A Guide To All-grain Brewing In A Bag

[jimmysuperlative]

dr K
In answer to your question ...I BIAB to make better beer, and I believe I do!
I'd probably still be brewing kits if it wasn't for this method ...and while producing reasonable beers, I wouldn't have been able to make the quality beer I currently enjoy as a BIABer.

Are the beers overly dextrinous? I don't think they are.
Did BIABing make AG brewing accessible for me? Yes!
Is the method any better (or worse) than other methods? ...here is where the debate becomes a bit like religion or politics or footy teams.

It takes a real shift in paradigm to move away from what you know and believe is best.

For now, that's the case for me and others like me who caught the wave that is BIAB. I tried it, I liked it, I'll stick with it for now ...but, I do appreciate the contributions to both sides of the debate because it keeps us thinking and learning and willing to consider new alternatives.

:beer:

 

[dr K]

dr K
In answer to your question ...I BIAB to make better beer, and I believe I do!
I'd probably still be brewing kits if it wasn't for this method ...and while producing reasonable beers, I wouldn't have been able to make the quality beer I currently enjoy as a BIABer.

and that, really, is what its all about...
"making better beer than you would have otherwise been able to"

That said, you could use exactly the gear that you have, mash at a 3:1 L2G then top up..
Would it make a better beer?
Your call...

 

[Thirsty Boy]

DrK

The topping up thing was mentioned as a possible way to BIAB at "normal" L:G ratios quite early on in the piece.. . I've always just assumed that there are a few guys out there doing it that very way.

The only reasons why not would be:

Well - now you need a separate vessel to heat up your top up water in. Defeating at least partly the goal to keep the equipment to a minimum. But its not like there are rules or anything, so I imagine that someone out there is doing it, or might try it.

You could just top up with Hot tap water, and that would be really easy. If you filter through a carbon filter to remove chlorine etc that complicates it slightly, but not insurmountably.

So there is a con side, but its not all that hard to get past. If it makes people feel better I cant see any reason why people wouldn't do as you suggest.

I suspect the main reason that not too many people are bothering with it though, is because despite the very good arguments that people continue to make as to why the large L:G ratio (and other things) will detrimentally effect the quality of the beer.. it just doesn't seem to work out that way in practice.

I have (as unfortunately self flattering as it sounds) a fairly good palate, which is fairly well educated and fairly well experienced across a wide variety of beers and beers styles.

I have also tasted beers produced by four different BIAB brewers (including myself) and the beers simply do not display (as a trend) the faults that the theorising says they "should" display.

BIAB is not inefficient - High 70% range isn't bad by any standards. up to high 80% range if you choose to dunk sparge and/or squeeze (which of course does not extract tannins. There is no reason why it would)

The beers are not overly sweet nor dextrinous (not that they are the same thing) - my last BIAB finished at 1.007 and I have regularly tasted quite "dry" BIAB beers with FG's at or below 1.01

The beers are not overly Dry from worts that are too fermentable - Had brews with lovely med/high bodies and FG's top match. Strangely enough, usually because this was what the brewer intended.

The beers do not suffer unusually from clarity or haze issues - Oh yeah they get it, but in my brewing at least, no more regularly than non-BIAB brews. I get clear ones and I get hazy ones... still trying to work that out in ALL my brewing. And I have seen the same in other people's brews

The beers do not seem to suffer from stability problems - at least not inherently. My BIAB brews seem to be stable for as long as my non-BIAB brews, and the other "aged" BIAB brews I have tried don't seem to have been suffering from pre-mature staling. That said, I don't know if that holds true beyond about 6 months. Thats as old as I have gone so far. But I have several "aging" batches that I intend to try out over the next several years .. unfortunately only time can answer this one properly.

So while we all appreciate that people have difficulty believing that what they are "sure" will happen - in fact doesn't it gets a little tiring repeating it again and again. The things people say will happen just don't happen... please believe us.

And so the whole "Are you trying to make Better Beer or just do it easier/faster cheaper..." thing is just a null argument as far as I am concerned. In fact its really a kind of a put-down for me at least. Why would people think that I would be any less concerned about making the best beer I can than they are? Or that I might "think" that the beer is good, but aren't capable of the level of tasting that they are and really the beers are lousy?

I'm a passionate homebrewer, I want to make the absolute best beer I am able to - without exception. Cost, time, effort and resources have not yet proved to be an influence on my desire to brew the best beer I can; and I don't imagine that they will become an influence in the future.

And yet I brew a number of my beers via BIAB - I do so because the method is simple, elegant and time efficient. If I thought for one second that BIAB had a negative effect on the quality of my beers - It would be dropped like a hot rock. But I don't believe that.

I have heard plenty of opinion, but seen no evidence that convinces me that BIAB is anything other than a completely legitimate alternative way to produce wort. Neither better nor worse than any of the other wort production methods. Merely possessed of different attributes. And thats why people should or should not choose BIAB. because its features suit the way they want to brew. NOT because it is "better" or "worse" at producing great beer. It is neither.

Choose batch over fly, choose single infusion over step, choose HERMS over RIMS, choose a bag over an eski, choose electric over gas, choose stainless over aluminium, choose chill over no-chill, choose braid over a false bottom, choose pumps over gravity... and more and more and Visa Versa to all of them.

None of those choices is about the quality of the beer, they are all about the preferences of the brewer. As they should be.


That is of course unless someone comes up with a NEW thing to be concerned about with the method... hell, I really want to hear from them. I'm just sick of going over and over the old disproved ones.

Sorry to rant (again ) I think I might have a slight "probem" :blink:

Thirsty Boy

 

[Hashie]

Well said Thirsty, I agree with all you say, but would like to add some of my observations.

To date I've made 16 BIAB brews. I had a couple with haze, but after the 5th brew I started adding my specialty malts at mash out. Since doing this I haven't had a hazy beer...so far.

On the L:G ratio debate. If a 3 vessel brewer uses ~35 litres of water to create ~23 litres of wort and all of that water passes through the grain (bed) at some stage. Why is full volume (BIAB) mashing different? To my thinking, if I mashed 5 kg of grain in ~15 litres of water (instead of ~35), when I removed the grain (bag) there would be a greater amount of sugars left in the grain due to the concentration of the low L:G. This would mean that I would then need to sparge the grain with the remaining volume of water to extract the sugars. Where as, with a full volume mash the grain is being rinsed by the same volume as a 3 vessel system, just with less steps.

I can't see the problem.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Its about the enzymes and the way they work during the conversion phase of the mash Hashie. Once you are up to the sparge stage and adding the "extra" water in a conventional system.. the assumption is that conversion will be all over bar the shouting and so the added volume wont have an effect.

On the face of it, most of the issues that people think will occur with BIAB probably "should" occur. I certainly expected them to appear in one way or another. I've been quite surprised at the fact that the full volume mashing process has turned out to be as robust as it actually has; pleasantly so.

I'm quite chuffed that what I suspect most of us thought would be at best a useful stepping stone into AG - has turned out to be a seemingly solid alternative brewing method without apparent drawbacks or limitations. One that has the bonus of being (arguably) the cheapest and easiest way for a new brewer to get into AG.

I reckon that's pretty cool.

Thirsty

 

[dr K]

Apologies for the "ransom note" cutting from more than one post, but all from this thread..

DrK

The topping up thing was mentioned as a possible way to BIAB at "normal" L:G ratios quite early on in the piece.. . I've always just assumed that there are a few guys out there doing it that very way.

The only reasons why not would be:

Well - now you need a separate vessel to heat up your top up water in. Defeating at least partly the goal to keep the equipment to a minimum. But its not like there are rules or anything, so I imagine that someone out there is doing it, or might try it

From the BIAB Bible

BIAB is what we might call a full volume method of brewing where all the water is added at the beginning so that mashing and sparging occur at the same time. A simplistic analogy is that of making an instant coffee. In traditional brewing, you add a teaspoon of coffee and a third a cup of water. Stir it and then either add the remaining water in one or more hits (as in batch-sparging) or trickle the remaining water in slowly (as in fly-sparging.) In BIAB all the water for your coffee goes in first and then you stir.

I digress, but, when I brew beer I don't add coffee and when I brew coffee I don't use instant (coffee).
When I brew beer I heat my sparge water in a 12 litre stock pot I have had for years, I used to use a 40 litre urn but it broke..sometimes I might use a 6 litre pot, I cook a lot and have a lot of pots, for me its not an extra vessel and I would hope that for most it would not be either..soup by week, beer by weekend !

You could just top up with Hot tap water, and that would be really easy. If you filter through a carbon filter to remove chlorine etc that complicates it slightly, but not insurmountably.

One of the reasons we sparge at around 72C is to wash those sticky sugars off the grist, legal hot tap water is lower than this (60C not sure), it cools in transfer and I would imagine having been through an (uheated) carbon filter would reduce the temperature again but you are correct, it is not, even after filtering insurmountable..you could always put in a big pot and heat it up

I suspect the main reason that not too many people are bothering with it though, is because despite the very good arguments that people continue to make as to why the large L:G ratio (and other things) will detrimentally effect the quality of the beer.. it just doesn't seem to work out that way in practice.

