Good on ya Spills
I'm currently doing everything I can to avoid working on the BIAB re-write and summaries
(I have to be in the mood for that stuff.)
But, I do have a few thoughts that might inspire some more thinking on BIAB. I'm going to start with the recent feedback on the 'extra' rinsing of the grain and finish with some new areas that I think deserve our attention.
I can also tell you now, before I even have a beer (it's 4:00pm here), that this is going to be a long post
The following contains also a lot of my personal opinions on or experiences of BIAB and therefore a lot of what I'll say is supposition that may end up being disproved.
'Extra Rinsing of the Grain'
Since the original idea of full-volume brewing was proposed h ere by James Squire in the All In One Brewery thread, there have been questions on whether such a large liquor to grain ratio would work. Even though we now know it does, a few people are still tempted to mash at lower volumes. My question is, 'Why?'
A lot of stuff in home all-grain brewing comes from commercial brewing where they have space and volume limitations. The science adopted doesnt always mean that you will get a better beer. Often it just means that you will get a more commercially viable beer. Personally, mashing at full volume logically makes more sense to me for a better beer. Batch-sparging makes the next best sense and fly-sparging the least for getting quality beer.
Hoops has been the only one to date that could pick the diff between a batch-sparged and BIABed beer. He found the BIAB beer to be slightly less astringent but with slightly less body. We are talking here though about minute levels no one else could spot a difference in the blind tastings. (I'm doing another side-by-side brew over here soon by the way.)
No matter what brewing method you use, assuming the same boil time, you are limited to exactly the same amount of water to mash and sparge with. The only question is the quantities, times and temperatures at which you apply the available water.
If the idea of mashing and sparging is to get the most sugar out of the grain, then I cannot see how batching or fly-sparging would be any better than BIAB.
Let me put it another way. Let's say you have a coffee mug 1/3 full of sugar and you only have 1 cup of water to dissolve it in. You can either add a little bit of water, drain it off, add some more drain it off etc or you can just stir in the whole lot. The solution is going to be saturated no matter what you do.
To the above we also have the problem of astringency. This is not a problem with BIAB or batch-sparging. It is critical in fly-sparging (which I know bugger all about.)
In fly-sparging, from what I know, sugars from the grain at the top of the bed are going to be very leached whilst the grain at the bottom is substantially less leached.
In batching, this is less the case and in BIAB less again.
So, my first major supposition (and remember I started out batch-sparging) is that I think full-volume mashing (of which BIAB is a form) would give the most 'even' extraction of sugar without any astringency. Remember that we don't have the limitations of commercial breweries.
And, if we raise the temperature of the mash to 78 degrees as I did in my last brew (see my last post here) then isn't this even better again?
ThirstyBoy who I, and I'm pretty sure anyone with half a brain, respects and admires for his intelligent posts, recently wrote the following on the American, 'The Brewing Network'...
Just a quick little update and minor advertisement for the BIAB thing.
My mate who I taught to BIAB on new years day (he's the hungover looking one in the pictorial.... wait, that was both of us!) anyway, he came down to visit and we had a brew session on Thursday evening.
I showed him how I brew on my more trad system. 3 vessl quasi HERMS.
I did a multi step mash, so we got to play with re-circulation, protien rests, pumps and all the attendant stuff. I batch sparged with 3 drainings.
At the end of the 7 hours... he basically couldn't see a single reason to change from his much simpler and easier regimen. And he brought down the last bottle of the beer we made on New Years Day. A modified version of Denny's Rye IPA --- And quite frankly, I cant see why he would want to change either, it was superb. At least as good as any of the IPAs I tasted at a recent beer festival with 15 micro breweries in attendance. His very first AG beer was as good as anything I have brewed, and better than a lot of it.
Of course, I gave him a sample of a reasonably complex brew day. I could have just done a single infusion. But now he's brewed both ways and his decision to stay with BAIB or move on, is a little more of an informed one. To be honest if someone handed me the beer he did; and then told me they were planning on radically altering their brewing process... I'd call them crazy.
Any lingering doubts I might have had about Brewing in a Bag have been well and truly vanquished. Of course now I have to worry about my own brewing.... and why it doesn't seem to be as good as Col's. Bugger
Thirsty
My Fears on BIAB's Future
Unfortunately, there are only two of us so far who have moved either completely or partially from traditional methods to BIAB. Thirsty has a friggin' HERMS for God's sake and already does his smaller batches with BIAB. Bloody credit to him I reckon. I, at least had some extra motivation to use BIAB due to my brewing space limitations.
The only credibility I have to add to the BIAB method is that I spend a lot of time and I've also spent a lot of money on brewing. It's one area of my life where I have said, 'I'll spend what I want to get this right.' I have brewed very 'hard' beers. Many beers can be brewed by anyone under any method. More subtle beers cannot. The very hard beers (such as very low-hopped German Lagers) I have brewed I, personally, have found unsatisfying for various reasons but others have given them an honest thumbs up. I have only once or twice tasted other 'hard' beers in the same style and couldn't taste a difference. Any 'easy' beer I've brewed has always at least equalled it's counterparts.
I am totally confident in BIAB when brewing hard beers. Just need to find the right recipe, mash temp etc etc.
My fear (and I think it is somewhat unfounded) is that with only Thirsty and myself changing their brewing habits, other new brewers may automatically think that BIAB is just a stepping stone to better beers.
Thirsty, myself and tastings to date should show that this is a total untruth.
I am also really pleased that when you look at the BIAB register, very few people have changed their method. The beer
is very good.
Another real credit to BIAB or, more properly, AHB, is that the traditional brewers are not knocking the method. They are and have been very open-minded. Several have actively contributed to the relevant threads and others have tasted BIAB with postivie feedback.
Frankly, this is bloody great and without such open-minded traditional brewers interest, input and feedback, both BIAB and full-volume brewing would not have had a hope.
I think though...
It's About Time We Formally Validated BIAB
To enable BIAB brewers to more confidently plough on with new ideas (see below) I think it's about time we started entering some competitions. I have no idea on how to do this and so will start another thread tonight where we can get some advice. Here's
the thread
(Whoops! The thread has been closed! Maybe use
this one instead.)
I'm happy to enter some of my, 'easy,' beers. It would be great to get some official feedback.
If we get some great feedback then we can move into some really exciting areas...
Making BIAB More Elegant
I think that once everyone is a little more confident in BIAB we can start playing around with a few ideas that will make BIAB a bit more technically elegant. I'd love this.
For example, replace the bag with a skyhook and fine mesh 'frying basket.' The question then is, 'How fine can we go?' (A lot of thought has already been put into this in James Squire's 'All In One Brewery' thread.
Then we can think on the perfect BIAB brewstand!
Looking forward to your thoughts,
Pat
P.S. That only took 2hrs 25 minutes! Could be my most 'efficient' post yet
