A Guide To All-grain Brewing In A Bag

[bonj]

Thanks for the very informative post Thirsty Boy. One of the things that makes this forum so great is the wealth of information that is so readily handed out by those in the know. I think some of our brewing practices come directly from large breweries where it is a concern for whatever reason, but don't actually translate that well to very small scale breweries like ours. It probably won't stop me from recirculating, because I'm conditioned into it now.... and it looks perty

Reviled: Check out this link for pretty good info about beer hazes. The simplified, condensed version is: good solid boil and boil for 90 minutes... you may find other things in here that will apply to you also: http://www.brewerssupplygroup.com/pdf/know...eBeer_Hazes.pdf

 

[reviled]

Thanks for the very informative post Thirsty Boy. One of the things that makes this forum so great is the wealth of information that is so readily handed out by those in the know. I think some of our brewing practices come directly from large breweries where it is a concern for whatever reason, but don't actually translate that well to very small scale breweries like ours. It probably won't stop me from recirculating, because I'm conditioned into it now.... and it looks perty

Reviled: Check out this link for pretty good info about beer hazes. The simplified, condensed version is: good solid boil and boil for 90 minutes... you may find other things in here that will apply to you also: http://www.brewerssupplygroup.com/pdf/know...eBeer_Hazes.pdf

Cheers bud ill have a read now.. :icon_cheers:

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Yeah, you sort of answered your own question - if the haze doesn't disappear when the beer warms up, its not chill haze. Although over time - chill haze can turn into permanent haze. As you can see in teh article.

It could be protein haze, it could be yeast haze... lots of different stuff could be causing it. BUT - I am pretty confident that its not BIAB in and of itself - I have had plenty of BIAB beers that were perfectly clear both from a chill and a non chill haze perspective. So its not that the process itself leads inevitably to hazy beer. That doesn't mean that the fact that you BIAB isn't more drastically exposing another aspect of your process that leaves something to be desired.

It could be something non-mash related that you are doing, it could be the way your are BIABing, or it could be that BIAB is making worse something else that wouldn't be so bad if you used another method... hard to tell. BUT there is no particular reason for your beer to be hazy just because you BIAB.

I dont know if your syphon technique could be doing it - the guide is Pistol Patch's work remember, not mine, and apart from a bit of a look through, I really haven't read it all that thoroughly, so I'm not certain of where in the process you refer to. Still, try following that advice and see if it helps, I'm sure Pat put it in there for a reason.

I'd look at your boil, some kettle finings, your hot break separation and perhaps your wort chilling technique - all that for protein / polyphenol type hazes.

Your transfer, racking and bottling/kegging techniques if its maybe a yest haze

The other thing to do is to make sure you have complete conversion in your mash - if there is unconverted starch then you will get a permanent haze from that. Do a search for "Iodine Test" or starch test and you will get info on how to test whether your mash has converted fully. This is a likely culprit actually. If you have unconverted starch in your mash, then its going to make it straight through the bag without slowing down.

TB

 

[Bribie G]

hi guys, I'm sorry i haven't read the whole 80 pages of this post but i have a question.

I use a 3 vessel system, but the other day i wanted to do a crazy test beer and only wanted 4L so i did a BIAB stove top setup.

Troydo, are you the experimental potato beer guy I met at the Babbs meeting? I've been thinking about what you said about wort clarity and I plan to hit it on all fronts with

kettle finings and whirlpooling
filtering hot break out through a hop bed
racking to secondary
gelatine or isinglass
polyclar

I'll bring a couple of bottles in Jan to check it out in person

Cheers
Michael

 

[reviled]

Yeah, you sort of answered your own question - if the haze doesn't disappear when the beer warms up, its not chill haze. Although over time - chill haze can turn into permanent haze. As you can see in teh article.

It could be protein haze, it could be yeast haze... lots of different stuff could be causing it. BUT - I am pretty confident that its not BIAB in and of itself - I have had plenty of BIAB beers that were perfectly clear both from a chill and a non chill haze perspective. So its not that the process itself leads inevitably to hazy beer. That doesn't mean that the fact that you BIAB isn't more drastically exposing another aspect of your process that leaves something to be desired.

