A Guide To All-grain Brewing In A Bag

[crundle]

After getting through a few kits, I've decided to take the plunge into all grain & BIAB. A major issue is that I'm limited to a 19L pot. I don't mind brewing a small batch to start, but would like to get the best use I could from a 19L vessel & thought that a LC Rogers clone would be the way to go, making a higher gravity wort & topping up in the fermentor. Not overly interested in efficiency for this first attempt, mainly interested in brewing a good beer. Could anyone please comment on the suitability of attempting a Rogers clone & suggest a recipe & starting volume for a 19L pot.

Many Thanks

Ben

I haven't done any mini BIAB batches, but will try to help if I can. I am assuming that you want to do a full BIAB batch, and not a partial BIAB topped up with extract (but I could be wrong in that assumption).

What size batch are you hoping to achieve from a 19 litre pot? Personally I use a 40 litre urn, and end up with 21 litres of 5.5% alc/vol beer in the keg/bottles given a fairly standard grain bill of about 5.5 kgs. This fills the urn up to the brim when I add the grain, as I use 35 litres of water initially.

Extrapolating this to a 19 litre pot - you would need to add 16.6 litres of water initially, and have a grain bill of about 2.6 kgs total, which would yield you about 10 litres of 5.5% finished beer in the keg/bottles.

Once again, this is based on my system, and allows for a good squeeze of the bag for extraction of sugars, and dumping the cold break from a no chill cube into the fermenter and crash chilling it to help it condense down.

If you are trying to make a higher gravity wort, then you may experience some issues with reduced efficiency, meaning that if your system gave you an efficiency of 70% at say a 1.050 gravity wort, then you may find that in trying to make a 1.070 wort to compensate for a reduced mash volume, you may find the efficiency drops to around 60-65%. This means you may have to compensate for the reduced efficiency by using more grain, which means having less water in your pot to mash with - which has a definite effect on your ability to hit your target gravities (personal experience in this department).

Having said all this, I have not done a mini BIAB mash, whilst Thirsty has done many, so hopefully he will be able to give you some information that will overcome a lot of the negatives that I think could occur in trying to overcome the limitations inherent in a small volume pot.

Hope it all works out well, and I might learn something further about BIAB,

Crundle

 

[bill_gill85]

PP - Thanks for the recipe, I've attempted to scale it to 16 L in beersmith, however I couldn't find Traditional Ale malt listed, so substituted Pale malt, but will be using Traditional Ale malt though. I've attached the bsm file if anyone would like to check it over.

Regarding thermometers, I have a digital stick thermometer that is accurate at 0 C & 100 C, but have not been able to check at mashing temperatures. How likely is a digital thermometer to be inaccurate if it passes these tests?

Crundle - You are correct in assuming that I was intending a mini 100% BIAB, with no extract into the fermentor. This should be going into my 9L party keg & hopefully a couple of bottles for long term ageing, so a fermented volume of 12L would be nice. As far as a "high gravity", what I was referring to was that Rogers, having a lower ABV% I was hoping to dilute into the fermentor to achieve a reasonable volume of a 3.8% beer. I think this first time around I'll just have a go at the recipe & not worry about diluting

TB - Looking forward to hearing from the guru of "mini BIAB"

Thanks

Ben

View attachment Rogers_16L.bsm

 

[PistolPatch]

Looks like crundle has given you a great place to start from. It's also great to hear you have already calibrated your thermometer. I imagine digital thermometers have less "wandering" capability between 0 and 100 so you'll probably be fine there. Also, using the Pale Malt instead of Traditional will certainly be close enough. TB might have some improvements to that recipe and the best batch size to use - I think one of the guys where the recipe came from said it was a tad too chocolatey. You are doing well so far though :icon_cheers:

One thing that might help you to get a larger volume is if you have a second big saucepan. What I'm thinking is that after your mash, you could dump your bag into this second saucepan and sprinkle around 4lts of just boiled water from your kitchen jug over the top of the bag. Jiggle the bag around for ten minutes and then lift it out. This will give you another 4lts of decent gravity wort which you could add to the boil assuming there is enough room. (Using boiling water should not cause any problems - the temp drops very quickly if sprinkled.)

