Mash efficiency

I have about half a dozen AG brews under my belt now, all of which are bitters/pale ales.  Although they are all ok, the common theme seems to be that they are too bitter for design, even when I deliberately reduced the hops schedule over the last couple of beers.

I think the problem may lie in the fact that the actual mash efficiency recorded in all beers is over 95%. I am guessing that these figures are wrong and that I am extracting less sugars from the malt than the efficiency suggests and therefore the hop additions are relatively too high.

I have a fully pumped 70 ltr brewery with a HERMS and a rotating sparge arm, which I built from scratch, so I expect the mash efficiency to be reasonable. the overall brewery efficiency may be some what less as the outlet from the boiler is a little high causing losses, the plate chiller and pipe work also cause waste.

My questions are - Am I barking up the wrong tree with this theory? Also how can I check or adjust the mash efficiency?

Thanks for any Help

Chris

I may be off base myself here, but how about using a hydrometer to check the mash efficiency?  %95 sounds extreme.

90-95 is about right if not including lauter eff. 

Mark

merfizle said:

90-95 is about right if not including lauter eff. 

Mark

Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply, but please excuse my ignorance as I am still on the bottom of the learning curve.

"lauter efficiency" is this not the efficiency of the mash?

I also would be interested to hear any comments on whether or not changing the overall brewery efficiency, which I currently have set at 75%, will effect the mash efficiency.

Thanks

Chris

This post explains all of the various terms and how they are applied in BS.  It also explains how to dial in not only your equipment profile, but how to derive your "Brewhouse efficiency" from your calculated Mash efficiency.  It has a spreadsheet attached to do the math for you, since one cannot directly edit Mash efficiency in BS.

http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,5140.0.html

I hope it helps.  It certainly helped me understand the underpinnings of BS and how the program actually works.  The moral of the story is to calibrate your equipment and measure EVERYTHING.

That's a great link

Cheers