BIAB low OG...how to avoid happening again?

[Beerbarron1]

I use brewmate and have followed grain bill on recipe to achieve OG of 1050 and have only reached 1030. Wanting to ask where I have gone wrong...?

I use a 29 L pot....get 25L water up to 70 deg, turn heat off and place bag in and mix grains well. Place lid onto pot and wrap in blankets and sit for 60 min....I then drain off this liquid into a cube ( got 16Litres). I then add 9 L of water to the pot and mix grain a second time and rest for 30 min....I then take bag out and add the cube liquid and follow the boil process.

My previous attempts doing the above gets my OG almost spot on. The only difference today is that I trying an Aussie wheat rather than a pale or lager.

Am I meant to take gravity reading during the 1st stage of the process to ensure I am maximising sugars from the wheat?

Appreciate any help.

Thanks
BB1

 

[GundyBrewer]

I started BIAB pretty recently myself and didn't get my target OG with my first couple of brews either. I can think of a couple of things that might help you out.

The first thing is to do a mash out, where you raise the temperature to 77-78 after the 60-90 min at 65-68. There's a recent thread on this that might be of use:

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/77889-mash-out-what-does-this-mean/

Have you been squeezing the grain bag out after the mash? That actually helps more than you think, you can get heaps of extra thick wort out by doing that.

I also started using pH stabiliser, that holds your mash pH to 5.2 which is supposedly the optimal mash pH. From what I've read, not everyone likes using this stuff but I think it has also helped me.

I've made two german style wheat beers myself and both times I've done it, my efficiency has been below target, where I normally get over 70% with other brews now. I think it might be just harder to get good efficiency with wheats, so it's something I'll account for when I do the next one.

I definitely recommend taking a gravity measurement before you add the water and boil. If it's a bit low, you can just add less water to make sure you hit your target FG, and sacrifice a bit of volume.

Hope that helps mate.

 

[mosto]

+1 for adding a mash out step. My first couple of BIAB's were way under on OG. I think I had over estimated my efficiency in BrewMate so therefore low OG. I then raised to a mash out temp if 78 and got close to expected OG.

Did one on the weekend that ended up a 2 hour mash as got tied up with other jobs, did a mash out and overshot the expected OG by some way, so maybe the longer mash helped increase my efficiency.

 

[Beerbarron1]

Thanks mate, make sense and will mash out next time and also squeeze the bag ( I hadn't previously)

Cheers
BB1