14 days on new system before going live.

[Rowdy]

Have 2 weeks to hammer out efficiency and utilization on a 2bbl brewmation system. Brewing 3 batches leaving my 4 the fermenter open for our "go live" brew. Have access to lab equipment. Three batches is a lot of beer ideally I would brew the same recipe three times tweaking numbers each batch. Just wondering if there was a way I can brew three different beers and get the same results? Just don't want to tie up 12 of 18 kegs with the same boring APA from test runs..

[NHBrewer23]

Hi Rowdy,

If I were trying to dial in a brewhouse efficiency, I would brew three different beers with similar grain weights and make-up of base to specialty ratio. What you will find is that some beers you will have a better mash efficiency than others based upon grain weight and grist make-up. What you will want to know for consistency among different beers is your evaporation rate.

Knowing you evaporation rate will allow you to have better control over correcting a batch that had a lower mash efficiency than you were expecting. As you become more familiar with your brewhouse, you will find that your mash efficiency may improve.

For the first batches, I would plan for a 90 minute boil and a mash efficiency of 80%. I would scale the recipe to account for a 60 minute boil. The extra 30 minutes will give you some time to boil-off more and boost your gravity. If you find that your actual mash efficiency is closer to 90%, you can cut back on your boil time.

For calculating hop utilization, this is a bit tricky if you have multiple hop additions. It is difficult to zero in on what type of utilization you are getting at various times. If you can brew a stout with a single hop addition, it will give you a good idea as to what you are seeing for your bittering addition.

[Rowdy]

Thanks for the advice this is something easily obtainable over time. originally I was given a week lol. Going to be colaborating with some of the local big names and need to get hammered down in short order. I see your in FL I'm new to the state any advice on this horrible water?

[jebzter]

Do you home brew? Were your recipes brewed on a smaller system before? If you take a recipe that is set for one system, brew it on another, then you will know what your efficiency differences are. But you would want to brew it exactly the same way, same boil times, same hops schedule, etc. The only thing that will be a little weird is your boil off, so you want pre and post boil gravity to be able to calculate that. I took 3 different recipes, started with one that gave me a mash efficiency difference, waited for that to ferment out and tested IBU. I was then able to scale all the other recipes to the new system, and the only recipe that was largely different was the first one, the rest were within 0.002 SG of target OG, which I was able to fine tune.