What kind of efficiencies are you getting.

[Cain Harland]

Ive had a couple of really low efficiencies lately. And probably all along its just that I haven't measured until now. I have a few Ideas on improving it but wondering what others are getting out of what kind of system.

Also wondering when scaling a malt bill for the efficiency of a system does it all scale evenly. Or do some grains give up their sugars/flavours easier than others.

[Cain Harland]

Rectangular manifold I usually loosely cover with a grain bag for a bit of an extra filter and fail safe in case the joins (held together only by friction) come apart I wonder if this is creating a weird flow round the front of the bag.

[Scott H]

Try it without the bag and see.

[Cain Harland]

Yeah I will do that or secure the opening of the bag around the out pipe with a cable tie or food grade rubber band so there is no change of all the wart draining through the open end of the bag at one end of the tun. I had never thought about manifold shape etc effecting the flow of wart until looking at Olivers link. I can see a lot of efficiency being lost between uneven drainage, uneven distribution of sparge water and channeling on its way in.

[Scott H]

When I was chilli Bin mashing, I found that adding about 5L of water at about 90c ish to do as best of a mash out step as I could helped with my efficiency.

I would add this water and stir it round then vorlaf for the 10min mash out period then start fly sparge from there.

[Cain Harland]

I think I just need a Blichman RIMS-Rocket then I can set my pump to recirculating. If only I had a spare $400 + money for the sparky to wire up a 15amp outdoor outlet.

[vdog]

Extension lead with RCD, less than $100 and no need to wait for a sparky to be available... 

In terms of efficiency, +1 for batch sparge. Also worth having the second 'batch' hotter for the sparge - if you can get the mash up to 75C you'll get more of the sugars out. Close to 80C you start to extract tannins from the grain husks so pays to be watching your temps.

We batch sparge, grain bed is usually 12-15in deep (ish), and get around 70-75% brewhouse efficiency pretty consistently. Could probably mess with mash pH or process to improve this but at that efficiency it's not a big enough problem to be bothered about.

[Scott H]

Waste of time with the lead and rcd for 15a you would still need a 15a socket to plug into if you want 15a out the other end. Big risk of fire trying to force 15a out a 10a outlet.

[Cain Harland]

Heres a thought. With no recirculation unless its stirred a lot there is a real possibility of uneven temperature through the mash, a short recirculation (5 min) would sort this out, the only consideration is would this result in a heat loss worth avoiding.

[Peter Smith]

Stir it like it owes you money....

[oliver]

http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/564

[Cain Harland]

Just to be sure I was measuring right and my refractometer was accurate I formulated a sucrose solution for 1.081 OG and measured and it was very close. Close enough that slight inaccuracy of scales at small volume and moisture content of sugar could have made the difference, not way off like the brews.

So for next time.

1) Formulate recipe where the result of a 55% - 80% efficiency should be drinkable. Still aiming for 75% but big enough that 55% wont be piss weak and hoppy but holding back on the hops enough that 55% won't be too unbalanced and bitter.

2) Ditch grain bag around manifold. I bought some food grade rubber (silicon) bands to go around it ensuring it cant come apart while mashing but still allowing for easy disassembly. Also cut some slits on the sides of the pipes (almost all were previously on the bottom with a couple on top to let the air out) to ensure the areas that touched the bottom of the tun could still drain effectively.

3) Stir it like it owes me money.

4) Better distribution of sparge water on top of grain bed. I made a holey hose that runs the length of mash tun and will use this instead of just opening the tap on HLT and having most of the sparge water hit the same place.

I will try and remember to post here with the result in case it helps any one else

[Peter Smith]

I find my refractometer produces unrepeatable results, often out by 5 or more points, I always do a hydro reading with the remains of the pot after a few beers where way stronger abv then expected. I think I have been under reading the final OG with refractometer for ages as lots of people comment how strong beers where that I thought where 6% could have been closer to 7%. I also see a few extra points if I mash out temp rise befor spare but it could also just be extra time mashing... I mash 70~80 min if doing a biggish beer more if big wheat %, when I first started I mashed shorter time periods. My own mill and finer grain crush got my eff from high 50 to 63-68% depending on configuration. For pot in pot BIAB I think this is pretty good as I cannot control speed of spragre runoff What about slowing your sparge runoff rate right down to 1/2L per min?