A Guide To All-grain Brewing In A Bag

[felten]

Its a lot less then traidional mash tun brewing. The calc spreadsheets use .63L/KG

 

[Rodolphe01]

I still ended up with only a quarter of that, with absolutely no squeezing. Probably a combination of extended hang time (about 45-60 mins) and perhaps a coarser crush - HBS crushes it for me, I assume they do a fairly 'normal' crush assuming a 'traditional' mash etc.

I don't really mind, I guess it is better, so long as efficiency is good and it is consistent.

 

[MarkBastard]

Are you dunk sparging Mark?

Nope.

No sparge, no mash out, no hoisting and no squeezing.

I use my 19L Big W pot in the same way others use a bucket, ie when I remove the bag from the kettle I plonk it into the pot.

After 5 minutes there's probably about an inch of wort sitting in the bottom of the pot, so I left the pot by holding it in my left hand and the bag in my right hand, and then tip the contents of the pot into the kettle as it's ramping up to boiling. I then put the bag back in the pot and sit it down again.

The height of the bag with grain in it is probably about say 5 inches. The grain at the top dries out first and goes down to the bottom and then out the bag, bit by bit. This liquid I just put back into kettle a few times while waiting for the boil.

This is the easiest thing you can do. I've tried the other ways.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

I also achieve 80% and higher consistently with my BIAB mashing. I'm a stovetop BIABer, not a tradtional BIABer with an urn, so thought I'd get semantics out of the way.

I don't own a coffee grinder. LHBS (a sponsor up the top) mills it for me for a normal brew.

I have two big w pots (2nd was on special so I picked it up, in case I wanted to start constructing something). I split the grain bill in two and mash each pot at the same time. The electric stove I have (just) fits them both to bring to mash temp.

Mash for 90 minutes (standard practice for me).

Mrs has pasta pot with insert strainer, which acts as a false bottom. 2 kettles of appropriate temp water per bag (there are two bags (2 pots), so 4 kettle-loads in total) and a good squeeze. This method also saves labour as I don't have to hang bags. I just chuck it into pot, give it a squeeze, sparge, squeeze, sparge squeeze; get bag 2 and repeat. 2-2.5 kg of grain into a pot is an easy task.

Then boil, removing break if it appears.

If needed, I dilute (i.e boil was too vigorous). Then I measure the SG and adjust for temp using an online calculator.

80-83% every time.

Hope this helps someone. M^B works very well, and he is super-helpful for helping understand his method which is probably as good and less labour intensive than even my method (which is a reduction compared to hanging the bag up).

Goomba

 

[MarkBastard]

I get around 68% into fermenter efficiency. It's the only efficiency I care about because it's the one I set in BeerSmith when formulating recipes.

I've achieved that same efficiency no matter which process I go with, give or take.

I've never measured any other efficiencies like pre and post boil and don't particularly need to.

I usually achieve my desired OG to the nearest point too.

 

[argon]

Could be a pH issue, melb water is very soft (if you're down in this part of the state/country). Get some pH strips and do some testing. And then if you haven't already, have a read of the 3 braukaiser articles on pH and brewing.

BCP... i'd be looking at your mash PH if you reckon you've got most other things sorted out and you want a tad more efficiency.

I had been brewing happily for about 12 months with efficieny pretty smuch spot on at 70% which i thought was fine. I then looked into mash ph for other reasons (malt flavour, hop presence and tailoring brewing styles to water chemistry) When i adjusted my water to what I think was optimum, i immediately jumped from bang on 70% to 79-82% efficiency over 3 or 4 batches, without changing any other part of my process. And that was doing full size double batches!!

Have a look at your water profile and try and get it in the right range... somewhere around ph 5.2 - 5.4 and see how that goes... Someone like Fourstar would be a good bet to ask questions of.. ie in Melbourne and has a handle on water additions/chemistry and their effects on the mash.

