How does low mash efficiency affect the flavor balance ?

[jimrush]

Unless I forget to tell my LHBS not to crush my grains, I do my own. I currently use a grain mill that's really meant for bread making (I do a very coarse grind). So, it's not a crush, but a grind. I've suspected for some time that this is the cause for my low efficiency (55-60%).

I don't mind bumping up the recipe size. The little bit of extra grain is much cheaper than a dedicated grain crusher. However, I was thinking last weekend how the increased malt bill...in particular, how the flavors from the specialty malts might be strong in comparison to the amount of sugar I'm getting from the base malt. Any reason to think this way ?

thx,
Jim

PS For those that bring up tannin issues related to grinding the malt, once I dealt with some PH issues (5.2), I haven't had a problem with tannins.

[Bugeater]

When you adjust the amount of grain to bring your gravity up to where it is supposed to be, make sure you only adjust the amount of base grains. The flavor profile contributed by the specialty grains (especially the roasted grains) is primarily determined by the amount of those grains in a given volume of wort. Your low mash efficiency will not effectively change the flavor contribution of your specialty grains to a significant extent, so don't change those amounts at all from your original recipe. This seems to be the source of your problem.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

[BeerMan]

How do you sparge I started at about 50% when I first started all grain used a sparger of my own design, then I shifted to a phils sparger arm got into the lower seventies I increased my sparge tme and now I run upper seventies lower eighties. Never batch sparged so I can’t help you there

[jimrush]

I'm currently batch sparging and have been fairly happy with the results. Previously, I would sometimes pull tannins towards the end of the sparge. I'm not directly worried about the efficiency, but was concerned how it might affect the recipes I was scaling up.

[BeerMan]

Down load pro mash its a free trial you can set efficency and build (or adjust) your recipe to get the right amount of grain. in the end you will buy it (just a guess) cause it is a great program