It could be something non-mash related that you are doing, it could be the way your are BIABing, or it could be that BIAB is making worse something else that wouldn't be so bad if you used another method... hard to tell. BUT there is no particular reason for your beer to be hazy just because you BIAB.

I dont know if your syphon technique could be doing it - the guide is Pistol Patch's work remember, not mine, and apart from a bit of a look through, I really haven't read it all that thoroughly, so I'm not certain of where in the process you refer to. Still, try following that advice and see if it helps, I'm sure Pat put it in there for a reason.

I'd look at your boil, some kettle finings, your hot break separation and perhaps your wort chilling technique - all that for protein / polyphenol type hazes.

Your transfer, racking and bottling/kegging techniques if its maybe a yest haze

The other thing to do is to make sure you have complete conversion in your mash - if there is unconverted starch then you will get a permanent haze from that. Do a search for "Iodine Test" or starch test and you will get info on how to test whether your mash has converted fully. This is a likely culprit actually. If you have unconverted starch in your mash, then its going to make it straight through the bag without slowing down.

TB

Cheers buddy ill look into this starch conversion thing first, and then try the syphon technique... I guess the trick is to try things one at a time so I know what it is?

 

[troydo]

cheers thirsty! that helps.. that said i think 3 vessel is easer than biab i dont burn myself as much HAHAHAHHA

bribie g yep thats me... i'll bring some along to the jan meeting

about to go geletain the carboy now

T

 

[reviled]

Thought id update my results from yesterdays brew and another increase in efficiency B)

Basically, took the water volume I would normally use for the mash, then take out about 4 litres of water...

Heat to strike temp, dough in, mash for an hour... Then when bringing to mash out temp, added 1.7 litres of boiling water to assist the mash getting to temp (stirring well of course)

When reached mash out temp of 78, half remove the bag, leaving the bottom of the bag suspended in liquid, then sort of sparged the top of the bag with about 1.5 litres of near boiling water, squeezed the bag, then placed it into a bucket...

I then sparged the bag in the bucket with another litre of water, drained it through, squeezed the bag, then put whatever liquor into the kettle...

This saw me with an OG of 1058 - 20 litres from 5kg of grain, big improvement from what I was getting...

Hopefully this is helpfull to some people, I dont know why it helps or what its doing, but it worked... Ill post up with the finished result also..

 

[geoffi]

Hey Thirsty, maybe you can help shed some light...

We recently did our case swap, and all the BIAB beers have what seems to be chill haze, but its not a chill haze that goes away when the glass warms up, so we were thinking maybe its something else??

I know that myself personally, I dont discard the cloudy wort at the start of syphon like you told me to in the guide, could this be the reason?

I recently started gelatining but the chill (or whatever) haze is still there in full force :unsure:

Do you use whirlfloc? I'm not a BIABer, but I find that makes a noticeable difference to my finished beers

 

[apd]

g'day reviled,

Basically, took the water volume I would normally use for the mash, then take out about 4 litres of water...

When reached mash out temp of 78, half remove the bag, leaving the bottom of the bag suspended in liquid, then sort of sparged the top of the bag with about 1.5 litres of near boiling water, squeezed the bag, then placed it into a bucket...

This is similar to what I do except I completely remove the bag and rest it on an oven rack that sits across the kettle opening. This way I can give the bag a good squeeze and press against the rack and it also leaves me with two hands to do the mini sparge.

About the sparge water being near boiling water - I thought anything over 80*C in contact with the grains would risk extracting tannins.

Andrew

 

[reviled]

Im not using a whirfloc or anything, ive been thinking about it, or koppafloc or something...

And yeah, I thought about tannins, but I wasnt sure, couldnt be too much extracted... ill update when i try the beer, if its tannin city then ill know for next time

 

[reviled]

Also, thought I would add the feedback I got when I went to get my malt yesterday (the HBS guy held the brewers guild bbq at his place on saturday)

I got asked if my ears were burning on sunday? I asked why, and he told me they were all talking about my beer, and all amazed at how I could make such good beer with my method, alot of them were shocked and stunned when I was telling them how I did it, but at the end of the day, they all agreed that it was really good beer, which is what matters the most right?

So...... For that, BIAB, I love you :wub:

 

[katzke]

Im not using a whirfloc or anything, ive been thinking about it, or koppafloc or something...

