mash out and efficiency

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Great to see you doing some experimenting jr and even though I have written an essay below, I really do like your post above. Good on you .

A couple of quick things [EDIT: Well, maybe not ]...

1. You must always define what you mean by efficiency. Most brewers don't and this causes a lot of problems. (Look at my last ten posts here and you are bound to find an 'essay' on why this is important .)

2. The only good common ground efficiency for brewers to communicate with is EIK (Efficiency into Kettle which is pretty much the same as Mash Efficiency or Post-Boil Efficiency). All efficiency figures after these simply reflect trub losses.

3. Efficiency is not a constant it is a variable. You can never say, "I get 80% mash efficiency into kettle on my brews," unless you brew the same gravity beer on every brew. When you brew a low gravity beer your EIK (and therefore all other efficiencies) should be higher than when you brew a high gravity beer.

4. Finally, measurements on a single brew can tell you very little as so much can go wrong with single measurements. (e.g. Was the grain weighed correctly? Was the gravity reading checked twice?)

BIAB's EIK should be very consistent between brewers who are brewing the same gravity beer - it should mainly vary from different 'squeezing' levels. A mashout should logically make a bit of a difference to EIK but until one brewer does the same brew over and over again varying between mashout and no mashout, we'll never know by how much. Or, the other way is for lots of brewers to talk the same language, do hundreds of brews and report their results.

Many times in brewing, we make a single change on one brew and see a change in our figures. Sometimes a second brew 'proves' these figures even though the brewer doesn't realise that more than one thing has changed and/or has not double-checked their gravity reading.

Gravity and volume (i.e. an 'efficiency'), can be checked at many stages of the brew. If you do this, all your 'efficiencies' should double-check each other but they almost never will. This is a good exercise to do because it proves how unreliable a single reading is.

So, keep exploring as a bit of fun but never take single figures from a few brews too seriously.

When I first started ag, I read so much stuff on efficiency (most of it garbage) that I didn't even really know what my measurements meant. I'd look back over brews and see that I had x% efficiency on this brew and y% on that one. In hindsight, one of them was probably EIK and the other brew I probably measured EIF (efficiency into fermentor)!

Focus on EIK and always spell out that you mean 'efficiency into kettle' and what the OG of the beer you were brewing was! These two bits of information create a common ground to work from.


PP

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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And, seeing as I have written so much of an essay on efficiency above , I might as well add in the following...

Even if two brewers are given the same grain bill and bag and squeeze the same, their 'efficiency into kettle' will also be different if...

1. They mash for different times.
2. They boil for different times.
3. Their kettles have different evaporation rates.
4. The ph of their water is different.

Even though 2 and 3 relate to the boil, they still affect EIK because the brewer will use more water to begin with - i.e. there is more water available to 'rinse' the grains.

There's probably other things I have forgotten but hopefully the above is enough to encourage those who get strange readings to not be disappointed and also to encourage brewers to take measurements when they can without becoming obsessed with them.

Often a hard balance to find when starting out ,
PP

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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I've been caught by strange reading before. I was taking my samples from the tap which has a deflector cover on the inside of the pot to reduce trub into the cube. twice now i have taken a reading without clearing some wort through the tap and come up with 1080 and 1090.

The sugars must build up in the entrance to the tap and make me look like an efficiency king then I take a second reading and it all goes to hell

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Sorry for throwing such a long essay at you jr . I was just trying to get a better understanding of your numbers. Your efficiecny into fermentor could have easilly dropped 15% when you strained as you would have lost volume and any efficiecny number is really a variation of volume times gravity.

You'll find the mashout does increase your efficiencies but no where near by as much as 15% - at most probably 5, maybe. One good use of a refractometer is in just this situation. You can take lots of readings. Individual ones might be a bit dodgy but the collection of them will tell a story so, yes, go for it!

That was much shorter ,
PP

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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Pat,why would boil length change EIK? Isn't EIK determined before boil?Take it easy on me,I'm still on island time.

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Lylo wrote:Pat,why would boil length change EIK? Isn't EIK determined before boil?Take it easy on me,I'm still on island time.

In Full Volume BIAB increasing the boil length will increase the amount of water in the mash which will increase the into boil efficiency

Basically the more water in the mash the more dilute the sugars which get trapped in the grain as absorption. Which means less sugars get removed when you pull the grain

Thus increasing the amount of water lost as evaporation will increase your efficiency

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Lylo: What stux said, in island time .

Aces high wrote:Of course, I am expecting Pat to tell me thats completely wrong and I have no idea what I am talking about.

You are completely wrong and don't know...

Oh, hold on!

The difference between a 60 and 90 min boil doesn't really make too much difference efficiency-wise, maybe 3% on a big brew like that* in your big kettle (less in other kettles) so I wouldn't be worried mate. I always go a 90 just because I think it is a safer option and I'm in no rush.

The downside of a 90 minute boil is that you get to drink more before the chill which increases the likelihood of not being able to find anything at chill time .

Not sure how you managed a 3 hour mash. I wouldn't have been able to find my kettle!


PP

* Thanks to stux for his work in being able to estimate these numbers .

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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No mention of sparging when you want increased effiency?

I mashin with 3L less water.

