First attempt at BIAB, lots of questions!

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ScottyDoesntKnow

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Hi guys, going to have a crack at my first BIAB soon, hoping to end up with a Cascade heavy APA.
Got a 19l stock pot and a small esky as equipment, ive tried to scale a recipe i found with beersmith and the ingredients are as follows...

2.63kg Pale Malt 2 Row
0.17kg Crystal Malt 60L
14g Perle @ 60mins
3g Magnum @ 60mins
21g Cascade @ 15mins
21g Cascade @ flameout
21g Cascade dry hopped after 5 days

My main question is to do with the mash. I have set the beersmith mash profile as single infusion, full body with no mash out and it says to add 7.3l of water @ 76 degrees and then sparge with a further 11.8l @76 degrees to give a mash temp of 69 degrees. Efficiency is set at 70%, do these temperatures sound right?

Beersmith also says to mash for only 45mins, is that long enough? I have read lots of things that suggest 60-90 mins?

Thankyou!
 
When it comes to all grain the world is your oyster. BeerSmith has a lot of defaults but ultimately you tell if what you want and it'll do the maths for you.
If you have a 19l stockpot you're limited to a fairly small brew length (final volume). How much do you want in the fermenter? This will determine how much water is required. I'll take a stab that you want 13 litres of beer.

2.9kg of grain will absorb ~2.9l of water. Assume it will account for 3l in the pot.
Set your pot volume in BeerSmith as 19l in the main profile.
In the mash profile tab, double click the saccharification rest and change either your volume or the grain:water ratio so that the volume required does not exceed the mash volume. 3l/kg is a good figure.

For for 3l of grain, you'll want minimum 9 litres in the mash tun prior to strike. Considering you have 19l to play with you can go up to 15 + 3kg to leave 1l of 'overhead' in the pot. When you remove the grain you'll have about 12l left due to grain absorption.
To achieve 13l into the fermenter, you'll need to sparge with 6-7l because you'll lose a few litres during the boil.

In BeerSmith if you change one number all the others will swap around to suit. If you want to mash in with 10l, the sparge volume and strike temp will increase. If you increase your final volume, everything else will move in proportion. If you do something silly like change it to 100l then red dots will pop up all over the place showing you your equipment can't do it.

And yes, a 60 min mash rest is common. Depending on your recipe change the temp of the rest to something like 66°C for the recipe you've posted.
 
ScottyDoesntKnow said:
Hi I have set the beersmith mash profile as single infusion, full body with no mash out ...

a mash temp of 69 degrees. do these temperatures sound right?...

Beersmith also says to mash for only 45mins, is that long enough? I have read lots of things that suggest 60-90 mins?
A full body mash profile, as you've chosen, is designed to produce lower levels of fermentable sugars and more unfermentable extract, hence the higher temperatures and shorter mash time.

If you lower the temperature and extend the mash time, you'll get more fermentable sugars and this will push you towards a lighter body.

Your choice.
 
Sparging with BIAB is generally achieved by dunking the grain bag in a separate vessel (your esky perhaps) of hot water, allowing to soak for 10 mins or so, then removing grain and then add the liquor to your boil kettle....
 
Google Mini-BIAB, when you have that licked you may wish to crank on with Maxi-BIAB.
Your recipe is about right for the mini variant.
 
ScottyDoesntKnow said:
Hi guys, going to have a crack at my first BIAB soon, hoping to end up with a Cascade heavy APA.
Got a 19l stock pot and a small esky as equipment, ive tried to scale a recipe i found with beersmith and the ingredients are as follows...

2.63kg Pale Malt 2 Row
0.17kg Crystal Malt 60L
14g Perle @ 60mins
3g Magnum @ 60mins
21g Cascade @ 15mins
21g Cascade @ flameout
21g Cascade dry hopped after 5 days

My main question is to do with the mash. I have set the beersmith mash profile as single infusion, full body with no mash out and it says to add 7.3l of water @ 76 degrees and then sparge with a further 11.8l @76 degrees to give a mash temp of 69 degrees. Efficiency is set at 70%, do these temperatures sound right?

Beersmith also says to mash for only 45mins, is that long enough? I have read lots of things that suggest 60-90 mins?

Thankyou!
I'd drop the mash temp down to about 66-67 for an APA and mash it for between 60 and 90 minutes. If you're doing BIAB you don't have to sparge if you don't want to, you can simply mash the grains in the entire water needed (Beersmith can be set up for this), then drain/squeeze the bag at the end and boil the wort as normal.