And yeah, I thought about tannins, but I wasnt sure, couldnt be too much extracted... ill update when i try the beer, if its tannin city then ill know for next time

It takes more then just heat to release tannins. Take Decoction mashes as an example. Part of the grain is removed with just enough wort to keep it liquid and then boiled. pH is what extracts the tannin and then hot sparge water rinses it out.

As long as your pH was ok then you should not have any extra tannin in your brew.

Congrats on everyone liking your BIAB beer. Got compliments on my last brew at a meeting also. Not sure if they believe me about the odd brewing method and I did not bring it up either.

 

[reviled]

It takes more then just heat to release tannins. Take Decoction mashes as an example. Part of the grain is removed with just enough wort to keep it liquid and then boiled. pH is what extracts the tannin and then hot sparge water rinses it out.

As long as your pH was ok then you should not have any extra tannin in your brew.

Congrats on everyone liking your BIAB beer. Got compliments on my last brew at a meeting also. Not sure if they believe me about the odd brewing method and I did not bring it up either.

Cheers buddy, seems it will all be ok then

 

[Thirsty Boy]

It takes more then just heat to release tannins. Take Decoction mashes as an example. Part of the grain is removed with just enough wort to keep it liquid and then boiled. pH is what extracts the tannin and then hot sparge water rinses it out.

As long as your pH was ok then you should not have any extra tannin in your brew.

Congrats on everyone liking your BIAB beer. Got compliments on my last brew at a meeting also. Not sure if they believe me about the odd brewing method and I did not bring it up either.

Yep, and thats where I think there could be a problem here - not saying definitely, but certainly there could be.

In a "normal" fly sparge, the grain bed is still wet all the way through - the clear water is added to the top and starts to rinse out the sugars, eventually rinsing them all out and resulting in a layer of basically clean water with spent grain in it - this layer moves down through the grain bed and when the gravity drops and the ph starts to go up - fly spargers know they are hitting the really dilute bit that probably has lots of extracted tannins etc in it, and they stop.

If you are sparging what is effectively a "dry" grain bed sitting in a colander or whatever above your kettle - then there is a pretty good chance that the boiling water (heat) at pH 7 ish (high pH) will combine to pull tannins out of your grist. But because its a bit of a random thing going on there... its going to be hard to tell. It might be OK, it might not. It might be OK this time, but not next time... all a bit hit and miss.

If you are keen to add a "sparge" type step to your process, I would be more inclined to go with a "dunk sparge"

As you did already, reserve 4 or 5 litres or even more of your normal mash in water, heat it up to a proper sparge temperature of 78C and after you have pulled your bag and let it drain a bit, dunk the bag into the sparge water like a big teabag. Stir it round well and drain/squeeze.

What you are effectively doing then is batch sparging. And you shouldn't have tannin extraction problems with that. BUT, best of all, you can check. Measure the pH of the grain/water mix in your sparge bucket and see if it is more than 6... if not - No problems. If so, well you can acidify the sparge water, use less of it or just give it a miss. You will see a percentage gain in efficiency of 5%+ from a dunk sparge.

But remember - its all extra steps and time and equipment. And by the time you have it all set up to bugger about sparging your BIAB... you could probably have set yourself up a nice tried and true batch sparge system in an eski.

I re-iterate.... efficiency is only important as a quantity that you need to know, so you can hit your numbers. Otherwise its just about cost and penis size.

If your bog standard, run of the mill, don't change a thing BIAB is giving you results where you get less than 70% efficiency (measured at pre-boil) on a wort of 1.050 or less, then you are doing something wrong. And as far as I am concerned, 70 odd % efficiency is plenty good enough. Anything extra is just gravy.

The dunk sparge will improve things efficiency wise for sure... is it worth the trouble? Not in my book. The other sparge methods people have described - well, if they aren't extracting tannins, they aren't. But I would call them risky and probably even more trouble than a dunk sparge.

BIAB has its strong points - but if you are going to trade them off in order to get extra efficiency, then I seriously recommend that you consider another way of brewing. BIAB is designed as a no sparge technique, shoehorning in sparges etc is just giving you the worst of both worlds. I believe that BIAB is the simplest and easietst way of grain brewing, but I am damn sure you can make it hard if you try. Better to do it well with one of the other techniques than badly with BIAB.

TB

 

[Bribie G]

As usual Thirsty you have put me right on efficiency, trade offs and mucking around too much with the basic BIAB technique. I too had been thinking along the lines of mashing thicker then doing a mash out, doing a dunk sparge etc. At the end of the day what I have decided (virgin brew tomorrow) is not to obsess about efficiency, just follow the BIAB pure and simple guidelines - but as an 'insurance policy' B) just up the grain a tad. For example I picked up six grain bills from Ross today. For the style and strength I am looking for, received wisdom indicates 4.5 kg of Maris Otter plus crystal etc. I've gone 5 kg and hope to hit a sweet spot there.
The worst that can go wrong is that I have spent $1.70 too much - big deal - and the best outcome is that the final beer will get me more pis$ed. :super:

 

[kenlock]

As usual Thirsty you have put me right on efficiency, trade offs and mucking around too much with the basic BIAB technique. I too had been thinking along the lines of mashing thicker then doing a mash out, doing a dunk sparge etc. At the end of the day what I have decided (virgin brew tomorrow) is not to obsess about efficiency, just follow the BIAB pure and simple guidelines - but as an 'insurance policy' B) just up the grain a tad. For example I picked up six grain bills from Ross today. For the style and strength I am looking for, received wisdom indicates 4.5 kg of Maris Otter plus crystal etc. I've gone 5 kg and hope to hit a sweet spot there.
The worst that can go wrong is that I have spent $1.70 too much - big deal - and the best outcome is that the final beer will get me more pis$ed. :super:

Good luck tomorrow BribieG! Having done my first AG BIAB on Melbourne Cup Day, and my second on the weekend, I agree that not obsessing about efficiency, etc is a good idea.

You'll have a great time getting to know the procedure and how your equipment reacts. Then the long wait to taste your first AG.

It is worth it!

Can't wait to hear your account of the day.

Cheers Kenlock

 

[Bribie G]

BribieG's brew day.

Assistant Cannibal Smurf from the Gold Coast arrived about 20 minutes before dough in, accompanied by Smurfette who handled the video camera, and they intend to edit and post on YouTube in a couple of weeks, other projects permitting.

Equipment: 40L Birko Urn, Swiss Voile bag, skyhook pulley, hop sock, etc.

Using tank water, and with a complete collection of water salts I couldn't make sense of John Palmer so just put in a level teaspoon of everything plus two teaspoons of Calcium Carbonate as I'm doing a Yorkshire Bitter. Ended up tasting like water

Grain bill 5kg Maris Otter floor malted , 200 medium crystal, 100 dark crystal.

Urn heated up surprisingly quickly to strike temp of 68, looking for 66 mash. Hit 66 spot on. Swaddled immediately with a single feather doonah and strapped, we don't use the doonah for sleeping as it's Chinese and smells like wet chickens but the wort doesn't mind.

Quick sandwich and salad lunch then took the Smurfs on a tour of Bribie Island and wahoo, came upon the Cellarbrations on the surfside who had a pallete of Kaiserdom one litre cans with a one litre stein for $15. Suitably shopped we returned to rescue the mash. On entering the garage the malt aroma hit us straight away. :icon_drool2:

Mash had dropped one degree in an hour. Hoisted and squeezed the bag and ended up with target pre boil volume, cranked up urn which raised wort to rolling boil after about half an hour then added 45 g NZ fuggles flowers.

Beer O'clock, nice ice cold fake lager (partial) in Boddingtons pint glasses miraculously disappeared in quick succession, punctuated only by trips to the nicely rolling boil to add 20g EKG pellets 20 mins and 20g Styrian Goldings 5 mins.At some stage we added a whirlfloc tablet that fizzed like a berocca (impressed ) Troydo may be interested that wort (discounting the crumbs of hot break, of course) came out crystal clear.

Hoisted impressively full hopsock and drained, flame out, whirlpooled and put lid back on urn for fifteen minutes to let crud settle somewhat.

Cubed. Collected a litre along the way for starter of WYeast West Yorkshire.

Great social day, Veronica got on well with the Smurfs & reciprocal and we hit every possible sweet spot in the process.

Still can't believe how smoothly it went.

Now to nurse my new creation, the wort tasted like an angel crying on my tongue (apologies to old Fosters ad )

 

[reviled]

BribieG's brew day.

