extract link

Methods, ingredients, advice and equipment specific to all-grain (mash), partial mash (mini mash) and "brew in a bag" (BIAB) brewing.

extract link

Postby speedie » Tuesday Aug 24, 2010 8:00 pm

this is something that i stummbled on it is a good read
hate imperial measurements though
http://www.hbd.org/uchima/tech/efficiency.html
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Re: extract link

Postby rotten » Tuesday Aug 24, 2010 10:50 pm

Gday speedie.
Don't take this the wrong way because it's a 'fair dinkum' question. Your link states to only expect 50% efficiency, you can always add more water if you get higher. I'm thinking they are talking pre-boil, which would then mean you need to adjust hop schedules before you boil to get your required or preferred IBU etc. It may also change your SRM, lovibond, whichever you would like to use, and maybe even boil volumes etc. That's a lot to do for most people if you don't mind me saying so. That 50% mark is using their calculations though, which my math brain won't be up for which is why I use a program to do that for me (but that's off topic). I think 70% is a fair mark to aim for, once you know your system and processes consistency is still more important IMHO.

P.S. Speedie, why don't you download the trial version of beersmith and give it a go for a few weeks, it's no obligation after the trial, and you could see what most people around here are using to do their math for them, that's it, only math. I personally use brewmate which is free, until my AG set-up is complete, which is very very close.
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Re: extract link

Postby Bum » Tuesday Aug 24, 2010 11:42 pm

speedie is talking about a somewhat different sort of efficiency than nearly all of the rest of the HBers in the world talk about. Don't worry about his little obsession with trying to convert us (if you're able...I'm not so blessed, sadly) and keep an eye out for anything else he might ever talk about instead (assuming such a thing might ever happen) since his comp results obviously speak for the quality of his beers.

Having said that, I suspect you've got a couple of things slightly backwards above but keep making the beers you're happy with and the maths will look after itself.

[EDIT: I just scanned the link (hadn't before, not because of anything to do with you, speedie, but more bacause I don't care much for my efficiency so I don't spend much time looking into the matter) and it seems to me speedie is pushing brewhouse efficiency now? Or am I reading it wrong? Happy to be corrected.]
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Re: extract link

Postby warra48 » Wednesday Aug 25, 2010 7:01 am

And that's one of the problems with a lot of brewing lingo. There are really no definitive definitions of what some of these terms mean.
For example, brewhouse efficiency means different things to different people, and different things in different brewing programs.

Having said that, I venture to say that when we talk about efficiency, we mostly mean "mash" or"extraction" efficiency. For us, that's probably the most comparable, as it has the least variances from brewer to brewer in the process. Once we go further down the brewing process, we introduce losses to trub, evaporation losses etc, which will vary from set up to set up. The use of mash or extraction efficiency also allows us to use other brewers recipes more reliably, because we have to tweak them less to fit our normal outcomes, although I tend to mostly design my own recipes.

I use BeerSmith for my recipe design and calculations, and my record keeping.
It doesn't really matter on a HB scale whether we use 4.5 or 4.8 kg of grains, for example, to achieve a result. The cost differential to us is minimal.
It is different on a commercial scale but, hey, this is a "homebrew" forum, not a commercial brewing forum, so lets keep things in perspective.

As already pointed out by DrS, what matters most to us as homebrewers is consistency. If we can achieve efficiency in the same range, then it introduces dependency in our processes, allowing us to produce beers as we designed them. We are not after the best achievable efficiency, but consistency.
Last edited by warra48 on Wednesday Aug 25, 2010 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: extract link

Postby rotten » Wednesday Aug 25, 2010 8:23 am

Thanks guys. Note to self '''stay out of these sorts of threads'''. Bit hard late at night after a froth or two.
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