Hi All,
Did my first AG today. It was much easier than I thought it would be. Mainly this was thanks to all the information I had picked up from the forum over the last few months. My advice to anybody contemplating BIAB and no chill is stop procrastinating and just do it! (Forgive the long post but hopefully somebody will take inspiration from this or - god forbid - even learn something.)
I decided to keep it relatively simple for my first go so I did a basic English bitter. Recipe as follows:
4.0 kg Maris Otter
0.2 kg medium crystal (150)
0.15 kg dark crystal (270)
25g Fuggles at 60
25g EKG at 15
25g EKG at 5
1/2 Whirlfloc at 10
S04 yeast.
(Thanks to Ianh for the BIAB spreadsheet)
Ok, here's how the day went.
It actually started last night with milling of grains. I used a borrowed Corona mill to do the milling. A bit of trial and error in getting it set up so it took me 45 mins to mill by hand. Note to self - buy a decent mill. Up at 7.30am and fill up the (newly purchased 40L Crown) urn with 32 litres of water. I'd set up the urn on a couple of old car wheels with a board on top. Just the right height for the cube to fit under the tap. I filled with cold water from the tap as I'm not too keen on using hot tap water. It took nearly an hour to get to required temperature of 68 degrees. Mind you this was an uninsulated urn in a garage at 7 degrees C ambient. Next I fitted the bag (purchased from my local brew shop for $17). OK, time to mash in. Slowly added the grain, stirring in any small dough balls. It probably took me 5 mins, which in a cool garage meant that I lost a bit more heat that was optimal. By the end of mashing in I was down to 64 degrees C. I put the lid on and lagged the urn in an old doona and a couple of towels. Tied it all off with some rope and then decided to add a little bit of extra heat heat for a couple of mins to counteract that lost with my slow mash in. After the quick burst of heat the urn was turned off and it was now time to do some chores while I waited the 90 mins for the mash.
So, ninety minutes later I nervously unwrapped the urnful precious sweet goodness. I quickly took a temperature - 63.1 degrees. I figured that this was reasonable given ambient temp in the garage was still only 11 degrees. By the way, I was using my new digital stick thermometer to take the temps. An excellent investment at $28. Now on to the job that had me a little worried - hauling out the grain. I had hooked one of those metal loops that look like things that climbers use (sorry can't remember what they are called) over the garage roof c-purlin. I'd looped my rope through previously. So tied the rope to the bag's drawstring and pulled on the rope to one side of the urn. Unfortunately due to the fact that the metal loop wasn't anchored to the purlin it started sliding along threatening to pull the urn off its support. So i had to call in the wife to help while I assisted the bag to go straight up and not sideways. Second note to self - buy a decent pulley and anchor it properly. Ok, so bag was hoisted and allowed to drain off into the urn. A bit of a squeeze with some saucepan lids (thanks to someone on here for that tip) and then the bag was lowered into a bucket. A bit more of a squeeze with the hands - ouch still quite hot! - and then tip the extra few hundred mls back into the urn. I didn't bother sparging the grains. Now the urn is cranked up to full and brought to the boil and I'm ready for the 90 minute boil. As per the recipe above, additions of fuggles at 60, EKG at 15 and 5. I added half a whirlfloc at 10 mins. At 0 mins I whirlpooled the wort. I'd never seen this done so i assumed it just meant using the mash paddle (in my case a big kitchen serving spoon) to spin the wort as fast as I could. Then it was lid back on and a 15 minute wait while everything settled out.
Now I'm ready to drain the wort into the cube. I take a peak in the urn..all looks pretty good. I place the cube under the tap. Actually, my cube is a rectangular 20L water container from Bunnings as that was all I could find in 20L containers. So, I open the tap and I'm pleasantly surprised with how clear the wort is. No hoppy gunk at all coming out. Oh, forgot to say I used pellets and just checked them into the wort. So I get as much of the wort out as possible....just slightly tipping the urn to extract a little more without getting the trub. The cube is filled as much as I can but still has an air space of about a litre even after I squeezed it before tightening the cap. I didn't bother with a hose on the tap as I've read that hot side aeration isn't as big a deal as some make out. However, the main reason that i didn't bother with a hose was I couldn't find a silicone hose in time for brew day. So cube is filled - job done! I quickly put the cube on its side so that the whole of the inside is sanitised. And yeah, the whirlpooling worked a treat. I had nice cone of hop and other debris sitting right smack bang in the middle of the urn's base.
And that's it. Now just need to clean up. I take a sample of the remaining wort for an OG reading. I get 1040. Not too bad i figure but calculations in Ianh's spreadsheet said I should have had 1043. OK, so using the spreadsheet I come up with a real world efficiency of 70%. Not terrible but probably some room for improvement. Last job is simply to wait a day or two till I feel like chucking it in the fermenter and pitching the yeast.
I should like to thank forum members for all the fantastic information on AHB. It definitely made my first AG a good experience. To anyone else contemplating AG using BIAB and no-chill I'd just like to say how easy it is. I actually think it's easier than mucking around with jars of sticky stuff or bags of dried malt (that always seem congeal into god-awful gooey balls). Yes, it does take a bit longer - today it took me about 5 hours. But, for much of that 5 hours you are waiting for stuff to happen (water heating up, the mash, the wort boil). So while you are waiting you can do chores around the house, play with kids, drink beer (preferably not all at the same time), or anything else that takes your fancy.
I'm already planning my next brew
, and even thinking about how I will finance my brewpub
Cheers,
Oakers.
