All grain brewing help

[kace069]

Well my brew buddy has ran some calcualtions on some of my brews now and the best he has came up with is 59%, for one brew. The rest have all been 40-45%

Since I have moved to a cooler I have been able to hit my temps and keep them in range with no problems. My water is terrible and am guessing I am having trouble with the ph.
I have also went with a finer crush with no movement on my effeciency.
Water is about the only thing I haven't messed with.
Going to brew this weekend with RO water and see if this helps. I am not trusting my ph strips and haven't bothered buying anymore so I am flying blind. My brew buddy doesn't check ph at all and is hitting 75%
I might give fly sparging another shot but mostly I have been batch sparging, this point is still up in the air for the weekend.

 

[HomeBrew]

I also do not think that your water is the issue here. Can you elaborate on why you think that your water is bad? Few AG brewers worry about water pH. The affect of pH on mash efficiency for the homebrewer is debatable…Even more so if you are batch sparging. One risk that you take with using R/O water is that you will be missing a lot of dissolved minerals, etc. These components of water have an impact on flavor as well as yeast growth, so you may notice a difference in your final brew if you do not add supplements back after mashing. If you are concerned about pH, a simple solution is to add some Buffer 5.2 (made by Five Star Chemicals). The buffer is designed to hold your mash at optimum pH, regardless of the starting value of your water.

I think that your idea of fly sparging is definitely worth a try. In my case, batch sparging resulting in much lower efficiencies than fly. I am sure that I could have tweaked my batch process to increase yield, but I would personally rather fly and didn’t want to spend the extra time messing around.

Overall, I would not get too hung up on achieving high efficiency in your mash. A lower efficiency does not mean a lower quality brew. Grains are relatively cheap and low efficiency can be managed by adjusting your grain bill accordingly. If given the choice between high efficiency or consistent efficiency, I would choose to be consistent…This makes recipes easier to develop and more reproducible.

 

[kk390]

Have you checked to see if your hydrometer reads ~1.000 with 60° (distilled or RO) water?

 

[kace069]

1. I think my water is bad because of film that forms on top of it in my HLT. After draining all the water from my HLt which I typicaly never heat the water past 185 the whole inside of the vessel is coated in a white film. I am constantly replacing coffee makers. I had bought a brand new hot water heater last year and had to remove the anode tube within 2 months. If any cloth is wet and left out it will smell terrible after a few hours. The city was fined by the state because the water treamtment plant was not up to snuff and now they have hiked our water rates to pay the fines and make the nessicary upgrades. Most of the life long locals seem a little off their rocker. These are a few of the reasons I think my water is not fit for brewing.

2. I have 2 hydrometers both of which read correctly.

3. 40% eff. is crap. A 100+ mile round trip to the lhbs is expensive,involves a lot of time ( just about half as much time it takes to brew), and I hate city driving.

4. I have seen no difference in efficiency between batch or fly sparging. Although I am willing to give fly sparging a 3rd try.

I am trying to get a consistent effeicincy with no success. I get a different number every time, typically low 40's.

So I ordered my ingirdients for this weekends batch and of course that went wrong too. Even with 3 phone calls I now have 10# of whole grain. I asked for the finest crush twice!

 

[kace069]

I forgot to mention that my water occasionaly comes out of the tap with a red tint. All my plumbing is pvc.

Not sure if these are good reasons to suspect that there is a problem with my water or not.

 

[kk390]

Your water sounds horrible. How does it taste? You could try buying gallons of bottled (spring/drinking) water from your local big box or grocery store for your next batch.

 

[kace069]

Actually, if it comes out clear it doesn't taste bad at all. Afteer talking to my next door neighbor, he has issues with the water too. So I am pretty sure it isn't all in my head.

 

[kk390]

Any update on your water/efficiency problem?

 

[kace069]

Actually I just brewed another pale this sunday. I used RO water and Star san 5.2. I came out with a 51% but I think my crush was bad. I need to get my own mill.
I batch sparged with really hot water and after I was done my grains were still pretty sweet. So I am wondering if I'm not spargeing good enough.

 

[kace069]

Well this last brew is now just days over 2 weeks old. It is potable, my water was certainly an issue here. My effeicincy still sucked but I am not dumping this brew so all in all a good brewday, -sucky eff. - 1 gallon short on my volume.

I am thinking I need to work on my process a bit more. I am pretty sure my eff. is suffering from a poor sparge (batch spargeing here). But with the change from tap water to RO has defenitley improved this very green beer.
I will soon have a mill and can't wait to buy my first sack of grain. Revamped backyard braggot in the future!!! Jury is still out on what is gonna happen to that batch.

 

[ucflumberjack]

i dont do all-grain. but i want to do it as soon as i have the space and money to do it. i have been reading alot about as im usre yall have. how long do you take to sparge? ive seen a video and read a few things where they adjusted the flow of hot sparge water so that it takes 30-60 minutes to complete the sparge process.

again, i dont do all-grain so i dont know if thats standard procedure or not.

 

[kace069]

Yippie!!!! I hit 77% tonight!!!!
I think my problem was partly a poor sparge. The other half of this is, I built a 2 roller grain mill and crushed my own grain tonight. Which looked to me like a way better crush than I have ever gotten from the lhbs. This was a batch sparge brew also. My brew buddy was surprised, he fly sparges.
I am so damn happy!
Thanks for all the great advice guys!
I was going to be really happy with 65% but 77, I don't know what to say! Looks like I can step up to 10 gallon brews now. But I think I will do a feew more 5 gallon brews first to see if I can stay consistent.
Damn I'm so happy! I don't think my wife fully appreciates this break through, but I think a few of you will.
;D

 

[GrantLee63]

Good goin' Kace - Keep up the good work ! :cheers: