A Guide To All-grain Brewing In A Bag

[FNQ Bunyip]

so can anyone confirm that "Docs Schwatzbier" uses 10gs of yeast? In the recipe it says 100g! Is it meant to say 10?

I think there is a discussion thread for each recipe , you could ask there or give Doc a PM , hes very helpful..

From memory Ross recipe can be found in the first post or in the download ...

Jump in mate you can't go wrong..

Cheers

 

[captaincleanoff]

cant wait to get the first one going!

I know this is pretty unrelated to the topic... but I just ordered a Fridgemate temp controller... Im just wondering, how do these things actually work? I cant seem to open the full details/instructions for the product, so I am just curious as to how I am going to rig this up. I didnt get a probe, should I get one, or is that only necessary to measure the temp of the wort itself (instead of the fridge temp).

Sorry for newbness

 

[Damian44]

captaincleanoff i used this http://helms-deep.cable.nu/~rwh/blog/?p=29

I too am getting a BIAB setup together to do my first All Grain, after reading this most awsome thread.

I plan to purchase a Italian spiral burner with the medium regulator. But i am not sure if i should get a 60L ($100) or 80L ($125) Robinox Aluminium pot. Is the 80L pot fine for single batches? Thanks for all the info guys.

 

[InCider]

captaincleanoff i used this http://helms-deep.cable.nu/~rwh/blog/?p=29

I too am getting a BIAB setup together to do my first All Grain, after reading this most awsome thread.

I plan to purchase a Italian spiral burner with the medium regulator. But i am not sure if i should get a 60L ($100) or 80L ($125) Robinox Aluminium pot. Is the 80L pot fine for single batches? Thanks for all the info guys.

You'll kick yourself forever if you get the 60l!

Go the Manly Sean Eagles!

 

[Damian44]

80L it is than. Thanks again guys. Woot.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Damian44 - Yeah, the 80L will work fine for single batches (although it will look a little empty...) but the advantage is that you will be easily able to ramp up to double batches and get twice as much beer for only a little more effort.

Captaincleanoff - As far as I am aware the Fridgemate should come with a probe and wont work without one. Unless you just mean that you didn't get the stainless probe, but did get the NTP(?) probe. In which case you can either just use it to monitor the temperature inside the fridge, which is what I'd do with a setpoint controller like the fridgemate, or you can tape the probe to the side of your fermentor with a bit of styrofoam over it. That'll pretty much read the temp of the wort inside the fermentor. Who did you buy it off?? If it was one of the sponsors, get in contact with them and ask, not only about the probe, but also about setting up and using the controller. They are all good blokes who will be happy to help.

Get into it gents, you'll have a blast and make some great beer.

Cheers

Thirsty

 

[captaincleanoff]

excuse the noobness again... but I am going to do Docs Shwartzbier..

It says it is a 40l batch.. How much water do I begin with? 40l?

 

[randyrob]

excuse the noobness again... but I am going to do Docs Shwartzbier..

It says it is a 40l batch.. How much water do I begin with? 40l?

umm...no... 1kg of grain will soak up roughly 1L of water. as well as your loss to evapaoration, trub etc

if you were to start of with 40L you'd prolly end up with 20 odd litres of high gravity wort (which i guess you could water down)

d'oh i contradicted myself.

basically what i'm trying to say is the usual method is work out how much you'll need given the losses.

 

[captaincleanoff]

sorry, that last post was a bit stupid.. of course I'll need more than 40l due to evaporation etc!

But I'm a bit confused... Doc's Shwartzbier uses:

5.28 kg JWM Light Munich
3 kg Weyermann Pilsner
0.38 kg JWM Chocolate Malt
0.38 kg JWM Caramalt
0.17 kg JWM Roast Barley
0.17 kg Weyermann Carafa Special I
84 g Hallertauer Hersbrucker (Plugs, 3.7 AA%, 60 mins)
28 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh (Plugs, 2.6 AA%, 60 mins)
28 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh (Plugs, 2.6 AA%, 20 mins)
28 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh (Plugs, 2.6 AA%, 1 mins)
10 g DCL Yeast US-05 - American Ale

if this makes 40l, would you need more that 10g yeast?? (the recipe on the recipeDB says 100g of yeast.. but apparently this is a misprint.

Is this possible to do in a 50l pot? How much water do I need at the start, and how much yeast? I would put 20l into 2 fermenters... so would I use 10g per fermenter?

 

[mikelinz]

Does anyone have the link to Ross's shwartzbier recipe? This is the one that is recommended in the guide, but I can't find a link anywhere... I think it is pretty much the same as this recipe, but halved.. I think I should go for that one.. Anyone got a link to Ross's recipe?

edit: I am happy to do the recipe above.. but is it possible in a 50l pot? How much water do I need at the start, and how much yeast?

Go to the first post in this forum and download, BIAB_Checklist___Black_Beer.xls the recipe is in it. you can always adjust the recipe to your batch size using brew software

I brewed a 23Lbatch of this and started with 33L which was about right, then I did a 48L batch so started with 65L which was too much, ended up with a sg of 1.040 instead of 1.053 and an extra 10L off wort.

Obiously the amout of water the grain soaks up is easy to work out, but evaporation will vary depending on your system, boil time etc. And I should have realised that double vol doesn't equate to double boil off loss.

So for my gear (80L CUB keg with gas burner) I'm going fora start vol of 30L if im doing a19L (ie 1 keg) batch which should allow for trub loss post fermentation. Will need to work on the larger batch so I end up with 57L (ie 3 kegs)

 

[Thirsty Boy]

sorry, that last post was a bit stupid.. of course I'll need more than 40l due to evaporation etc!

But I'm a bit confused... Doc's Shwartzbier uses:

5.28 kg JWM Light Munich
3 kg Weyermann Pilsner
0.38 kg JWM Chocolate Malt
0.38 kg JWM Caramalt
0.17 kg JWM Roast Barley
0.17 kg Weyermann Carafa Special I
84 g Hallertauer Hersbrucker (Plugs, 3.7 AA%, 60 mins)
28 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh (Plugs, 2.6 AA%, 60 mins)
28 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh (Plugs, 2.6 AA%, 20 mins)
28 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh (Plugs, 2.6 AA%, 1 mins)
10 g DCL Yeast US-05 - American Ale

if this makes 40l, would you need more that 10g yeast?? (the recipe on the recipeDB says 100g of yeast.. but apparently this is a misprint.

Is this possible to do in a 50l pot? How much water do I need at the start, and how much yeast? I would put 20l into 2 fermenters... so would I use 10g per fermenter?

Nope - you wont be able to make a 40L batch in a 50L pot if you are using BIAB as your method. You have to fit EVERYTHING in the pot at once with BIAB. Even with a more standard brewing technique... a 40L end of boil volume would be pushing the limits of a 50L pot... with BIAB, no chance.

The easiest way to work out your mash volumes is with software like pro-mash or beersmith. But here is a rough way to work it out. After you have done a couple of brews then you can work out your own system's boil off rate and your bag's grain absorption; & substitute them for the values I use in this example.

Lets take that recipe and cut it in half for 20L into the fermentor

You will lose around 3L to trub and gunk in the kettle so add 3L = 23
You will boil off some liquid during your boil - I have a 50L pot and lose about 4.2L/hr when I am boiling. Lets add that = 27.2
You will lose some liquid to absorption by the grain - less in BIAB than other methods, I work on 0.5L/kg. You have 4.7kg in that recipe (halved remember) so you will lose 2.35L to absorption. add that = 29.55. Thats it for the water.

so you would need 29.55L of water for this brew. Call it 30L to make life easy.

Now you have to fit in your grain as well. You can add 2/3rds the weight of grain as L and that will be around how much volume the grain adds to the mash. So in this example. 4.7*.6667 = 3.13. So the total volume in your pot after everything that needs to go in has gone in... is 33.13L

To make 40L batch you would need nearly twice as much volume, or a 66L pot.

No double batches for you my friend. Sorry.

Just use one pack of yeast - its about 11.5g. I'd use two for the double sized batch.... but you wont be needing that much unfortunately.

Thirsty

 

[captaincleanoff]

thankyou for that info ThirstyBoy... really helpful, I owe u one!

 

[maltedhopalong]

Is Efficiency Higher or Lower with BIAB Compared to Traditional?

For the beginner, trying to increase efficiency by a few percent is not an important goal. Good clean brewing practices are far more essential. In saying this, in the few side by side brews that have been done, BIAB has been coming out in front of batch-sparged brews by a little over 5% so efficiency is not an issue.

Why is this so? I still can't work out WHY it happens like this. Is it purely the thick consistency of batch-sparged mash that makes sparging essential? I would have thought there would still have been more than 5% efficiency lost in BIAB considering the bag itself is still pretty wet (with the original mash water) and would retain loads of sugars.

I've been searching for the answer for quite a while but have been unable to find it. I'm sure it's been discussed before, so I do apologise but I just can't get the search query right to find it.

 

[bonj]

Why is this so? I still can't work out WHY it happens like this. Is it purely the thick consistency of batch-sparged mash that makes sparging essential? I would have thought there would still have been more than 5% efficiency lost in BIAB considering the bag itself is still pretty wet (with the original mash water) and would retain loads of sugars.

I've been searching for the answer for quite a while but have been unable to find it. I'm sure it's been discussed before, so I do apologise but I just can't get the search query right to find it.

The bag is made of synthetic plastic material, and doesn't absorb. It will hold a little due to surface tension, but bugger all.

 

[maltedhopalong]

But the grain inside the bag is still soaked with original mash water??? (Ahh, sorry, yeah when I said bag, I meant the grain inside it).

Is it because the sweet liquor is much thinner that more sugar drains out of the grains while it's hanging above the bucket after it's been taken out of the tun?

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

I can't give you a reason exactly why we are seeing greater efficiencies, but I can give you some observations of both methods - which may be complete crap, but works for me in my world view.

Normal mash tun:

Has a dead zone - no matter what concentration of sugars are in there, an amount of liquid stays there until you're cleaning up.
Cannot be squeezed - again, no matter what concentration of sugars are left there, they stay with the grain until you're cleaning up.

BIABaggie:

Will probably have a greater concentration of sugars in the liquid that remains in the grain due to the mathematics that makes fly-sparging different to batch-sparging.
No dead zone - dunno how else to say it - there just isn't a dead zone in a baggie.
You can squeeze the bejebus out of the baggie and let it drain so that the total volume of liquid lost is around 0.5litre/kg of grain or less.

If you accept these and figure that more sugar is being left behind in the dead space and in the grain, you might have the beginning of a theory why it is so... And if you do, you will probably enjoy the sympathies of several people now that you're thinking like me... :lol:


Edit: my new kitten loves walking on my keyboard...

 

[maltedhopalong]

Hmmm... True. <_< ............. ............................ :super:

Although...

If you accept these and figure that more sugar is being left behind in the dead space and in the grain, you might have the beginning of a theory why it is so... And if you do, you will probably enjoy the sympathies of several people now that you're thinking like me...

Did I say something dumb?

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Did I say something dumb?

No. It was kind of a joke. Sorry, I'm not very good at them...

 

[maltedhopalong]

No. It was kind of a joke. Sorry, I'm not very good at them...

If it's any consolation, I did laugh when I saw ^^^

 

[microbe]

Normal mash tun:

Has a dead zone - no matter what concentration of sugars are in there, an amount of liquid stays there until you're cleaning up.

Forgive my ignorance - but doesn't sparging kind of combat that? Isn't a side effect of sparging diluting the wort in the dead space to almost a zero sugar level?

Cheers,

microbe