Be nice to see you get your keg full. I'll be really interested to follow this one.

Cheers
Pat

 

[Thirsty Boy]

You watch me make Pat mad now ....

I have done a fair few mini BIABs - but I have only a couple of times tried to extend the volume and try to get a finished volume that was more "standard" my mini BIABs are for mini finished volumes.

It is my belief that if you dont want to invest in an appropriately sized pot -- but you do want to brew full sized batches. Then BIAB is not for you.

By the time you much about trying to brew high gravity, getting lousy BIAB efficiency, heating sparge water in extra pots etc etc etc .. I think you could have made and used a nice little braid and eski mash tun - which is more appropriate for high gravity brewing. You can make HG biab brews and dilute them down... but trying to squeeze a full sized batch out of a pot that is realistically half the size you need.... its a big ask and by the time you have jumped through all the hoops and made all the compromises required, you will have tossed out all the good things about BIAB and just kept the bad ones.

You could using a "standard" edition of a different style of brewing, rather than a bastardised version of BIAB.

So thats what I suggest - you build a mash tun out of a cheap 20L eski - and then with a bucket and your kettle you should be able to brew mildly high gravity brews and dilute to 20 odd litres fermenter volume.

If you are happy to accpt a smaller finished volume, then it really is just a matter of scaling down. Crundle has given you the ball park figures - I will try to get you the largest volume you can squeeze out of your pot without deviating from "stock" biab.

I will use the recipe that Pat gave you and scale it. [Pat - you are a scoundrel... 75% efficiency... measured where and how? Not following your own rules buddy boy. And I will assume that 21L is the post boil kettle volume, hot - which gives me an anticipated OG of 1.040]

Scaling down - I make it that the biggest batch you can realistically make at this OG is 13.0L. For a 13L post boil volume you need to a total amount of water of ..

Pre-boil of 15.3L (evaporation rate of 15%) + 1.13L (absorbed by grain) = 16.5

When you add 16.5L of water to the pot along with the 2.25kg of grain that makes up your scaled down grain bill - it will have a volume of 18L and fit in your pot.

So you can make 13L of this beer or beer of this strength (1.040) or less stronger beer or a little more weaker beer, by using stock standard no mucking about BIAB.

If you want to play with the various forms of sparging, you will get more volume - if you want to combine that with high gravity brewing you can maybe get a "full" volume out of it..... maybe. But its more trouble than its worth in my book.

Personally - I would just brew big partials. Make 13L using the stock method - include all the specialty malts, then make up a high gravity wort for dilution by adding DME. It will make fine beer and you dont need to muck about or build a mash tun.

Sorry to be depressing about it -- but BIAB needs a big pot to be done easily, and you have a small pot.

TB

 

[PistolPatch]

Yep, unfortunateley the original source had no OG reading in their recipe so it is impossible to tell what they meant by batch size and brewhouse efficiency. The best I could do was just copy and paste it. From that source, I can only guess that by batch size they mean volume in the kettle immediately after the boil and by Brewhouse Efficiency, they use Beersmith's definition which is volume and gravity at the end of the boil.

I'll have a crack at converting the original recipe for Ben using Thirsty and Crundle's advice. I'll assume just a 60 minute boil for this one. (I'm going to use BeerAlchemy for the first time so look out )

Batch Size = 13lts (15.3lts less 15% evaporation over 60 mins)
Kettle and Fermenter Trub = 2.5lts (a high but safe base figure of 15% of starting water - 10%kettle and 5% fermenter)
Brew Length (Lts into your Keg)34 = 10.5lts (13lts - 2.5lts)

Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%

Ingredients:
2108 g Traditional Ale Malt
43 g Crystal Malt
43 g Dark Crystal
31 g Pale Chocolate Malt
31 1g Chocolate Wheat Malt
23 g East Kent Goldings (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
28 g Cascade (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 1 min
1 ea White Labs WLP001 California Ale

The above should give you a beer a bit less than 4% ABV.

Notes:
Mash at 69-70C for a fuller mouthfeel for such a light beer and do so for 90 minutes.

