Another Newbie Biab Recipe

[stixjew]

Ive personally tried the search facility many times and google, the inhouse search function is shite house, but the forums are excellent, quicker to ask the question if no sticky, and if someone is willing to type "try the search function" just a few keystrokes more may have answered the question, too easy IMO. Another prime example of the many varied responses to some questions is to type in "efficiency" and this exact post comes up so why would i want to sort through garbage that i have posted a question on with no answers too? lol. Then in some replies some people think that grain size makes no difference and others reckon milling grain makes all the differences so confusing, typical interenet i wish most would agree it! doh "Irish red" has any relevance?? lol, frustrating, cheers

 

[Bribie G]

"Irish Red" was just an example of how useless the search function is.

 

[stixjew]

TA for your help, totally agree! Great site and info tho if ya can find it. As i said below ive searched my mill name on google and here but cant find a great deal about settings etc .Then read about soome people milling fine and others reckon standard milling for biab etc makes no difference.It must be frustrating being so good at brewing for some, but still reading noob posts and having to post to dumb noobs about the same old questions weeek in week out.Wish i was an expert already would be great! Thanks again

 

[stixjew]

OKay so i had my first go at AG yesterday and made plenty of common mistakes which i have read about before and will list, but overall it was fun and a great experience, and the wort tasted beautiful going into the fermenter this morning as i no chilled into a cube for the night. First mistake was my strike temp was a bit too high at 71.5 , after my bag and grain went in it only dropped to 68.5 and took a while to get to 66 so next time add a touch of cool water or try 69 degrees strike instead. Second mistake which cost me lots of time was i was out on the verandah exposed in squally strong winds lashing me from different directions, this led me to taking around 40 mins to get my keg to boil with a 4 ring burner! Also i could have started with an extra litre or so of water as i ended up scraping to get 23 litres of cool wort into the fermenter and left hardly any trub and liquid in my kettle (mabee a litre at best). My worst mistake i think was to not have my syphon sorted properly and not practice beforehand! i used cheap ass vinyl tubing for 5 minutes to no avail due to the heat effect then just binned it and had to scoop the wort into the cube gently via a jug. Big PITA but a great lesson learnt! I was also very glad that my missus was home when i lifted the bag so she could tie a few knots in the rope whilst i held it for the hoist. The bag was very heavy and drained very slowly- lucky i had the block set up. OH and the bag was hot squeezing it in washing gloves, i might bring a pair of thick 1000volt rated gloves with inners home from work next time. Plenty of things to improve on but am stinging for my next brewday in two weeks. I ended up using 4800 gms TF Ale and 200gms caramunich 1 plus 20gms POR at 60 mins 15 gms POR at 10 mins with no chill and safale US 05 at 18C. My "into fermenter efficiency" was 68.9% so there is room for improvement there as well.Any comments for improvements or suggestions most welcome, cheers.

 

[felten]

I wouldn't worry too much about the into fermenter efficiency, it's going to be lower with BIAB compared to 3V because you lose volume to the kettle trub. I aim for 25L end of boil and leave 2-3L behind depending on the grist, enough to fit in my cube.

I've found you don't have to squeeze the shit out of the bag, depending on the beer; I've had a 50% rye beer that clogged up the bag and had to be throttled to get anything out. Mine just drips away over the kettle while I'm coming up to the boil, then twisted up tight for the last drops and shifted over to a bucket.