No argument with that..I cannot think of a single BIABER whose beer's quality has dropped since he/she changed.
The point, and the only technical point that I have been making is that the L:G does matter, if you are happy with the results that you are getting from an abnormally high L:G then fine and I have no doubt that the beers are excellent, but to dismiss such a basic and well held concept is at the least arrogant.

Its about the enzymes and the way they work during the conversion phase of the mash Hashie. Once you are up to the sparge stage and adding the "extra" water in a conventional system.. the assumption is that conversion will be all over bar the shouting and so the added volume wont have an effect

Yes!..it is all about the enzymes, two in particlar, alpha and beta amalyse, and how these two enzymes work is dependent not just on temperature but on L:G, even in the "standard" range of say 2:1 to 3:1.
Now I am not saying, nor have I ever said that BIAB will not work, nor am I or have I said that the beer resulting will be crap (for a start I have not tasted one !!) I am and have been stating well established facts.
Good luck and good beers

 

[Kai]

While at the Riverland field day today I found something that might be useful for BIABers wanting to scale up a bit - see attached photo.

I took a brochure. Someone tell Pat it's his if he wants it

 

[deadly]

Hiab for Biab? :blink:

 

[Fents]

While at the Riverland field day today I found something that might be useful for BIABers wanting to scale up a bit - see attached photo.

I took a brochure. Someone tell Pat it's his if he wants it

Dont know about the crane but i'll take the super big blowup gas bottle in the background :lol: never run out of gas again...

 

[the_fuzz]

Hey guys,

I'm keen to give BIAB a go this weekend :super:

I made it up to about page 25, then had to leave work, Can someone point me to the latest excel sheet for BIAB

BTW, how to I work out how much grain/water I need for a 11.5l ferment

 

[poppa joe]

Good work there PP ehhhh SORRY THIRSTY...
My first and only BIAB was cloudy...used some wheat...
Didnt know what i was doing....BUT it was "EASY PEASY"...
GUNNA try again...Maybe give both ways ago..So i can comment..?
CHEERS
PJ
Gotta Get some grain but....?????????? Somewhere round here.....

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Hey guys,

I'm keen to give BIAB a go this weekend :super:

I made it up to about page 25, then had to leave work, Can someone point me to the latest excel sheet for BIAB

BTW, how to I work out how much grain/water I need for a 11.5l ferment

We can work backwards from your 11.5litres

Lets say you are going to lose a litre to trub in the form of hops and break material 11.5 + 1 = 12.5

You're going to want to boil off at a rate of about 15% of the starting volume of the boil (1 hr boil) and 12.5 is what will be left so 12.5 = 85% of 14.7

You will lose about 0.5 litres of wort per KG of malt if you squeeze the bag, about 0.75 if you don't - some people think that squeezing the bag might be bad for the beer, so lets not do that. How much grain are you using? well a fairly normal beer would need about 5kg for 23litres and you are doing a half batch so lets say 2.5kg. So you will leave behind in your grain about 2.5 x 0.75 = 1.88 Add that to your 14.7 and you get 16.6

Call it 16.5 litres

I'd be inclined to go in a little low at say 15litres, because at your batch size its pretty easy to just add a litre or so of water from the kettle when you finish the boil - or cooled boiled water to the fermentor. That way if you miss your gravity on the low side, you have the option to just leave out some or all of the top up water to help you hit your gravity. Of course, if you are high... you can just add more water.

As for the excel sheets - I don't know that they have been kept up to date... I suspect that what you have might be the latest version. Once you do one for two brews, you will probably realise why they have lapsed a bit... you dont really need them ! There are only one or two simple calculations for BIAB and I've just done one of them for you

The other is strike temp .... I use promash and let it work it out for me, but I reckon if you were to heat your water to 1-1.5C higher than you want your mash to be, that would be OK.. If it comes in low; with the smaller volume brew, you can very easily and quite quickly add heat to the mash with your stove/burner. Just remember to stir it a LOT (gently of course) while you are heating and be careful not to over shoot. If you are adding only a degree or two... a nice low flame is plenty to get you there in a few minutes.

Have fun and good luck

Thirsty

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Hey DrK,

It seems we are slowly (and torturously ) forging an understanding of each other.

No one's dismissing the effect of L:G on the enzymes (Beta Am in particular), we all know that their activity is effected by L:G. Of course it is.

