BeerBorg

I've use this converted cooler twice now to brew with and both times I've fallen fairly short of the mark I was aiming for. With SMEIBB, I would hit efficiencies of 75-85% regularly. With the cooler, I'm between 68-70%. I understand that the difference in materials will make a difference, coupled with the fact that I know the temperature in my oven when SMEIBBing would stay constant versus the temperature slowly decreasing over time with the cooler. What are some ways to help cover the gap in efficiency between my SMEIBB pot and the cooler, without having to add more grain or adding extract?

I dump a couple gallons boiling water in mine for 10-15 minutes, dump it out and go from there. I'm still missing the mark on mine too, or did last time I brewed, way back when, before infections....

try bumping your water grain ratio to 1:75.

I've been battling efficiencies for some time now too. Yankeedag may be speaking the truth. I was at 1:1.25 and went to 1:1.50 and saw a slight increase. I'm brewing this weekend and I might as well try the 1:1.75 ratio. I think the sparge technique is very important also. I batch sparge and I have read that when you add the sparge water and mix, it's important to mix gently but thoroughly, and make sure that you do not create any foaming while mixing. Not sure why, but I'm going to give this a try this weekend also. As for the temperature decrease over time, I don't think that's it. I use a 10 gallon round orange cooler and only drop about 1-2 degrees over the 60 minute mash time, so the temp stays pretty consistent. If you figure it out, please post what you did.

Definitely gonna try increasing the ratio to 1.75 qt per lb, and hopefully I can get my brewmometer mounted on the mash tun soon, so that I don't have to stick the one I hang over my pot into it. Every time I open that lid to check the temp, I lose a little bit of heat, so if I can avoid that all together, that'd be the best. I'm still trying to learn how the sparge is actually done, as well. I've still got it in my head to pull the grain bag up and squeeze it to get wort out, rinse it, and squeeze again (SMEIBB habit). As long as the beer tastes good, then that's the most important thing to me. I just want to get the technique down.

dumb question time. Are you taking the actual grain temp? When I was having those same issue, it dawned on me that things are not what they appear to be. The temps of the grain, mash tun were not the same as the ambient air temp

It is a wise idea to heat up the mash tun. Be careful with adding boiling water some coolers are not very heat tolerant and my warp.

HB brings up a good point. Unless your grains and equipment are in stable temps, then they could be at different temps when you use them. As luck has it, I store everything in one area that is temp stable, so I feel comfortable with those numbers. With that said, I do prewarm my mash tun, so I don't have to guess at what temp my strike needs to be to bring up temp of grains and tun. It made a big difference for me, and I can be within 2* of where I want to be.
I also run a 1.75 ratio. I find I have a smaller drop over the time.

So are mine. It is habit now even though it is not an issue. With a recirculation rig I slowly start adding my grains @ 122* maintain that temp for approximately for 30 mins. Then bring up to my mash temp. For me that is generally 148* -- 150*. I brew mainly Belgiums & Pilsners. One thing you need to is maintain your Mash PH.

I did heat up the mash tun. I heated the strike water to 5 degrees above target strike temp and let it sit until the temp dropped. I haven't been taking the grain temp, so I guess I should start doing that. It didn't seem to matter as much with BIAB since the pot is metal. If increasing the water ratio and inputting the temps of the grains and the tun don't help much, then I guess I'll start checking pH. Thanks for the insight, guys!

The sparge method may also be suspect....at least it is for me. I thought it would come down to the mash pH on my last round, and I had full conversion, but still didn't have good efficiency. I'm brewing this Sunday and will try a somewhat modified fly sparge instead of batch sparge. I'll recirculate the first runnings a few times, drain the mash tun into the kettle, then I'm going to siphon off the sparge water and let it run over top of the grains while the spigot on the mash tun is wide open, draining into the kettle. I did a very similar technique when I did BIAB with my turkey fryer basket and had really good results. We'll see what happens, and I'll report back.

I've spent some time today watching videos on Youtube about brewing AG with a mash tun cooler, and I'm going to agree with you, Chris, that the sparge method is a major key to achieving good efficiency. With batch sparging, everyone I saw vorlaufed the first quart or two of wort back into the grain bed so that the wort ran clear, being filtered by the grains while pushing the sugars down to the bottom and into the kettle. Depending on how much grains are used, it might be necessary to batch sparge twice (or more), to ensure extraction of sugars is as high as possible. Fly sparging eliminates having to sparge in steps, but ultimately, it's the same thing in that you want to ensure the grain bed filters well and sugars get pushed down and out into the kettle.

I didn't vorlauf with my two previous batches so certainly there were sugars still caught in the grain bed that I could have extracted. I think I might try my next beer using the same 1.5 qts per lb ratio that I usually use, but vorlauf the runnings in conjunction w/ the batch sparge. If I hit my target OG, I'll keep the water/grain ratio. If I'm still off by a considerable amount, I'll change the ratio, and maybe consider changing the sparge.

On my batch yesterday, I recirculated about the first 1.5 gallons or so. I have a one gallon pitcher that I filled about half way and dumped back on top of the grain bed....I did this three times until the wort was clear of any grain debris. Then I sparged as explained in my previous post. My predicted OG was 1.067 and I hit 1.071. So, I've hit upon something that improved my results. I used the same ratio (1:1.5) as I have in the past also. I was afraid to go to 1:1.75 as that would have only left me with about 2 gallons to sparge with. That just didn't seem like enough sparge water to run through 14 pounds of grain.

Phil...I'm going to agree with you on the recirculation, I think it's important to set the grain bed. In the past I would only recirculate a couple of quarts, then add the first amount of sparge water and stir. But I think the stirring at this point basically nullified the whole purpose of recirculating which is to set the grain bed. Yesterday, I stirred the hell out of it before I recirculated, but once I recirculated, I did not stir the grains again, then started the modified fly sparge as mentioned above.

With the batch sparge, the videos showed that after stirring the grains in the sparge water, they would recirculate the runnings again to reset the grain bed. I really really want to grab myself a refractometer so that I can track the preboil gravity as well as postboil for the OG of the beer, and for gravity samples throughout the fermentation process without losing too much volume for the finished product.

philm00x wrote:With the batch sparge, the videos showed that after stirring the grains in the sparge water, they would recirculate the runnings again to reset the grain bed. I really really want to grab myself a refractometer so that I can track the preboil gravity as well as postboil for the OG of the beer, and for gravity samples throughout the fermentation process without losing too much volume for the finished product.

I have to say that a refractometer is one of the best brew gear purchases that we have made since we started doing partial mashes. But be advised that there are more bad ones than good ones on the market from what our research showed so read reviews and anything else you can find on them before you buy because you want one that will work for home brewing. There are a lot of them that look exactly alike but aren't.

BB2 says ours is an RSG 32 ATC and was highly rated for quality. Like scales etc. you have to shop for best pricing ( he had Amazon credits).

I'm looking at one that's the RSG 100 ATC which seems to be the same refractometer, except that it has dual scales, one in 0-32 brix, and another in 0-1.130 SG. The ATC is the important thing so that it compensates for temperature to give an accurate reading.