@ guitar lord....you might also want to check the crush of your grains if your efficiency is lacking. Not sure if you're doing your own crushing or having your LHBS do it for you. another thing in comparing your sparge to Stihler's, is it sounds like he's "fly sparging", whereas you are probably batch sparging. Two different process.

That being said, I now have 5 AG batches under my belt, and it takes about 5-6 hours(all day for me as well). I like AG because it's much easier to "tweak" batches to your liking, and for me, it's just a lot more fun...

Happy Brewing!
Bob

4 ag brews now. the wife got me a beer kit for my birthday in november so I brewed the 1 extract beer that came with the kit, then I got a grain ingrediant kit. now I'm doing a lot of research and trying to build my own recipes and looking to build a HERMS to do large volume brewing. i think its great, though my efficiency is only 73% but I'm working on ways to improve it, going to set up a fly sparge on my mash tun soon

I've been brewing all grain in earnest since November. Since then I've brewed 11 batches. I can't believe it took me so long to make the switch from extract. i had all the equipment too!

The transition itself was not difficult for me, but I will be honest and say that it was with much hesitation. I'm glad I made the step. I have a deeper appreciation of how beer is actually brewed and the versatility is unbeatable.

GuitarLord5000 wrote: My efficiency is hovering right around the 60% range right now. I'd like to be able to get that up to around 70 or 75%.

You might also try the longer mashing to get your efficiency up. You might not be getting a good conversion. I highly recommend the overnight mash. I tried it on my second or third batch and my efficiencies are in the high 70s to low 80s. It's amazing. Also, it cuts your brew day down to a brew morning. I grind my grains in a cheap victoria mill with a cordless drill attachment (about 10# in 5 minutes), heat my strike water, dough in and go to bed. It's ready to sparge in the morning.

Wow, this is an old-ish thread. Man, a lot can happen in a year!

First off, I did get my efficiency up to right at 73%. The tips here did not lead me astray. Here's what I did:
1. Began adding my grains to the strike water (while stirring), instead of the other way around. When adding the strike water to my grains, I wasn't able to stir the mash up like I wanted to. What I ended up with was a large chunk of grain on the bottom of my cooler tun that didn't get converted. This single step raised my efficiency about ten percent!
2. Dialed in my grain crush. I had entirely too large a crush on the grain.
3. Slowed down my sparge. I was rinsing the grain bed so quickly, I was leaving too many sugars behind.

I highly recommend the overnight mash.

No offense, but besides shortening your brew day, I really don't see the upshot to the overnight mash, so long as you are reaching full conversion. Once your mash if fully converted, you're pretty much done. No amount of extra time should make the mash more fermentable. This is particularly true if you are using a cooler tun (which I do). After 3 or 4 hours in my tun, my mash is no longer within the temperature range for conversion.
Personally, I would want to get that sweet wort boiling as soon as conversion is finished. Grain is pretty nasty stuff, and I wouldn't want to give any nasties time to take up residence in my soon-to-be beer.

But, as they say, Your Mileage May Vary.

Cheers,
Dave

I just started all-grain brewing and I love it. It was not much of a transition, just a few more hours work with mash and steeping. I have to spend a little more time organizing my brew area. Other than that, all grain recipes are not that much work.

A couple of noob questions while reading through this thread...

1) What does efficiency mean in regard to mashing?

2) What is the difference between strike water and sparge?

I am going to try my first partial grain kit today. The only trouble I have is the mad dash to the local beer supply store. YIPES!!! I'm 100 miles away.

Only in Wyoming do we call 100 miles a mad "dash"... Good luck on the drive. The roads down here where terrible when I got off work around 2am.

I have been brewing all grain for seven years. Personally, I think all grain is the only way to go. So much control and it is just plain fun...

Gary

I've been all-grain for about 5 years now. A few weeks ago, my wife (due to "Mis-Communication"...her words), came home from the LHBS with Wheat Malt Extract instead of Malted Wheat. It sat around for a week, until I thought, "Hey, I can brew a heffe-weizen in like 1.5 hours after work tonight!"

So...Now I'm thinking allgrain is awesome and provides a lot of control, but for a quick and easy what-the-hell-I'm-bored kind of batch, why not throw together an extract?

I'm still brewing with mash/extract kits doing a partial mash and making up some percent of grains with extract. So far, I am very happy with my results, and I’m still having a lot of fun with it. I've been tweaking my kit recipes quite a bit by substituting or adding grains or hops in addition to or other than the recipe calls for. I'm also designing some new recipes working with the extracts that I have available. I have done all-grain brewing with other people on their equipment, but I haven't done it on my own yet. My biggest obstacle to all grain is the equipment, money, and space. I'm in college now, so I don't have a lot of money, space, or time. I know I will graduate to doing all grain brews someday, but for now, I’m more than content with what I can do with my extract-mash kits.

After all, good beer is good beer; am I right?