Efficiency Experiment: The Results Show

As planned, I did my efficiency experiment this past weekend and I think I found my culprits. I double milled my malts to ensure a good crush. I mashed with 1.5 qts/lb. I ran off my first runnings and measured them so I could hit my sparge water volume perfectly. I got my pre-boil volume perfect. I boiled for an hour, and added hops on schedule and lost exactly 1 gallon to boil off which is what I wanted. I hit 80% efficiency (measured pre and post boil).

When I went to fill the conical... not even enough volume to register on my measurements (which start at 4.5 gallons.) I topped it up with a measured 1 gallon of water to see where I was at, and hit 5 gallons on the nose. I lost 1.5 gallons of wort to my hops and kettle! I had been chatting with Denny Conn about my issues as well and he said that he figures about 12oz of beer lost to 1oz of hops. I had 7.5 oz of hops (5.5 whole, 2 pellet) and that would give me roughly 3/4 of a gallon lost to hops, and 3/4 gal lost to keggle pick up tube. That brought my efficiency down to 60%.

How Did That Happen?

Thought this was kinda interesting... I brewed 3 beers from one mash awhile back, and this is one of the first times that I had them poured side by side. The two beers in the picture are almost the same OG and FG, both had 90 minute boils. The only difference is hops, yeast, and fermentation. The one on the left is my Bavarian Hefe that was fermented open with Sierra Nevada's Kellerwiesse yeast. The one on the right has 7oz of Falconer's Flight hops, fermented w/ American Ale 1056, and has a pineapple in the secondary with the dry hops. It is quite astounding the difference in color on these two beers. Granted, the Hefe has yeast in the glass, and the Wheat has lots of hops (for the style at least) and pineapple (juice included). Hard to believe they both came from the same mash. I might have one Hefe left to do a 3 way comparison with the "Berliner Wiesse" that was made from the last runnings, which will inevitably be lighter seeing as it was a thinner wort to begin with and almost 1/2 the OG.