After spending the last two years or so trying to create an information site for BIABrewer.info and, at every turn finding this harder and harder, just last week everything became simple. I went around to NME's last weekend and all is brilliant now. It is so easy!
LOL! That only took two months of hardly any sleep
BIABrewer.info is now a reality. It is not in the format I originally imagined (better format now) and has taken far more effort (about a thousand times more) than I imagined.
There is a lot of great/new stuff there but not as much as I had hoped for. We will get there though. I am quite disappointed in "The Commentary" but it is still, I am ashamed to say, a huge improvement on previous versions.
I've been working on the above, just today, since 6 am so can I do a little PP post?...
Squeezing the Bag etc
I only have one question here. What is the point of squeezing/draining the bag so much?
It will not promote further enzyme activity. All it will do is give you a tad more sweet liquor (wort.) So. why is there so much discussion on this? The reason is because new brewers get hung up on other brewer's efficiency without even knowing what the other brewer is even referring to. (Often the original brewer doesn't even know what they are quoting!)
BIAB gives better efficiency on even a gentle squeeze than batch-sparging but less than fly-sparging.
BIAB brewers and new all-grain brewers generally should not be so focussed on, "draining the grain." so much. It is usually only an economy measure relevant more to big breweries. And, it is actually impossible to determine your efficiency after one brew. This is an ugly but true fact of home brewing.
Home brewers often talk about efficiency which is a factor in which they, in reality, have little control over.
So, the real point should be when is the most practical time to stop squeezing and draining your bag?
Batch-spargers and fly-spargers know that at some point you have to begin the boil. A sensible traditional brewer knows that they can let their mash tun drain into the kettle all the way through the boil. This is stupid though - all it does is increase an efficiency figure which we can replicate in BIAB quite easily.
At some point a Traditional Brewer will cut the supply from their MLT. A
sensible time to do this is at Boil Start.
I think a bag should never be squeezed more than three times simply because it is a waste of effort. Wort drainage from the bag should also be done at Boil Start or prior - no later.
That is my late night thought for today
Pat
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