I then sort of lauter... I mashout and when done I pull the bag and put a refrigerator shelf on top of my urn and the grain bag goes on that. 3L of water that's warmed up (not scalding) goes through the grain and neatly drips into the kettle (and onto the bench when I'm not careful). Grainbag temperature has dropped via this sparging and I can squeeze the bag without major burns.

I paid good money for the sugar in that grain, so i figure this gives me a better chance at getting it. On the other hand, I couldn't tell you efficiency, potential alcohol etc, all I care about is if it tastes good at the end

The other exception to most processes (ie electric urn community) is that I use the plugin thermostat for my fermenting fridge on my urn - works heaps better than the urns thermostat (urn always set to boil).

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• • From United States of America
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Thanks for the tip re: foodsafe. The one I use has some plastic coating (maybe half lead, half arsenic - should have done some research).

I'll check it out but should be able to find some form of (non-aluminium) metal shelf like a cake rack or oven shelf if necessary. You turn bare cakes onto cake racks, they should be foodsafe.

The heads up is appreciated!

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Personally, I wouldn't worry about aluminum. I use an aluminum kettle for my brews. I guess you could boil or bake an aluminum rack to get the black coating on it as suggested for "seasoning" an aluminum pot. If you are buying instead of scrounging, you might find a big colander from a restaurant supply store to use.

Many people think things will be OK if they boil, but boiling only kills of biological contaminants. (Boiling can also inactivate the botulism toxin, but we're not worried about that in brewing. ) Boiling does nothing for chemical (or nuclear either, for that matter) contaminants.

Even if it won't make you sick or have long-term health consequences, you still want to think about the effects on taste. I'd always consider taste when hot wort touches plastic.

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DanIAm wrote:No mention of sparging when you want increased effiency?

Dan, I'll write a whole new thread on this soon but the guts of it will be, efficiency is very easy to increase. However, assuming you have everything under control, increases in efficiency involve more work and a very real possibility of a reduction in quality.

BIAB, in it's pure form is a single vessel, full-volume, single heat source method of all-grain brewing. It also gives a high return on grain (efficiency). Any variation from this formula means incorporating another vessel and another heat source. That's more work. It may also compromise quality.

The quality issue is harder to see. Suffice to say that there is a method of brewing that is regarded as the highest quality and there is another method of brewing that is regarded as being the most efficient. High efficiency does not mean high quality. Single vessel BIAB is a beautiful compromise.


PP

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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PistolPatch wrote:
BIAB, in it's pure form is a single vessel, full-volume, single heat source method of all-grain brewing. It also gives a high return on grain (efficiency). Any variation from this formula means incorporating another vessel and another heat source. That's more work. It may also compromise quality.

PP

PistolPatch, what I do is minimal effort, still single vessel and full volume (start with 3L less, use 3L to sparge), so I think your making a mountain out of a molehill.

1. Change thermostat to Mashout temperature (note: I mashout at 76c for 15 minutes)
2. Lift grainbag onto a rack on top of the urn
3. Rinse with 3 Liters water (I heat it to 76c, same as mashout)
4. Squeeze any extra goodness out of the grainbag or just let it drip in.

Extra step
What I otherwise do

As for the second vessel/heat source for the 3 Liters, I use the kettle and I switch it off when the temperature gets to sparge temp (I go for 76 °C). It's conveniently setup at all times in our house for tea/coffee so it's no big deal.

Also, my beer passes the taste test I am going for both efficiency and quality.

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DanIAm wrote:...I think your making a mountain out of a molehill.

Yep, I think you are right Dan. I also should not have even mentioned quality in that post as it is an issue that would mainly come into play in over-sparging on a fly-sparge.

I think the main thing I wanted to say was that high grain efficiency should not be the ultimate goal. Finding a nice balance between grain efficiency, labour time and equipment needs is a better goal. On small batches, often, as in your case, it isn't too hard to do a sparge. On larger batches, it can be problematic as a kitchen needs to be replaced with a bigger vessel and more powerful heat source.

I'm doing 4 double batches this weekend and will be sparging two of them just for fun. It's always interesting getting figures on this as it helps people in working out whether extra steps will be worth the return to them.

Another thing I'd like to try one day is the original no-sparge method where only about half the water is ever allowed to contact the grain. This is the lowest grain efficiency method but is said to give the "finest possible all-grain beer."

Forgive my mountains Dan. I often raise them ,
PP

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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Pistolpatch, no problemo.

If you read into my first post that I was involved in some elaborate setup that defeats the purpose of BIAB, you were right to challenge me on it. My reply was just a raised eyebrow sorta thing and not having a go, hope it didn't sound too snarky.

What I ought to do sometime is overcome my laziness and do 2 worts in identical conditions, one with and one without mashout/sparge. I worked in alchemy for a few years (lab technician doing gold/mineral sands/iron ore etc in WA), there is a bit inside my head that tells me that I MUST test my results and prove the better method in an eventual blind taste test < - do a golden lager?>

I don't have enough space in my fermenting fridge for 2 worts, maybe I'll do it in winter.

But I guess that raises the challenge to the BIAB community. While going to mashout temps and sparging is good for making worts ordinarily, what are the differences in doing it with BIAB for efficiency and ultimately the end taste?

If it's nominal then it's not worth doing, if it's a reasonable/significant difference then it might be a case of establishing a concept of BIAB LITE (minimal for a successful brew) and BIAB (for those who don't mind going an extra step for improved results - if that can be substantiated).

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