About To Try My First Biab On The Stove

[ArcLight]

Based on what I have read here I am planning on doing a BIAB on the stove.

Equipment - 3 20 liter pots, plus some smaller pots.
2 Laundry bags - one cotton and one polyester?

1. I will have the grains double crushed, and keep the steeping grains out of the mash.

2. For 5 Kilos of grain I will use 12 liters of 73C water.

3. I will place the grain in the bag, place the bag in a pot, then pour in the 73C water, mixing it in. The wort will end up at around 67C

4. I was planning on mashing for 30 minutes, stirring after 15, and keeping an eye on the temperature. Then taking the bag out, placing it in a colander to drip out some of the wort. I will press it down with a pot lid to help squeeze out a bit more.

5. Then I will place the bag in another pot with another 12 Liters of 70C water for an additional 10 minutes, dunking stirring it, and then gradually heating it to 75C for mashout. This 2nd pot is also the lauter.

I assume that since most conversion takes place in the first 15-20 minutes I am not getting much after 30
http://books.google.com/books?id=zV9bpyykN...ing&f=false

By using 1.1 liters of water, draining, and using another 1.1 liters of water, I have read i will get better efficiency than putting all the water in the pot (the traditional BIAB way).

6. I will boil both 20 liter pots on my stove (each containing roughly 10 liters of wort) plus what I get from the steeping grains which will be steeped separately.


After the lauter, I will place the bag in a colander and continue collecting runnings that I will add to the brew kettles.

Any thoughts of this? Anything I'm doing wrong?
I could split the grain bill into 2 smaller batches, one for each bag/pot and then add more water to each and not perform a rinse. But I think I will get better efficiency this way. With the mashing in 2.5L/Kilo of water, and the 2nd mash/sparge I am hoping to get better results than placing the grain in more initial water, with no rinse.
I will still end up mashing for 40 minutes so I wont miss out on more than a couple of percent.

Or am I making some serious mistakes?

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Based on what I have read here I am planning on doing a BIAB on the stove.

Equipment - 3 20 liter pots, plus some smaller pots. Why so many? I'm assuming one for the sparge.
2 Laundry bags - one cotton and one polyester?

1. I will have the grains double crushed, and keep the steeping grains out of the mash. Why? The steeping grains should be in the mash to extract the best benefit from the diastatic power in the base malt.

2. For 5 Kilos of grain I will use 12 liters of 73C water. Have you got brewmate - this will do the calcs. For the quantity of grain and BIAB, this seems too low.

3. I will place the grain in the bag, place the bag in a pot, then pour in the 73C water, mixing it in. The wort will end up at around 67C

4. I was planning on mashing for 30 minutes, stirring after 15, and keeping an eye on the temperature. Then taking the bag out, placing it in a colander to drip out some of the wort. I will press it down with a pot lid to help squeeze out a bit more. No need to stir - just mash for an hour. The squeeze idea sounds fine - it's what I used to do.

5. Then I will place the bag in another pot with another 12 Liters of 70C water for an additional 10 minutes, dunking stirring it, and then gradually heating it to 75C for mashout. This 2nd pot is also the lauter. Be careful of burning the bag.

I assume that since most conversion takes place in the first 15-20 minutes I am not getting much after 30
http://books.google.com/books?id=zV9bpyykN...ing&f=false Possibly, but it's standard brewer's practice to mash for an hour John Palmer how to brew

By using 1.1 liters of water, draining, and using another 1.1 liters of water, I have read i will get better efficiency than putting all the water in the pot (the traditional BIAB way). I did get better efficiency by sparging, but it is more effort.

6. I will boil both 20 liter pots on my stove (each containing roughly 10 liters of wort) plus what I get from the steeping grains which will be steeped separately. See 1


After the lauter, I will place the bag in a colander and continue collecting runnings that I will add to the brew kettles.

Any thoughts of this? Anything I'm doing wrong?
I could split the grain bill into 2 smaller batches, one for each bag/pot (I used to do this) and then add more water to each and not perform a rinse. But I still sparged ("rinsed" as you've put it) But I think I will get better efficiency this way. With the mashing in 2.5L/Kilo of water, and the 2nd mash/sparge I am hoping to get better results than placing the grain in more initial water, with no rinse.
I will still end up mashing for 40 minutes so I wont miss out on more than a couple of percent.