Its just that the effect hasn't turned out to be as big a factor in wort fermentability at the extreme end of L:G ratios; as you (and me) might have expected it to. At a guess... I'd say the difference between a standardly "thin" 3.5-4:1 ratio and a 6:1ish BIAB ratio... is probably less drastic than the difference between a 2:1 ratio and the 4:1

The effect turns out to be at a level, where it's still well and truly the junior partner to Mash Temp in determining fermentability. A degree or so's worth of tweaking your mash temp sorts it out... if needed.

When I began doing my BIAB brews, I decided to lower my mash temps by a degree or so to compensate... but i have drifted away from that because, counter-intuitively... my BIAB brews were turning out with less body than I wanted them to. So now I make no adjustments at all to my recipes when I transfer between my BIAB & my Standard 3:1 brews. The differences, although I'm sure they are there, are well inside the variability range that exists within the normal spectrum of my brewing results. I've (sadly) got much bigger issues in my brewing that I need to address before I can even try to track them down.

Oh... Just as an aside that you might be interested in from a technical perspective. I have been doing a bit of reading recently. I suspect that some of the reasons that the L:G ratios don't effect BIAB brews as drastically as perhaps we think they should.. is because we have only been thinking about the Big 2 enzymes... we've been ignoring Limit Dextrinase... which the more recent literature (not new, just more recent) is suggesting plays a much bigger part in conversion than its generally given credit for. I'm still not too sure how it all meshes together... but I reckon its got something to do with it.

What do you think? or am I way off track?

Thirsty

 

[tcraig20]

G'day blokes. Been reading this thread over the last week or so (gave up at about page 44, most of the nuts seem to have been out by there).

Certainly seems like an interesting way of going about it, simple, seemingly efficient and even I can understand it! Im pretty new to the whole HB thing. Actually going to bottle my first K&K on Sunday. I can see it being a relatively rapid transition to BIABing though. Im actually starting to regret buying so many tins of concentrate stuff now...

A couple of things that I think I can add: for extra support/strength of bags I reckon (if you could get your hands on it) the blue nylon netting they make prawn trawler nets out of over the outside of the bag would be ideal, it can hold tonnes of prawns, so 10kg of grain shouldnt be too much to ask. Second, I see a few blokes are doing things outside. I reckon you could turn a hills hoist into a pretty effective winch fairly easily.

Cheers

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Hey James,

I like your Hills Hoist idea! how Aussie is that? Using a Hills Hoist to help you brew beer. The netting sounds like it might be an idea for those who are trying to brew "big" batches, or just for anyone who is a bit suspect on the sewing skills front.

Don't regret those tins of concentrate.... make beer out of them. You can make really good beer with a tin if you pay attention to the advice that you will find on this site.

If you decide you want to swap to brewing with grain, either by BIAB or another method, then the experience you will have gained from your kit beer, on fermentation and sanitation issues alone, will serve you very well indeed.

Actually, in my opinion (which I've never been shy about sharing :roll_eyes I would say that you will make a bigger improvement to the beer you make, by investing any extra time/money/effort into using better quality yeast with your kits and getting some control over your fermentation temperatures... I reckon that will give you bigger bang for your buck in quality terms than changing to AG.

Or you could do it all

Cheers

Thirsty

 

[wambesi]

Hey Thirsty,

Couldn't agree more as I am in the same position.
I had seen this thread before but thought it was still a "normal" type of AG brewing and therefore out of my league until 2009 (2x interstate moves to come and lack of $$$) so had never looked at it, until someone mentioned it to me in another thread.

I am currently brewing kits and extracts but with my own special grains, liquid yeasts, hops and the like and must say I am liking them more and more since this site and I have quite a few tins still which will certainly NOT be wasted! but now after reading (and downloading) this thread and all attachments as well as the thread I found you talking in on the brewing network forum it seems I will be able to try out my first AG sooner than I thought - this november if all goes to plan.

It's great to see other methods and the like around, this hobby of mine is clearly turning into an obsession...does dreaming about yeast types and hops count toward that

Anyway, re-reading it all again and planning to acquire a bigger pot and the fabric needed.

Thanks to everyone for bringing the AG scene closer to me!
You will all certainly be hearing from me in this thread again.

 

[tcraig20]

Hey James,

I like your Hills Hoist idea! how Aussie is that? Using a Hills Hoist to help you brew beer. The netting sounds like it might be an idea for those who are trying to brew "big" batches, or just for anyone who is a bit suspect on the sewing skills front.

