Brewing Efficiency Calculator

Brewing efficiency measures the percentage of potential sugar in the grain that was extracted into the wort.

Once you have measured the efficiency of your homebrew setup, you will be able to adjust the quantity of malt used in recipes.

How to use the brewing efficiency calculator

When using this calculator, you should enter the volume of wort in litres and the specific gravity readings. After this, you should select the grains and other adjuncts used from the drop-down lists (one per line) and enter the weight of each.

To calculate Brewhouse Efficiency, the volume of wort and specific gravity reading should be measured when the wort is in the fermenter, before fermentation takes place.

To calculate Mash Efficiency, the volume of wort and specific gravity reading should be measured when the wort is in the brew kettle, before it is boiled.

Find out more about Brewing Efficiency in this post >>

I’ve included 7 lines for different grain and adjuncts which should be sufficient for most recipes. If you use fewer grains you should leave the weight displayed on the other lines as zero kilograms. If you need more lines to be added or have any questions, please get in touch by using the contact form at the bottom of the page.

If the grain you are using isn’t listed, you should select a similar grain from the list. The table below shows the values used by the calculator for each grain.

The calculator currently only works with metric units, I plan to add imperial units at a later date (check back soon).

Extract Yields

The extract yields used by the calculator are listed in the table below and come from the spec sheets on the manufacturers’ websites.

The manufacturers used for reference are Simpsons Malt and Bairds Malt, other manufacturers produce similar products.

In a few cases, both manufacturers produce similar grains with the same name, in which case the average value is used.