This will effectively cause you to use a bit more grain in your recipe but should allow you to hit your original gravity with only a dollar or two of extra grain added per batch. As you become more familiar with all-grain brewing, your efficiency will often improve.Īnother solution is to simply lower the brewhouse or mash efficiency estimate you are using to develop your recipes. Some of these inefficiencies can be corrected through experience. Many new all-grain brewers struggle with low efficiency numbers, resulting in lower- than-expected original gravity for their beer. This number is always lower than the mash efficiency due to the additional losses in these later steps and is typically in the 65–75 percent range for many homebrew systems. It represents how well the complete brewing system converts potential sugar in the raw grains into original gravity points (sugars) in the fermentor.
The overall efficiency of the system from mashing grains to gravity points in the fermentor is called the brewhouse efficiency. These additional losses result in a lower original gravity of the wort into the fermentor than we achieved coming out of the mash tun.
After mashing, we may add top-up water, boil, chill, and transfer the wort, all of which results in some further losses due to trub loss, chilling, and transfer losses into the fermentor. Of course, the mash itself is only one step in the brewing process. The portion of the “ideal” number your system extracts during the mash phase is called the mash efficiency.
In fact, a typical brewing system is only going to get perhaps 80–90 percent of the potential sugars extracted during the mash, meaning that 80–90 percent of the yield will be achieved in the runnings coming directly from your mash tun. An average pale malt might have a yield of about 80 percent, meaning that 80 percent of the sugars could be converted and extracted in an “ideal” laboratory setting.Ī real-world brewing system outside of a laboratory does not achieve this perfect number. First, you need to understand that each individual grain you use has its own “yield.” The yield is a percentage that represents the percent of the weight of the grain that can be converted into sugar under ideal laboratory conditions. I’ll start with an explanation of mash efficiency.
What’s the difference between mash and brewhouse efficiency in all-grain brewing, and how can I improve my efficiency?
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