Further Notes

1. I am not 100% sure that this beer will be like a Rogers. It came linked to a Rogers thread though.
2. You could use dried yeast such as US-05
3. You could use the same volume figures as given by Thirsty but use ingredients you came up with that you based on a batch size of 16lts. This will give you a higher gravity wort that you can measure at the end of the boil and then dilute accordingly.

Finally, don't get too attached to this recipe. Most full-strength beer recipes can easily be converted to mid-strength by upping the mash temperature to the high end and using the same amount of hops as the full-strength recipe. There are further ways to do this but this formula has always worked well for me. NRB All Amarillo Ale is such a recipe and the ingredients are simpler than the above. I don't know anyone who doesn't enjoy that beer.

So, if you want to brew a different kind of beer, then do so. :icon_cheers:

 

[crundle]

It seems like the 19 litre pot is only going to be good for making half batches with BIAB, so while it will be a good place to start your journey with AG brewing, you will likely soon find that a larger pot of at least 40 litres will be a worthwhile investment.

If you can source a 50 litre keg to use as a pot, and get a 2400W immersion element (around $85 delivered), you will be set for making full strength/volume batches for a very low outlay.

let us know how your first batch goes - you will be impressed I am sure,

Crundle

 

[Pollux]

get a 2400W immersion element (around $85 delivered),

Got a source at that price? You do mean a handheld element right? I'm looking for one to supplement the element on my crown urn during the boil.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

makes sense really - a fair bit of thought and experience has lead us to the conclusion that the smallest really useful BIAB pot for full batches is around 35-40L) ergo the use of 40L urns ... half that size pot is going to make you half a full batch of beer

Mind you - I suggested that you make partials... and I think a partial that was 50%+ grain based would be a perfectly fine beer and basically indistinguishable from AG. The grain portion via BIAB and your volume from a DME addition will make great beer and probably be the easiest option short of a bigger pot.

 

[bill_gill85]

Thanks everyone for the all the assistance.

My main reasoning for using a 19 L pot for the time being is that I could pick a "stainless" induction compatible one up for $12 at Big W. Unfortunately as a uni student, I can't afford to buy a decent pot or an urn right now. Once the bug bites & I'm happy with the results I'm getting, I'll be upgrading to a better system. At the moment the 19L pot is my "pilot" brewery so to speak.

I'm still trying to source the ingredients under the names listed using the EBC's listed in beersmith as a guide. I can't seem to find anyone selling Crystal malt with an EBC of 19 - 20, would this be similar to Carahell?

I probably won't get this brewed until later this week, but I'll keep you all informed.


Thanks,

Ben

 

[PistolPatch]

I'll send you a PM Ben and you can ask Stuster what the correct recipe is. He's a top bloke and will sort you out.

 

[crundle]

Got a source at that price? You do mean a handheld element right? I'm looking for one to supplement the element on my crown urn during the boil.

Sorry I took a while getting back Pollux,

After contacting Tobins directly, I got mine from NESCO Electrical - 1300 852 411

It cost me $82.50 including delivery, and works a treat. I got the Grimwood 4108B. As we are using it for BIAB, we shouldn't have the issues that others have had of having to move it constantly at risk of burning the mash.

I got mine for the same purpose, to supplement the rather lackluster boil on the Crown during winter especially. I also put a camping mat around the Crown, and plugged in the immersion element, and wow - it was a vigorous boil alright! I ended up having to unplug the immersion element for the first 20 minutes or it was going to froth over. It is interesting that with the camping mat around the urn, it actually kept up a fairly good boil as opposed to how it was normally, but it was a much warmer day when I brewed than the last time, where I had to supplement the boil in a couple of good sized pots on the stove to get the volume I needed.

Great item, I wonder how I brewed before I got it.

Crundle

 

[matho]

just want to say thanks thristy just finished doing a brew (3 vessel system) and your advice on taking preboil reading after the break made for consistent efficency readings through the boil

cheers matho

 

[drtomc]

makes sense really - a fair bit of thought and experience has lead us to the conclusion that the smallest really useful BIAB pot for full batches is around 35-40L) ergo the use of 40L urns ... half that size pot is going to make you half a full batch of beer

Mind you - I suggested that you make partials... and I think a partial that was 50%+ grain based would be a perfectly fine beer and basically indistinguishable from AG. The grain portion via BIAB and your volume from a DME addition will make great beer and probably be the easiest option short of a bigger pot.