Don't regret those tins of concentrate.... make beer out of them. You can make really good beer with a tin if you pay attention to the advice that you will find on this site.

If you decide you want to swap to brewing with grain, either by BIAB or another method, then the experience you will have gained from your kit beer, on fermentation and sanitation issues alone, will serve you very well indeed.

Actually, in my opinion (which I've never been shy about sharing :roll_eyes I would say that you will make a bigger improvement to the beer you make, by investing any extra time/money/effort into using better quality yeast with your kits and getting some control over your fermentation temperatures... I reckon that will give you bigger bang for your buck in quality terms than changing to AG.

Or you could do it all

Cheers

Thirsty

Thanks Thirsty. I tend to get carried away and run ahead of myself sometimes. I reckon it's going to be a process getting to AG, working from kits to partials to (eventually) AG. I reckon that Im going to need to "get my eye in" first, get an understanding of hops, grains and yeast. The easiest way to do that seems to be doing modded K&Ks. Ive heard a lot about K&K "taste", so I guess I'd better experience it for myself before trying to solve it by going AG (know your enemy or something like that I suppose).

Its going to be a while off, if for no other reason than the old lady just got the credit card bill... Christ... "I thought homebrewing was meant to save you money! How the hell did you spend $400???" Imagine, if you will, hair curlers and a rolling pin. You get the idea

 

[braufrau]

Its going to be a while off, if for no other reason than the old lady just got the credit card bill... Christ... "I thought homebrewing was meant to save you money! How the hell did you spend $400???" Imagine, if you will, hair curlers and a rolling pin. You get the idea

Tell your "old lady" that AG is cheaper. And BIAB is the cheapest way to get into it.
And even if your decide to follow a more conventional route later, the only bit of equipment you wont use is the bag.

What am I doing? Advocating AG when I stubbornly stick to partials.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Tell your "old lady" that AG is cheaper. And BIAB is the cheapest way to get into it.
And even if your decide to follow a more conventional route later, the only bit of equipment you wont use is the bag.

What am I doing? Advocating AG when I stubbornly stick to partials.

I reckon that if you decide to go for one of those three-vessel systems, you might still be able to use the bag you bought/built as a liner for your mash tun. The value in that is that it might make your cleaning task a bit easier, which you will certainly appreciate...

However, if you are prepared to give this process a good run, you may not bother with all that extra carry-on.

 

[ikern]

Hi All,

Well it's probably time that this AG virgin came out of the closet. I've been doing kit's and then extract + bits brews for about a year. My first attempts at getting my head around AG on this forum and others was quite difficult. I think this thread helped alot because there were some fairly fundamental questions raised about the BIAB process and also some comprehensive answers given. In other threads I have tried to read there appeared to be a lot of assumptions about 'assumed' knowledge.

Anywho.....popped the cherry a week ago and found that all in all the day (morning actually) went reasonably well.

I used a 40lt electric urn I scored for 10 bucks, and the bag my favourite mother-out-law stiched up for me. I rigged up a nice pulley off the eaves and found that when the time came to extract the bag that the loop round the top of the bag reached the pulley so I couldn't get any altitude on the bag. Had to stand on the table the urn was sitting on and drag the bag up by hand and hook the loop over the skyhook (damn that thing was heavy). Have changed my fastening process so that I can actually make use of the pully next time.

At the end of the mash I emptied the bag out in the garden beds and gave it a quick rinse as I planned to try to use it as a hop sock as I had read about somewhere here. Won't be doing that again !!. Found that after a little while into the boil when I tried to lift the bag a little, the bag appeared to be lined with some sort of coagulant (break material ??) and it actually retained a fair bit of the wort. Next time I'll just be chucking the hops in to the boil sans bag (or get a proper hop sock).

At the end of the boil I tried to whirlpool to get the break in one place so that I could drain in to my no-chill cube but found the break material didn't settle particularly well. As I wanted to make sure I didn't loose too much heat before transferring to the cube I ended up with a fair bit of break in the cube. I let this settle over night but still found I left a fair bit of wort in the cube due the break material. I should state at this point I didn't use any sort of finings. Just wondering what the other BIABer's have had success using?

A couple of other stat's from the brew (didn't take many as I was more concerned with the process) -

*started with 36lts in the urn ( had to let out a bit as the grain from the all-Amarillo bill was pretty hefty)
* mash temp held between 66 and 67
* ended up with 21.5 lts (because that's all the cube held) of 1056 wort. Not sure what that works out to for eff.
* currently humming away in the ferm fridge at 18 deg.

Cheers for all the great advice fellas.

Soz.