It's a lot simpler than i first thought... can't remember who told me this but i saved it off

touch of gypsum (lighter coloured hoppy beers),
calcium chloride (lighter coloured malty beers)
chalk (darker beers) is all you need to start with

:icon_cheers:

 

[lespaul]

Just using the calc spreadsheet for a couple of brews im planning this weekend (a kolsch and the irish red http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...&recipe=709)
with the grain bill it comes to 5.23kg but when i put it into the calculator with the opening gravity of 1.054 it tells me that it will be 6.2kg. Is this normal to be using an extra kilo for the BIAB method?
also when i am putting in the hop bill the recipe shows total bitterness and the aa% but when i put in the actual AA% that im using it gives me a much less IBU (22.7IBU with 43.8g at 45min and 27.2g at 15min). In the recipe i dont have the ammount of bittering of each hop addition but only the final. Is there a way to fix this?
Thanks

 

[felten]

You might have to change the brew length number, putting in 18.65L and a 1.054 OG gives me 5.23kg grain, and a 23.5L end of boil volume which is close to what the recipe says.

The brew length is end of boil volume minus kettle trub, and fermenter trub.

 

[bcp]

BCP... i'd be looking at your mash PH if you reckon you've got most other things sorted out and you want a tad more efficiency.

I had been brewing happily for about 12 months with efficieny pretty smuch spot on at 70% which i thought was fine. I then looked into mash ph for other reasons (malt flavour, hop presence and tailoring brewing styles to water chemistry) When i adjusted my water to what I think was optimum, i immediately jumped from bang on 70% to 79-82% efficiency over 3 or 4 batches, without changing any other part of my process. And that was doing full size double batches!!

Have a look at your water profile and try and get it in the right range... somewhere around ph 5.2 - 5.4 and see how that goes... Someone like Fourstar would be a good bet to ask questions of.. ie in Melbourne and has a handle on water additions/chemistry and their effects on the mash.

It's a lot simpler than i first thought... can't remember who told me this but i saved it off




:icon_cheers:

Thanks. I'll definitely try it. If that makes the difference i'll feel pretty good about my process.

The discussion is also interesting about the whole issue of potentially losing the simplicity of biab with all sorts of complex manual fix-its, like squeezing, sparging, etc, when we only need consistency. So i'm starting to think if i can get reasonable efficiency with least effort, why get into hard work for those last few points. But getting the pH right is worthwhile because it's helpful for flavour profile anyway.

 

[felten]

good read on how to treat melb water here

 

[argon]

Thanks. I'll definitely try it. If that makes the difference i'll feel pretty good about my process.

The discussion is also interesting about the whole issue of potentially losing the simplicity of biab with all sorts of complex manual fix-its, like squeezing, sparging, etc, when we only need consistency. So i'm starting to think if i can get reasonable efficiency with least effort, why get into hard work for those last few points. But getting the pH right is worthwhile because it's helpful for flavour profile anyway.

Good one... obviously i reckon it's worth a go. As you say for the flavour benefits. Plus any extra efficiency is a bonus.

When i was looking into chemistry i had a look at these sites for a bit of info on the effects of water additions.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-1.html
and
http://www.brewersfriend.com/2009/03/14/al...ng-information/

Also you can use this handy tool on the babbs site.. it's pretty much set up for brisbane, but if you add in the Melbourne particulars it'll sort you out.

http://nomograph.babbrewers.com/index.html

Definitely worth sorting out these things i reckon. Split mashes/boils, squeezing, sparging and all that can convolute things to a point where it feels like you're moving away from the simplicity of BIAB (which is why i now 3V - for a range of reasons)

IMHO if you're getting a predictable 70% efficiency or better with the "original" simple method of BIAB then it's not worth any extra steps in the process. To me 70%+ represents pretty good value.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

It's funny - the methods I got to to get 80%+ efficiency were actually originally designed to minimise my labour and make it easier for one person to brew, if I didn't have a helper (the same as 3V does that, by virtue of automating the sparging process via recirculation for example).

So happens I picked up a nice increase in efficiency as a bonus.

And I'd argue that my process is as simple, if not simpler than Nick_JD's (thanks for your guide Nick - it got me onto BIAB and AG in the first place) guide - for my situation.

