Of all the process concerns/complaints I hear and read about when it comes to homebrewing, one seems to pop up more often than others: shitty efficiency. Here are some tips I’ve used over the years to help improve my efficiency and consistency of my brewing!
Nice write up. One that is often overlooked is to make sure your thermometer is calibrated and accurate in the mash temperature range. I say this from personal experience, dial thermometers can be off.
The most important tip is #1.
Don’t worry about it. Sparge until you get the pre-boil gravity you desire and don’t worry so much about the volume whether a little high or low. Your goal is to make good beer. Adjust any other additions on your kettle volume.
If things are really off, proceed to tip #2.
After reading Kai’s article a couple of years ago, I realized that I was (when I was initially trying to dial in my system) worrying about brewhouse efficiency when I should have been looking at conversion efficiency. I was making all of these changes that would only affect brewhouse efficiency and wasn’t seeing a change.
Turns out that my conversion efficiency was really terrible, so nothing I did previously was working. (Kinda like putting a Band-Aid on a problem that needs a splint - doesn’t really help much.) I was screwing with crush, different sparging techniques, calibrating my volume sticks/thermometers, etc. When all that was wrong was that my mash pH was awful (Martin helped many of us out with this), I had dough balls (I now stir with a giant wisk before starting the RIMS), and I now perform a mash out. I now double check my conversion efficiency against the chart below to make sure I’m on above 90%, courtesy of Kai’s website:
http://www.braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Understanding_Efficiency
I’m aiming for 1.5 qts/lb in the Sabco, so I like seeing my wort at around 1.072 or higher before I start the sparge.
Another thing that I do also. I need to print that table, and tap it to the wall for reference.
When I used my alkaline tap water, and did not use a pH meter, I was getting some crappy efficiencies. High pH will do that.
It is not one thing that is a silver bullet.
Ain’t that the truth! 
+2
What, there’s no simple fix to every brewing problem? 
Changing thermostats helped me dramatically. My dial thermo reads 10F high.
Au contraire, I do believe the fix to most brewing problems is usually very simple. For efficiency, 9 times out of 10 people need to start with a harder crush. Then move on from there if that ain’t it.
Increasing liquor to grist ratio improved my efficiency considerably. I also find no benefit to stirring the mash.
Didn’t matter for me. YMMV
This I believe is scientific fact, with the only possible exception if you do a super crappy stir at the beginning, which nobody around here would be doing, right? 
Since my mash is direct fired I stir the mash quite a bit at the beginning and then a few times during to be sure my temp is right on. My efficiency has been off the chart ever since I started crushing my own grain, but I’ve pretty much always stirred since I quit trying to hit temps in a cooler with an infusion and that was about the same time I started crushing my own grain.
On your next couple batches, try leaving the mash alone after the initial stir unless you batch sparge, in which case stirring is appropriate at the point at which the sparge water is added. Bet you don’t see any difference in efficiency compared to normal.
Totally, good call!
Yes!
Yeah-- stop brewing
This would make a good xBmt.
I haven’t tested it under controlled conditions, but this is one of the reasons I attribute my high efficiency with BIAB without a sparge. My typical mash is in the 3 qt/lb range and I hit 82-84% efficiencies pretty solidly.
This also shows that you really need to know your system. For me, I needed to extend my mash times to 75 minutes to ensure I hit a consistent efficiency for all my brews. Others are done in 20 minutes. What works for batch sparge may not for BIAB or fly sparging.
Speaking of which, I think the most important thing is having a consistant efficiency rather than a high one. I’d be happy with a rock-solid 65% efficiency at the homebrew level rather than hitting 80% sometimes and 70% others.
+1 to consistency.
I finally got my mill where I like it and have begun to plot my efficiency on a graph to allow me to better gauge how my efficiency is affected by the preboil gravity. I need to convert to lbs per gal due to the three main boil lengths and volumes that I use and the additional sparge water. (60, 90, 120 / 7.5, 8.25, 9). After a dozen or so batches I should be able to accurately predict my efficiency easily.
So far I have 82% on a 1.060 beer and 74% on a 1.090 beer.
+2 to consistency. Being able to be consistent and knowing your system enough to predict OG pretty closely across low, standard, and high target gravities are all that matters.
I disagree somewhat. I’ve been consistently at about 50% with BIAB and mashing in a cooler. I’m not at all happy with 50% and something is clearly wrong or can be improved.
Last weekend, I was able to improve that to around 70% (which obviously is only one data point and I’ll need to see if I can be consistent at 70%).
The only change was a new thermometer and realizing my two dial thermometers are both reading 10 degrees high.
So, I will agree that consistent efficiency is good. But consistently poor efficiency is maybe not so good.
Yeah, I should’ve been more clear. I see people post who feel that they’re somehow not making good enough beer because they don’t hit 85% + efficiency - ie., automatically equating higher efficiency with better beer quality. I get ~ 78% regularly on most beers, but when I started I didn’t do near as well efficiency wise - like 55%ish. I knew that there were things I needed to figure out, so I worked on variables one at a time (getting a mill, volumes, temp accuracy, etc.) until I improved and got consistent. I meant fretting over not getting ultra high efficiency and just trying to be consistent. For me, I saw a lot of AG recipes assuming 70% efficiency and decided that should be a reasonable goal. Above that, I really don’t think it matters.