Or am I making some serious mistakes?

 

[Nick JD]

Sounds complicated. Have you read this?

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=44264

Question is: why go to all that extra trouble for a couple liters of beer? My main batch size is 17L because that's the sweet spot of my gear. I strongly suggest getting bigger equipment if you are determined to make 20+L batches.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Sounds complicated. Have you read this?

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=44264

Question is: why go to all that extra trouble for a couple liters of beer? My main batch size is 17L because that's the sweet spot of my gear. I strongly suggest getting bigger equipment if you are determined to make 20+L batches.

Or 2 food grade plastic pails and your existing esky (per my sig).

Goomba

 

[Nick JD]

Eskys, bags, plastic pails, multiple boil pots ... you guys love making stuff complicated!

Carry on.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Eskys, bags, plastic pails, multiple boil pots ... you guys love making stuff complicated!

Carry on.

Naaah, really simple.

Now, skyhooks - that is complicated!

 

[ArcLight]

The final output is targeted at 19 liters (5 gallons).

The reason I keep the steeping grains out of the mash is based on a pod cast by Gordon Strong, where he suggested doing that.
He might also mention it in Designing Great Beers. The steeping grains are already converted, they don't need additional enzymes.

I will use Brewmate, than you for pointing out my oversite!

I am not sure if the food grade Ale Pails I have are safe at 75C temperatures. Maybe they leech something into the wort? Make my testicles shrink over 5 years or something ;-)

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

I put 81 degree water in it, and never had anything leech yet.

 

[thylacine]

Goomba l,

re: 1. I will have the grains double crushed, and keep the steeping grains out of the mash.
Why? The steeping grains should be in the mash to extract the best benefit from the diastatic power in the base malt.

Hashie likes/liked (ie. Feb 2011) another method. (http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=246) Post #23 of thread: "...Every brew I do that has specialty grains in it, I do this. I find the beers have a greater flavour range, rather than the flavours being homogeneous they are individual. Hope that makes sense..."

'I do this' refers to adding spec grains at mash-out.

If one already plans a mashout, it appears simple to try.

Cheers

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

@thylacine - to each, their own. As you said, if your mashing out, it's probably not going to make much more work.

It'd be worth finding the opinions of the even more experienced than I brewers (especially the award winning ones), to see if they do it.

And I don't think it's a bad thing - I use base malts as spec malts in my AIPA (Rye, thank you). But I don't think I could be bothered doing so. Same reason I don't generally bother step mashing, if I can get away with a single infusion mash (within style).

As for the OP - if you do plan on separating the spec malts for a steep, maybe do one batch like this, one with the spec malts in the mash - and catalogue your results. It'd be interesting to find out.

However, if this is your first AG brew - I'd suggest making things as simple as possible, and build on that. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Goomba

 

[seemax]

Why go to so much effort?

2 pots, 2 bags... water in each to 72C , half grain in each, half hops in each.... mash for an hour (30min if time poor), drain bags, boil for an hour, drain into NC cubes.

That should yield you 20L post boil (enough to fill a corny keg) without almost no effort.

Get that down pat , make some good beer... then start doing different techniques.

 

[Florian]

1. I will have the grains double crushed, and keep the steeping grains out of the mash.

Depending on which spec grains you use and what you're trying to achieve with them this can make sense, but might not always be necessary (although there is no harm in doing so as everything you want is already converted).

As an example, when brewing dark lagers (Schwarzbier, Munich Dunkel) I always cold steep the dark grains and add at start of boil to avoid too much roastiness which I would otherwise extract if steeping warm or mashing.

 

[jakethesnake559]

2 pots, 2 bags... water in each to 72C , half grain in each, half hops in each.... mash for an hour (30min if time poor), drain bags, boil for an hour, drain into NC cubes.

+1 for that...two separate brews side by side on your stove.
5kg of grain in 12L of water is going to be a really thick mash!!

Without knowing what your brewing, if you want 10L of 1.052 wort into fermenter, you would need about 2.5kg of grains mashed in 18L of water. That would be about the absolute max for your pot size...keep some towels on hand :blink: !

Good luck mate...there is always a way!!
I started with stove-top due to space restraints....small batches can be a great way to learn the process and ingredients.

Check out the BIABrewer forum for heaps of BIAB specific info.