I was pretty bummed after one of my last batches when I hit approximately 62% efficiency for my IPA. I did a bit of reading and made a couple changes for my last batch, and saw a dramatic improvement. Thought I'd share.
Just 2 things I did differently. I read that the width of the grainmill should be approximately the thickness of a credit card. Pretty general statement, but I only slightly tightened it for that my credit card fit snugly, because I found it was sliding in there pretty loosely (please refrain from any "that's what she said" jokes) when I did the ole credit card in the grainmill test ... Second, I tried starting with the water in the mashtun, and added the grain to the water. I went 3 degrees above the suggested strike water temp, and I hit my mash temp of 153 bang on; I tried this just one other time and came in 3 or 4 degrees below my anticipated 152, so this was just to make up for it. I'm assuming that if you actually took the time to heat up the mash tun with some boiling water, you wouldn't need to do this, but I'd rather just heat the strike water to a few degrees more.
I entered the info into brewmate expecting around 70% efficiency (based on my dismal efficiency the prior batch), but ended up hitting closer to 85%, which I've never ever done. Not sure if this was just a fluke or if just slightly tightening the mill and adding grain to water really helped. Either way, pretty pumped about the result. Unfortunately cannot do another batch until the weekend, but I'll try again and see if I can get similar results.