Assistant Cannibal Smurf from the Gold Coast arrived about 20 minutes before dough in, accompanied by Smurfette who handled the video camera, and they intend to edit and post on YouTube in a couple of weeks, other projects permitting.

Equipment: 40L Birko Urn, Swiss Voile bag, skyhook pulley, hop sock, etc.

Using tank water, and with a complete collection of water salts I couldn't make sense of John Palmer so just put in a level teaspoon of everything plus two teaspoons of Calcium Carbonate as I'm doing a Yorkshire Bitter. Ended up tasting like water

Grain bill 5kg Maris Otter floor malted , 200 medium crystal, 100 dark crystal.

Urn heated up surprisingly quickly to strike temp of 68, looking for 66 mash. Hit 66 spot on. Swaddled immediately with a single feather doonah and strapped, we don't use the doonah for sleeping as it's Chinese and smells like wet chickens but the wort doesn't mind.

Quick sandwich and salad lunch then took the Smurfs on a tour of Bribie Island and wahoo, came upon the Cellarbrations on the surfside who had a pallete of Kaiserdom one litre cans with a one litre stein for $15. Suitably shopped we returned to rescue the mash. On entering the garage the malt aroma hit us straight away. :icon_drool2:

Mash had dropped one degree in an hour. Hoisted and squeezed the bag and ended up with target pre boil volume, cranked up urn which raised wort to rolling boil after about half an hour then added 45 g NZ fuggles flowers.

Beer O'clock, nice ice cold fake lager (partial) in Boddingtons pint glasses miraculously disappeared in quick succession, punctuated only by trips to the nicely rolling boil to add 20g EKG pellets 20 mins and 20g Styrian Goldings 5 mins.At some stage we added a whirlfloc tablet that fizzed like a berocca (impressed ) Troydo may be interested that wort (discounting the crumbs of hot break, of course) came out crystal clear.

Hoisted impressively full hopsock and drained, flame out, whirlpooled and put lid back on urn for fifteen minutes to let crud settle somewhat.

Cubed. Collected a litre along the way for starter of WYeast West Yorkshire.

Great social day, Veronica got on well with the Smurfs & reciprocal and we hit every possible sweet spot in the process.

Still can't believe how smoothly it went.

Now to nurse my new creation, the wort tasted like an angel crying on my tongue (apologies to old Fosters ad )

Good stuff Bribie, welcome to the world of AG BIAB :beerbang: Glad it all went smoothly for you! Sounds like the Urn worked really well too!

 

[ikern]

Congratulations on breaking the seal, popping the cherry etc etc :icon_chickcheers:

Equipment: 40L Birko Urn, Swiss Voile bag, skyhook pulley, hop sock, etc.

I too am an electro-BIAB-no-chiller and reckon it's the duck's nuts for simplicity vs results

Using tank water, and with a complete collection of water salts I couldn't make sense of John Palmer so just put in a level teaspoon of everything plus two teaspoons of Calcium Carbonate as I'm doing a Yorkshire Bitter. Ended up tasting like water

I don't know if this product is intended to give the same results you are trying to acheive from your salt additions but I use the 5.2ph stabiliser as a kind of "catch-all" for potential chemistry issues (bit like taking a multi-vitamin) as it's dead simple. Ignore this comment if you are trying to replicate a particular regional water profile of course.


Cubed. Collected a litre along the way for starter of WYeast West Yorkshire.

I noticed that there appeared to be no mash-out step. I have included this as part of my process due to published wisdom on this forum but might try the next couple without to see if it has any negative impact. Would love to drop this step as standing at the urn with an over-the-side element, plunging the paint stirrer like a tosser for 15 mins is a pain (and looks pretty suss from behind).

Cheers,

Soz

 

[Cannibal Smurf]

Had a great day BribieG. Thanks for the invite and the great hospitality...and a quick tour of Veronica's Gallery, some really nice work there! We were both impressed.

The drive around the island was a good way to pass the Mash time after a nice lunch, the only way to top it off was with a nice cold HB while the boil was underway.

Learnt quite a bit and consolidated a lot of what I had read on the forums here. Picked up my pot on the way up and have my bag being made, hopefully to be finished in a few days.

Can't wait for my first brew, thanks again BribieG