Calling BIAB brewers
My entire AG BIAB career I've been doing the following:
Proceed to boil. Hops (flowers and pellets) are confined to a hop swimming pool using a grain bag pegged round the top of the urn.
At the end of the boil the hop bag is hoisted, containing most of the hop material. Then I let the urn rest for about 20 mins before running off into no chill cubes.
I've always had about two or three litres of soupy grey break and crap left in the urn.
A couple of brews ago I was distracted and inadvertently hoisted the bag immediately after a one hour mash. Gave it a good squeeze as normal and proceeded to boil.
The first thing I noticed was that rather than the alarming grey foam crusty on the top prior to the boil breaking through, the foam was whiter and more healthy looking. When the boil broke through the wort was unusually clear and even had specks of break forming.
I boiled as per normal, rested and drained.
There was hardly any break or gunk in the bottom.
That was with Maris Otter. Yesterday I repeated the process with BB Pale for a lager brew and very carefully hoisted the bag a few cm at a time.
Same result as with the previous brew.
Here's what ended up in the urn. You'll note that you can see the urn bottom through the small 'clouds' of trub.
The last time I saw such as small amount of trub in an electric boiler was when I minded Dave Clark's BrauMeister at a systems war for him, and was surprised by the small amount of trub left after cubing.
I suggest that without the fierce rousing the grain actually does form a bed of sorts, which was always a supposed "downside" of straight BIAB. Even when squeezing, the wort was running through clear (being suspended on a skyhook I can use both hands to squeeze from the top of the "sack".
Will experiment further, but so far I see little benefit in constructing elaborate recirculating systems for BIAB unless for temperature Nazi purposes. B)
The main benefit is that I can now probably scale back my brews from 23L to 21L lengths and still get clear wort into the fermenter and still fill one keg.
Or put it another way, as far as $$$ go, every tenth brew is now free.
ed: hit gravities nicely.
My entire AG BIAB career I've been doing the following:
- Curved roasting rack on the bottom of the urn to keep the bag off the element, so heat can be applied for ramping.
- Dough in, lag the urn and mash for 1 - 2 hours (urn remains switched off)
- Remove lagging, turn the urn on and pump the mash up and down with paint stirrer / giant potato masher while the mash ramps up to mashout temperature.
- Gather the top of the bag (in my case it's a big hemmed circle of voile), fit skyhook pulley and hoist away.
- Way hay and up she rises.
Proceed to boil. Hops (flowers and pellets) are confined to a hop swimming pool using a grain bag pegged round the top of the urn.
At the end of the boil the hop bag is hoisted, containing most of the hop material. Then I let the urn rest for about 20 mins before running off into no chill cubes.
I've always had about two or three litres of soupy grey break and crap left in the urn.
A couple of brews ago I was distracted and inadvertently hoisted the bag immediately after a one hour mash. Gave it a good squeeze as normal and proceeded to boil.
The first thing I noticed was that rather than the alarming grey foam crusty on the top prior to the boil breaking through, the foam was whiter and more healthy looking. When the boil broke through the wort was unusually clear and even had specks of break forming.
I boiled as per normal, rested and drained.
There was hardly any break or gunk in the bottom.
That was with Maris Otter. Yesterday I repeated the process with BB Pale for a lager brew and very carefully hoisted the bag a few cm at a time.
Same result as with the previous brew.
Here's what ended up in the urn. You'll note that you can see the urn bottom through the small 'clouds' of trub.
The last time I saw such as small amount of trub in an electric boiler was when I minded Dave Clark's BrauMeister at a systems war for him, and was surprised by the small amount of trub left after cubing.
I suggest that without the fierce rousing the grain actually does form a bed of sorts, which was always a supposed "downside" of straight BIAB. Even when squeezing, the wort was running through clear (being suspended on a skyhook I can use both hands to squeeze from the top of the "sack".
Will experiment further, but so far I see little benefit in constructing elaborate recirculating systems for BIAB unless for temperature Nazi purposes. B)
The main benefit is that I can now probably scale back my brews from 23L to 21L lengths and still get clear wort into the fermenter and still fill one keg.
Or put it another way, as far as $$$ go, every tenth brew is now free.
ed: hit gravities nicely.