That does sound like the go.

Unlike TB, who bases his observations on real experience, I'll use my status as a professional academic to make an observation on no real experience to speak of. I have done lots of kits, no partials, and only a few BIABs, though I have read quite a bit.

The consensus seems to be that DME is relatively high in non-fermentable sugars, so you may need to take that into consideration for the AG portion or you may end up with a higher FG than you want. And probably don't be too scared to use a portion of sugar, if you want to boost the %abv without making the resulting beer too chewy. Works a treat for the Belgians.

T. (inclined to post so his fingers don't cease up)

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Glad to be of service Matho. So long as your brew day is making a bit more sense to you now.

While we are momentarily back on this topic (sub topic I suppose) I did the experiment Pat said he'd like to see the results of.

The Method was

*I took 2ish litres of 100% BB pale malt wort @ 12.67 plato to experiment with. The wort was straight from the lauter grant and the highest temperature it had ever seen was 76C
*I put this wort into a 2L erlenmyer flask and brought it up to the boil - let it boil till I saw distinct hot break formation (2-4mins) then turned off the flame
*I adjusted the volume to exactly 2L by sucking out the excess, set the timer for 90min and put it back on to boil.
*Filled a test tube with the pre-boil wort to take to work and analyse.
*Boiled the wort for 90mins - then with the flame off, added boiling water from my kettle, till the volume was exactly 2L again, mixed thoroughly and took another tubes worth of sample.

The rationale is that with the pre and post boil volume both being exactly 2L .. any loss of of gravity in the wort over the boil would be immediately apparent.

Accuracy and error -- I flatter myself to think that I was able to tell the difference between adding or subtracting 10ml from the erlenmyer flask when it was on the 2L mark. So my volumes would be +/-10ml. Now I had to read those volumes twice during the experiment so that doubles the error to a potential 20ml or 1%. We will keep thing simple and say that the gravity measurements are error free because I am using a pro- density meter that we will just assume is right.

Samples went to work with me next day and each sample was filtered to remove hot/cold break and run through the density meter three times with the intention of averaging the results to iron out variation. As it was, in both cases the DM returned three identical values for each repetition on each sample. So I'm calling it consistent.

Results

Pre-Boil Sample: 12.99 plato
Post-Boil Sample: 12.83 plato

a difference of 0.16 plato or around 1.0064 in SG - 1.23% of the original 12.99 gravity.

Conclusions --

Not many really. The was a small drop in gravity, but it was pretty close to the error threshold of the experiment. error at 1% and the variance at 1.23% leaves 0.23% variance that could be considered significant.

I observed that the break, while it had developed at the start of the boil to a noticeable degree - certainly increased over the boil. I propose that the 0.23% significant variance and even the 1.23% raw variance could be explained by the further precipitation of hot break. Leaving effectively no unaccountable variance between the pre and post boil gravities - and therefore no variance in the any efficiency figures that could be derived from the kettle volumes and gravities.

But thats just my possibly skewed interpretation -- yours might be different.

TB

 

[PistolPatch]

Doesn't seem anything wrong with that design mate. Thanks for doing that :super:

It's still an area I am very much looking forward to getting more raw data on. Already in the figures we have collected there are several people getting that 10% drop pre and post-boil (around 85% then down to 75%).

We have been taking measurements pre-boil. Seeing as everyone who has seen me brew or I have seen brew, if they take a measurement, takes it at the immediate start of the boil, I did further investigation on the weekend and the guys I spooke to had never heard of taking the pre-boil measurement after the break. Even Gregory Noonan in New Brewing Lagers is taking it then so we are not the only ones, thank God.

I suspect that this break thing isn't going to give us the complete answer - probably only about a third of it if the figures I recorded in this post here a few years back are any indication. Unfortunateley it is only based on one brew but shows that the drop I was getting was linear throughout the boil.

Anyway, maybe we'll solve the mystery but if the figures keep coming up the same, I'll be using the 75% post-boil figure rather than the 85% pre-boil one when I quote efficiency.