Did my first AG today. It was much easier than I thought it would be. Mainly this was thanks to all the information I had picked up from the forum over the last few months. My advice to anybody contemplating BIAB and no chill is stop procrastinating and just do it! (Forgive the long post but hopefully somebody will take inspiration from this or - god forbid - even learn something.)
I decided to keep it relatively simple for my first go so I did a basic English bitter. Recipe as follows:
4.0 kg Maris Otter
0.2 kg medium crystal (150)
0.15 kg dark crystal (270)
25g Fuggles at 60
25g EKG at 15
25g EKG at 5
1/2 Whirlfloc at 10
S04 yeast.
(Thanks to Ianh for the BIAB spreadsheet)
Ok, here's how the day went.
It actually started last night with milling of grains. I used a borrowed Corona mill to do the milling. A bit of trial and error in getting it set up so it took me 45 mins to mill by hand. Note to self - buy a decent mill. Up at 7.30am and fill up the (newly purchased 40L Crown) urn with 32 litres of water. I'd set up the urn on a couple of old car wheels with a board on top. Just the right height for the cube to fit under the tap. I filled with cold water from the tap as I'm not too keen on using hot tap water. It took nearly an hour to get to required temperature of 68 degrees. Mind you this was an uninsulated urn in a garage at 7 degrees C ambient. Next I fitted the bag (purchased from my local brew shop for $17). OK, time to mash in. Slowly added the grain, stirring in any small dough balls. It probably took me 5 mins, which in a cool garage meant that I lost a bit more heat that was optimal. By the end of mashing in I was down to 64 degrees C. I put the lid on and lagged the urn in an old doona and a couple of towels. Tied it all off with some rope and then decided to add a little bit of extra heat heat for a couple of mins to counteract that lost with my slow mash in. After the quick burst of heat the urn was turned off and it was now time to do some chores while I waited the 90 mins for the mash.
So, ninety minutes later I nervously unwrapped the urnful precious sweet goodness. I quickly took a temperature - 63.1 degrees. I figured that this was reasonable given ambient temp in the garage was still only 11 degrees. By the way, I was using my new digital stick thermometer to take the temps. An excellent investment at $28. Now on to the job that had me a little worried - hauling out the grain. I had hooked one of those metal loops that look like things that climbers use (sorry can't remember what they are called) over the garage roof c-purlin. I'd looped my rope through previously. So tied the rope to the bag's drawstring and pulled on the rope to one side of the urn. Unfortunately due to the fact that the metal loop wasn't anchored to the purlin it started sliding along threatening to pull the urn off its support. So i had to call in the wife to help while I assisted the bag to go straight up and not sideways. Second note to self - buy a decent pulley and anchor it properly. Ok, so bag was hoisted and allowed to drain off into the urn. A bit of a squeeze with some saucepan lids (thanks to someone on here for that tip) and then the bag was lowered into a bucket. A bit more of a squeeze with the hands - ouch still quite hot! - and then tip the extra few hundred mls back into the urn. I didn't bother sparging the grains. Now the urn is cranked up to full and brought to the boil and I'm ready for the 90 minute boil. As per the recipe above, additions of fuggles at 60, EKG at 15 and 5. I added half a whirlfloc at 10 mins. At 0 mins I whirlpooled the wort. I'd never seen this done so i assumed it just meant using the mash paddle (in my case a big kitchen serving spoon) to spin the wort as fast as I could. Then it was lid back on and a 15 minute wait while everything settled out.
Now I'm ready to drain the wort into the cube. I take a peak in the urn..all looks pretty good. I place the cube under the tap. Actually, my cube is a rectangular 20L water container from Bunnings as that was all I could find in 20L containers. So, I open the tap and I'm pleasantly surprised with how clear the wort is. No hoppy gunk at all coming out. Oh, forgot to say I used pellets and just checked them into the wort. So I get as much of the wort out as possible....just slightly tipping the urn to extract a little more without getting the trub. The cube is filled as much as I can but still has an air space of about a litre even after I squeezed it before tightening the cap. I didn't bother with a hose on the tap as I've read that hot side aeration isn't as big a deal as some make out. However, the main reason that i didn't bother with a hose was I couldn't find a silicone hose in time for brew day. So cube is filled - job done! I quickly put the cube on its side so that the whole of the inside is sanitised. And yeah, the whirlpooling worked a treat. I had nice cone of hop and other debris sitting right smack bang in the middle of the urn's base.
And that's it. Now just need to clean up. I take a sample of the remaining wort for an OG reading. I get 1040. Not too bad i figure but calculations in Ianh's spreadsheet said I should have had 1043. OK, so using the spreadsheet I come up with a real world efficiency of 70%. Not terrible but probably some room for improvement. Last job is simply to wait a day or two till I feel like chucking it in the fermenter and pitching the yeast.
I should like to thank forum members for all the fantastic information on AHB. It definitely made my first AG a good experience. To anyone else contemplating AG using BIAB and no-chill I'd just like to say how easy it is. I actually think it's easier than mucking around with jars of sticky stuff or bags of dried malt (that always seem congeal into god-awful gooey balls). Yes, it does take a bit longer - today it took me about 5 hours. But, for much of that 5 hours you are waiting for stuff to happen (water heating up, the mash, the wort boil). So while you are waiting you can do chores around the house, play with kids, drink beer (preferably not all at the same time), or anything else that takes your fancy.
I'm already planning my next brew
, and even thinking about how I will finance my brewpub Cheers,
Oakers.
