5% Better Brewer!

When you are an all grain brewer, besides trying to make tasty beer, you are also judged on how well you convert starches to sugars. This is know as your brewhouse efficiency. According to Brad Smith over at BeerSmith, "Brewhouse efficiency is defined as the percent of potential grain sugars that are converted into sugar in the wort."  I'm not going to reinvent the wheel by writing about efficiency but if you want to learn more about it, here are some resources.

BeerSmith
How to Brew

I've historically averaged around 65% efficiency by batch sparging. There have been some batches I've been in closer to 70% and some in the upper 50%.....yes, all over the place! I've been closer to 55%-60% my last few batches and I was starting to talk to some fellow brewers about it. They were also seeing some lower efficiencies and we found the common link was where we got our grains. It appeared that our local homebrew shop was just not giving a good crush (note: last time I was there I looked at the gap on their mill and I think I could fit my wife's mini van through it!). So with post Christmas money/gift cards I decided to buy a mill. 

I opted to go with the Monster Mill MM3. Really nice mill. I'd highly recommend it. On the maiden grind before my last brew I ground 1 lb of my grain bill to see how it worked. And right away I noticed how much finer the crush was compared to what I was getting from the store. I have my mill set at 0.045" gap.

I ground the rest of the grain and I went through my mash process as usual. At the end of the brew day I calculated my efficiency and it was up to 70%. This is the best mash I've had in a while. Yes, it was only 1 test so far and I know 70% isn't wonderful but its a step in the right direction. I'm very hopefully that I can be more consistent now that I'm grinding my own grains. I plan to do a few more batches at the current gap setting and then start to mess with it to see how it impacts my efficiency.