I'm going to do 4 single batches in a few weeks so I'll do some measurements at various times throughout the boil as a matter of interest.

Crazy stuff :wacko:

P.S. Matho: Can you remember what variance you were getting pre and post-boil on your three vessel system? Would be great to know that. And please let us know if you get the same results over the next 5 brews or so if you can take the time :icon_cheers:

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I dunno Pat - most of the stuff I read when I first started brewing (books, forums, websites etc etc) lead me to conclude that the safe and sure way to conduct a boil -- was to bring the kettle up to a boil, wait for the hot break (ie the the scum forms, froths then settles back down), turn off your heat, drop in your 60min hops, turn your heat back on and start your timer.

This gave you -

-well mixed wort from the mixing of the boiling action, so no false gravity readings from density layering
-less chance of a boilover when you toss in the hops
-better utilisation of your hops because not so many alpha acids stick to the break when it forms
-better accuracy on your gravity readings because much of the break has happened already

For me - the phrase "pre-boil" never had anything to do with that actual wort being at a boil.. it had to do with it being "pre" the start of your boil timer.

I honestly thought that that was the common understanding and that much variation from that regime was conscious shortcutting

such is life - at any rate, thats the way I suggest people take a pre-boil if they are going to take one. Well... those of use who don't have the magic disappearing extract anyway

TB

 

[Scruffy]

TB, this tiny fraction of measuring anomaly, did you adjust for the difference in volume due to temperature along the lines: change in volume=(coefficient of volume expansion)(initial volume)(change in temperature) or ΔV = V0βΔT

Layman's: from 0C - 100C you would see a 4% change in volume...

No, OK, I'll get me coat...

 

[matho]

pp,

it had been in the range of about 10% which had me looking at my losses, today the difference was 1.040 in 30l taken after the hot break (took the sample in a flask and chilled it down, then poured it into the sample tube leaving the break behind) and 1.045 in 26l (24l in the fermenter 2l loss) which is 77.9% "pre boil" and 75.4% in the fermenter.

thristy, in pp defence i have three brewing books in the two that mention extract efficency (how to brew, new brewing lager) they both say to take gravity reading after the lauter has finished.

any way this has taken some of the WTF out of my brewday next time i do a brew i hope ill have more time(look after little kids today as well) so that i can take the "real pre boil" reading as well.

cheers matho.

 

[PistolPatch]

Thanks a heap matho for those figures. It's great to get reinforcement that the discrepancy isn't just a BIAB thingo. I'll ask the brewers who have been supplying figures to see if they can take a few extra measurements at varying stages of the boil. It'takes a bit of stuffing around unfortunateley but it is always good fun solving a mystery. This one has had me scratching my head for a long time. I reckon after we get the measurements from 10-15 brews, we'll know if this is going to solve the problem so please keep us informed of how your brews go matho.

Fingers crossed and thanks again :icon_cheers:

 

[katzke]

pp,

it had been in the range of about 10% which had me looking at my losses, today the difference was 1.040 in 30l taken after the hot break (took the sample in a flask and chilled it down, then poured it into the sample tube leaving the break behind) and 1.045 in 26l (24l in the fermenter 2l loss) which is 77.9% "pre boil" and 75.4% in the fermenter.

OK so 30L and 1.040 is 1200 gravity points. 26L and 1045 is 1170 gravity points. A difference of 30 points in either 30L or 26L is not big deal as we are talking 1.001 difference in the 30L. I sure could not tell you if my gravity was accurate to 1.001 points using a glass hydrometer with 1.002 markings. Then the measuring of the hot wort in the kettle is a problem and that alone could account for such a small difference. It could be the people that have recorded a 10% difference had all the possible errors add up against them. Or they could be judging volume in the kettle at different temperatures or even during the boil.

Brewing is a very complicated chemical reaction. Who knows if break has an attraction to sugar? Did you use hop pellets or flowers? I have no idea but it could be that the hops have an osmotic reaction and suck up some extra sugar. We have so many different efficiencies in brewing. I am only concerned with how much sugar I get out of my grain and how much wort I put in the fermentor at my target gravity.