Goomba

 

[PistolPatch]

Lots of great posts above - some great advice on how if you are following all the basic rules and have accurate measuring equipment and still get low efficiency then pH is definitely the next cab off the rank. Also great comment from bcp on being careful not to lose the simplicity.

Just thought I'd try and help lespaul on the recipe conversion calcs...

Just using the calc spreadsheet for a couple of brews im planning this weekend (a kolsch and the irish red http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...&recipe=709)
with the grain bill it comes to 5.23kg but when i put it into the calculator with the opening gravity of 1.054 it tells me that it will be 6.2kg. Is this normal to be using an extra kilo for the BIAB method?
also when i am putting in the hop bill the recipe shows total bitterness and the aa% but when i put in the actual AA% that im using it gives me a much less IBU (22.7IBU with 43.8g at 45min and 27.2g at 15min). In the recipe i dont have the ammount of bittering of each hop addition but only the final. Is there a way to fix this?
Thanks

felten has nailed your problem on the grain bill side of things . It gets very confusing working between different software programs and the way they can or need to be set up. Some brewers will use the term batch size as what goes into their fermenter while other brewer's, "recipe reports," mean the post-boil volume. It is often difficult to know which one they mean unless you know the software they are using and even knowing this sometimes means you still have to do some figuring or guessing to work out how they have set their software up!

And, it gets worse...

When converting recipes, every program will give you different gravity and bitterness results which is a PITA. The Calculator* (or BIAB spreadsheet) uses a standard gravity formula but usually reads about 3 points different from Beersmith etc. The formula used for bitterness comes from John Palmer but reads far lower than other brewing software. For example, a recipe I plugged in the other day came up with...

ProMash = 41 IBU's
BeerSmith = 35 IBUs
Beer Alchemy = 43 IBUs
The Calculator = 31 IBUs

My goodness!!!

When communicating recipes, end of boil figures are the easiest to work. They are the common denominator of gravity and bitterness as these two things do not change from this point on. The best way of communicating recipes though is to take the time to explain the set-up your figures are based on such as Jamil and John do on Page 41 of, "Brewing Classic Styles," or in the manner of The Calculator where all volumes, gravities etc are described explicitly. This makes it easy for others.

What You Should Worry About/Do when Converting

The way I convert a recipe is...

1. Try to determine the original brewer's end of boil volume. (This can be difficult if the original brewer has used volume into fermenter as their batch size as you will have to guess at their losses after the boil or play around in the program they used until you establish their post-boil volume.)

2. Now set your software or spreadsheet so as the end of boil volume matches the above.

3. Now set your efficiency figure to the original brewers efficiency figure (based on post-boil efficiency.)

3. Type into your software the original weights and times of ingredients.

4. Now take a note (write down) what OG and bitterness your software / spreadsheet reads.

5. Now type in your desired end of boil volume (this will be what you want to get in your fermenter plus what you lose when transferring from the kettle/cube etc.) and your efficiency figure.

6. Now adjust the grain weights until you "score" the OG you wrote down above. Often their is a scaling function on the software or spreadsheet that will do this for you.

7. Finally adjust your hops until you score the bitterness level you wrote down above. Once again most software or spreadsheets will do this for you.

Good recipes will take a lot of punishment so don't be panicked about making a stuff-up as you'll end up with a great beer anyway.

Jamil and John's recipes work on 75% efficiency and a post-boil volume of 22.7 L. The average end of boil efficiency on BIAB figures I have collected is a bit over 79%. I think a new brewer could happily copy any recipe in J & J's book exactly without worrying about the efficiency difference and end up with 19 L of splendid beer in their bottles or keg. It's a great book to have on your shelf.

So, if you were wondering why converting recipes can be a little bit demanding on your brain, hopefully the above shows why .

Cheers,
Pat

* You are now free to distribute your recipes in The Calculator format providing you follow the copyright instruction explained here. The name will also soon be changed to BIAB-Calculator to make it easier to find.

 

[K&K]

Has anyone tried to recirculate your liquor (after the mashing) through the grain bed in the bag? My thinking is that it can be done and it may improve clarity (possibly efficiency). Has anyone though along the same lines?

