BIAB Newbie

[Tangle Foot]

Malts were from CraftBrewer at Capalaba. Tank is about 4 years old.

Post boil my gravity was closer to expected 1.046 achieved compared to BeerSmith expected SG of 1.050.

Cheers

 

[wynnum1]

With the tank would look at adding some acid to the tank lower ph slightly can also buy tank water disinfectant. Intermediate bulk container IBC also good cheap way to store rain water when tank is full and the pumping out helps to clean the tank.

 

[MHB]

Well look on the bright side, that's 92% of what you expected
Sorry about the Country Brewer comment, mixed up with another thread... my bad.

Do us a favour and post your recipe, it could just be that you have your efficiency set too high.
Need - Mass of each malt. Start or finish volume of kettle (total including what is left behind), rough process (times)
But really the things that really impact extract efficiency are
Grind, Temperature and Time.
Mark

 

[Tangle Foot]

Beersmith recipe shown below:


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Stone & Wood Pacific Ale (1.2)
Brewer: Tangle Foot
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 30.86 l
Post Boil Volume: 29.12 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l
Bottling Volume: 21.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.050 SG
Estimated Color: 8.6 EBC
Estimated IBU: 32.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 85.2 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
6.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent 1 -
5.00 g Calcium Chloride (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 2 -
3.93 kg Pale Malt (Barrett Burston) (6.0 EBC) Grain 3 74.0 %
0.90 kg Wheat Malt (Barrett Burston) (3.5 EBC) Grain 4 17.0 %
0.27 kg Munich I Malt (Weyermann) (15.0 EBC) Grain 5 5.0 %
0.21 kg Wheat, Flaked (Blue Lake) (3.5 EBC) Grain 6 4.0 %
7.00 g Galaxy [14.25 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 7 10.5 IBUs
20.00 g Galaxy [14.25 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 8 12.7 IBUs
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 9 -
20.00 g Galaxy [14.25 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 10 9.1 IBUs
2.0 pkg Safale - English Ale Yeast S-04 (Ferment Yeast 11 -
40.00 g Galaxy [14.25 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 Days Hop 12 0.0 IBUs
40.00 g Citra [14.00 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days Hop 13 0.0 IBUs


Mash Schedule: BIAB, Medium Body
Total Grain Weight: 5.31 kg
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Saccharification Add 34.11 l of water at 69.5 C 66.0 C 60 min
Mash Out Heat to 75.6 C over 12 min 75.6 C 10 min


Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that I allow 5L loss to the Crown urn, due to placement of tap, trub and the false bottom. I aim for 23L to the fermenter so that I have 21 usable L after fermentation. I typically put 19L to keg, and the other 2 L into bottles.

Brewhouse efficiency is set to 70%, which I guess is a tad high given what I achieve.

Cheers

 

[MHB]

I suspect your problem is the amount of wort left in the kettle but lets see (here is hoping your numbers are reasonably accurate - have you measured the loss?)

At the end of the boil you are reporting 29.12L @ 1.046, giving a mass of (29.12*1.046) = 30.46kg.
1.046 is the same as 11.5oP, the mass of extract in the wort is (30.46*11.5%) = 3.503kg
Just roughly if we assume that your 4.77kg of grist has an extract potential of 76%, potential (4.77*76%) = 3.625kg
You are getting 3.503/3.625 = 96% yield - which is freaking good!

its just that you are diluting all that extract with more water, if you think about it 5L of loss and 23L going to the fermenter, 5/28 = nearly 18% waste.

If you have a look at fitting a diptube to your tap so you can reduce that dead volume, you should be seeing way better returns. I'm not suggesting that you suck up trub and send it to your fermenter (bad) but kettle loss in the 5-10% range is about right.

The above is just a very fast finger count, but I think it points you in the right direction, without necessarily being exact!
You could just add more malt until you do some work on your system about (46/50=) 8% more which would get you closer to your target gravity.
Mark

 

[Tangle Foot]

Thanks Mark for another thoughtful response.

I need to think about what you’ve said, and fiddle with BeerSmith to check that it seems to account for the dead space in my urn. My thought was that it did and should scale the recipe to reflect the dead space.

Will get back to you.

For the moment, yesterday’s brew is looking good with a nice active fermentation underway.

Cheers again

 

[MHB]

Beersmith has always had problems with dead space in calculations, the first version you could drive a truck though the hole.
If you cant make it behave, set the dead space to zero and add what you know it is to the batch size (in effect total end of boil volume)
From what I can see you aren't doing anything wrong, except relying on software, its a good idea to be able to do rough calculations, at least it would highlight the unexpected.
Good brewing Mark