Another double brewing weekend has just passed. Thus we have a Hazelnut Mild fermenting away in our utility room. All went according to plan. Last Thursday we made a starter from the WLP013 London Ale yeast in our new 2L Erlenmeyer flask. We’ve got a cheap stir plate and a selection of stir bars. It whirred away for 24 hours and then spent a night in the fridge to settle out.
On Friday we weighed everything out. At 7.30 on Saturday morning the HLT went on and we were finished by 14.00. The process was the same as usual. There were some small changes: the malts used were mostly new to use and we use our new “hop spider” to keep the hops from clogging up the filter in the boil kettle. It worked well. No problems with the draining and we were able to squeeze more liquid out than usual.
The main thing to note is that our efficiency shot up. Normally we work to 63% of sugar content (which is 75% of 85% – 85% being the accepted maximum extraction and 75% being typical brewhouse efficiency). Due to improvements I’d increased this to 65% for this brew. Afterward we calculated the efficiency to be over 81%. There are many possible reasons for this.
- The extraction values for the malts used were wrong and low.
- Our water/malt ratio is 4:1, which is high and is supposed to give higher extraction.
- Less loss due to the hop spider.
- Our measurements were wrong.
81% translates to a brewhouse efficiency of 98%. *shrugs*