How I plan on doing it is to perform the mash in, raise the bag (tie it up) and then use the tap in the bottom of my pot to drain some liquor, put it into a no chill cube then run it back into the grain bag using a silicone hose tied in a ring to gently sparge the liquor through the grain back into the pot (and repeat).

Is there anything that can go wrong? Do I need to maintain a specific temp for the liquor to effectively work?

Cheers,

Trav

 

[RdeVjun]

K&K, while I note your enthusiasm, I really need to ask, 'why?' The boil takes care of most clarity issues with cloudy BIAB runnings. With batch after batch of nice clear BIAB beer, it just hasn't been worth pursuing IMO.
By all means, feel free to experiment though, that's what I like to see! :icon_cheers:

 

[pk.sax]

BIAB lesson 1: Learn to sew

Problem: Sewing machine turned out to be broken :S Couldn't be stuffed sewing by hand.

Workaround : Didn't sew, just clipped the bag to the pot and popped the lid on and covered with two towels, not a single degree C lost. Bag did NOT resemble anybody's jewels either, was a round lump I pulled out of the pot.

 

[Budron]

Hey guys,

I did a quick search but couldn't find anything. I am looking at making the move to BIAB and am in need of a bag. As I am currently unable to get to spotlight for some swiss voille, I was wondering if this stuff thatCraftbrewer sells is the same/similar thing? Has anyone used it for a full 5-6kg grain mash in an urn??

Cheers,

Budron

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Hey guys,

I did a quick search but couldn't find anything. I am looking at making the move to BIAB and am in need of a bag. As I am currently unable to get to spotlight for some swiss voille, I was wondering if this stuff thatCraftbrewer sells is the same/similar thing? Has anyone used it for a full 5-6kg grain mash in an urn??

Cheers,

Budron

Right stuff, but 24 inch squared may be a bit on the small side, depending on what sized pot you are using - I don't think it'll be big enough for 5-6 kg of grain IMO. My bags are all 4 foot squared (i.e 4 times the size of this bag on CB). See if they have a bigger one. Or if you have/can obtain 2 x big w pots (as I have), you can split the grain bill and you might get away with that sized bag, though again, I somewhat doubt it.

I have lincraft closer to me than spotlight and they have it. Maybe you have a lincraft closer? Or can order online for it?

Another option may be if you have a large enough esky, you can use some mesh or stockings and a tube through the bung. Tie the stocking tight over the bit of tube within the esky so beer can flow out but grain doesn't, and have the other end of tube into your boiling pot. It'll remove the need for the bag, though it will add some kit needed to get there.

Hope I've helped.


Goomba

 

[matr]

Hey guys,

I did a quick search but couldn't find anything. I am looking at making the move to BIAB and am in need of a bag. As I am currently unable to get to spotlight for some swiss voille, I was wondering if this stuff thatCraftbrewer sells is the same/similar thing? Has anyone used it for a full 5-6kg grain mash in an urn??

Cheers,

Budron

Gryphon Brewing bags look pretty good for $45. I'm going to attempt making one out of 415 micron SS mesh, but if that fails then I'll be buying one of his..

Cheers, Mat.

 

[Bribie G]

Gryphon Brewing bags look pretty good for $45. I'm going to attempt making one out of 415 micron SS mesh, but if that fails then I'll be buying one of his..

Cheers, Mat.

At first glance the Gryphon bags may seem expensive, but I've done about 50 brews in the first one and it's as good as new although a bit tea stained. I bought a new one for my second urn and after around 12 brews it still looks like it's fresh off the shelf. I saw a Craftbrewer bag at the Pine Rivers club meeting the other week and it would be the ducks nuts for anything up to say a 30l stockpot, but not for an urn.

My original bag which I gave to an AHB member was Spotlight Material, sewing lady on the island ran it up for me but when I add up the transport costs to Spotlight and the Lady, the sewing charges, the bag material and the sheer amount of time and stuffing around, I gladly bought my next one online from GB. :icon_cheers: