Updates and Mash Efficiency

I have completed the 3rd 5 gallon brew on the electric brewhouse!  Here is what I have learned so far:

1)  Always make sure your hydrometer/reflectometer is calebrated!!!  Failure to do this has caused me an enormous amount of stress.  On my last two brews I relied on a borrowed reflectometer to take my gravity readings and calculate my mash efficiency.  On the second one (American wheat), there is no doubt that I had problems with the grain bed so I chalked the low numbers up to that.  On the third (vanilla porter) the numbers were also low but I had no grain bed issues.  This prompted me to double check using my trusty (mostly calibrated) hydromenter.  Turns out the reflectometer was low by .013!

2) There is not enough drop between my brew vessels and my pumps.  I am not sure why but while making the vanilla porter, I had several instances of my pumps not priming properly.   This was so frustrating that my head nearly exploded.  This situation caused me to loose more than 1 quart of very concentrated wart while tying to get the pump primed.  It also caused me to have problems with chilling down the wort.  I did not realize that the pump was not primed and I ran it dry for quite some time.  It is a wonder I didn't burn it up!  As a solution I plan to elevate my mash tun by about 2 inches, lower the pumps by 2 inches and do a flip/swap of the pump heads so that the input is once again on the bottom.  In this configuration I have never had my pumps fail to prime.

3) It is important to only use the amount of sparge water necessary to get the boil volume you need.  On my last 3 brews I figured that I had plenty of sparge water so I could just keep adding it until I get the proper boil volume.   WRONG!  The extra water is apparently diluting the run off so that there is a lot of sugar left floating in the MLT when the run off reaches volume.  I am hoping that fixing this problem will increase my mash efficiency by quite a bit...

Efficiency!

I need to brew a few more batches to be sure but it looks like my mash efficiency is coming out at about 82%!!!  Not too bad!!!   It may even turn out to be a bit higher once I figure out what my flow rate needs to be on the HERMS side.  I know it was definitely to high on the American wheat due to the fishers that formed in the grain bed and to low on the vanilla porter because the efficiency was down a bit.  As I said above I also plan to calculate my sparge water volume and stick to it!