your efficiency was wrong (because you probably used the incorrect 72% figure). In your example you show that a brewer that gets 25 gravity points per pound, using 15.5 pounds of grain and collecting 5 gallons of wort, would get an OG of 1.0775, but you only got 1.052. So you’re not getting that much extraction.

I hope I’m not making things more confusing, but everyone is showing you slightly different ways of calculating the figures. I thought it might be useful to use your real world examples and address your calculations.