Efficiency

[brew.exe]

On my last batch I got 82% efficiency.
When I started AG a few months ago I got 64% on my first try, and after a couple more attempts have been getting 75%, but on this batch I got 82% and am very pleased.
The difference this time was, that I cracked my own grain and must have had a better crush than I usually get from my LHBS.

Because I am batch sparging and don’t have a very deep grain bed compared to fly sparging, that I could maybe try for an even finer crush.

Am curious as to what other people’s efficiency is?
And how they go about sparging?

I did a mash out and double batch sparge to get the 82%

[Kevnlis]

82% is very impressive! I fly sparge and find I usually average about 75% now. I mash out at 78C and sparge with 76C water which seems to help a bit. I will be doing my first self crushed brew tomorrow so it will be interesting to see if it impacts my efficiency.

[lethaldog]

I have only ever fly sparged and i find that from my calcs i usually get around 80%, the only time i drop under this is when i do a dark ale such as a porter and then i get around the 70-75% mark and yes i have always crushed my own grain

[warra48]

My first few AG brews were between 50 and 60%.
This gradually rose to about 75%.
I was delighted with the brew I put down last week, a Marzen, which has an efficiency as calculated by me of 85%, although Beersmith has it closer to 87%. Don't know why this one is up at this level, but I did pay a lot of attention to proper stirring when adding the grain to the water, and I also did a double decoction. Maybe all the stirring, taking out the decoctions, stirring and boiling the decoctions, adding them back to the mash, and more stirring, may have made some difference. However, I'm also getting much better at working the water volumes for my system and controlling the mashout and sparge temperatures.
The key to it all is to keep precise notes of what you do, i.e volumes of water for all steps, temperatures, how long you stirred your grains and the frequency etc, so that you can repeat it and check if anything you do makes an improvement.

[Kevnlis]

Decoctions can definitely increase efficiency, depending on the malt you use and rest temps/times etc. In fact that is a big part of why they were invented, if you will. Malts were not always as good as they are now and needed a bit of help

It was also an accurate way of hitting rest temps without using a thermometer which of course did not exist before the mid 1800's.