That recipe looks similar to the SNPA clone recipe I brew occasionally. You could replace the Perle with more Magnum, or move the Perle to 30 minutes and increase the Magnum, either way will turn out nicely.
 
Never had good results with perle and us Hops

Up the Magnum to 10

Drop the mash to 63_64
 
I use perle a bit and I gotta say I like it but that's just me, perle has a slightly minty taste which is less noticeable with a longer bittering addition and magnum is a nice clean bittering hop, I also occasionally brew a SNPA clone (BYO mag) which uses both and comes up really good!
 
69, while being an attractive number, is a bit high I reckon. For your first Biab, 66.6 is the devil's number and actually works well as a mash temp. Ales go well with it and so do my lagers. I used to do low 60s but now I stick to 66.6. The occasional virgin sacrifice and plenty of burning black candles assures a hearty brew.
 
Thanks for the advice, so the general consensus is drop the perle for extra magnum and mash around 65-66 degrees. Think I'm all set then, going to order all the ingredients and hopefully post up a brew day report in a week or so. Cheers
 
I think you might have mixed it up. The figures up the top (boil time, batch size etc. where you have 11.02l filled out) determine the recipe. These drive the figures so you can work out how much of what grain you need.
Eg. I have a recipe that I want to make to 23l final bottled volume. My efficiency is normally 80%. I want a pilsner with 100% pils malt and 35 IBU. For this I'll want an OG of 1.047 (which is 4.9% assuming an FG of 1.010)
  1. Enter 23l in 'Batch Size' and 80% in 'Tot efficiency'
  2. Enter grain bill of pils malt and hops - say 5kg of pils, a 60 min bittering addition and 0 min addition of hops
  3. You have two options to adjust to get your OG -
    Adjust the amount of malt manually until your 'Est Original Gravity' down the bottom hits 1.047
  4. Click on the slider down the bottom and a dialogue will pop up. Enter 1.047 and the grain bill will adjust itself.

[*]Change your hop additions as per above until Bitterness (IBUs) down the bottom hits 35
[*]All the volumes in the 'Mash' tab will give you a beer that will end up being 23l of bottled beer, assuming your system has been set up correctly in BeerSmith (i.e. losses due to trub, bottling and evaporation are accurate). In reality you will end up with more than 23l as the 'Measured Batch Size' because you will lose some beer in your fermenter when bottling .
Now, say I'm not happy with the results and only want to keg. I only want to do a 19l brew.
  1. Change 'Batch Size' on the 'Design' tab to 19l. All the numbers will change EXCEPT the recipe amounts.
  2. Follow points 3 and 4 above to adjust your grain and hop bills using the sliders.
This way all the proportions of malts and hops will stay the same and the recipe will remain the same, just a small volume.
If you want to go for a longer boil change 'Boil Time' on the 'Design' tab and all your volumes will change, but the recipe will stay the same. The only difference will be more evaporation so BeerSmith adjusts for more volume pre-boil.

As for a few of your comments -
  • "When i finish my mash I should take a gravity reading to try and work out my efficiency pre boil" - no, you don't want to work out your efficiency specifically, you want to know the pre-boil so you can work understand your brew/system. Pre-boil gravity and volume will affect the final gravity and volume, so if these don't meet up in BeerSmith you need to change your system's settings (i.e. if your FG is too high but the volume is right, adjust your efficiency. If the FG is low, pre-boil was ok but the final volume is too high, you need to reduce your boiloff rate etc.)
  • "Post boil I should take another reading once the wort is cooled to yeast pitching temp to determine my starting gravity." - absolutely, possibly the most important measurement of your brew
  • Adding extra water - not necessary unless you have astringency issues. You will lose some efficiency. Better to enter things right in BeerSmith - which will require some tuning on the first few brews - and just follow the volumes in it.
Once you have finished doing a brew fill out all the 'actuals', especially on the front page, and that will give you a better understanding of what's happening in your process. Hope this helps.
 
Thanks mate, sorry I must have deleted my post as you were writing yours. First time using beersmith.. i worked out not long after posting those values are for inputting as you are actually brewing, as you have explained. Feel like an idiot for asking something so obvious! Appreciate you taking the time to respond.
 
First BIAB day yesterday, overall I think it went ok...
In the end went with this for 11 litre batch size:

2.88kg Pilsner malt(brew shop was out of pale malt)
0.18kg Crystal malt
11g Magnum @ 60 mins
21g Cascade @ 15 mins
21g Cascade @ flameout
Plan to dry hop for 5 days at end of ferment with another 21g of Cascade

Lessons learnt:
Don't try and brew while trying to look after a sick toddler and mum is at work!
Cheap candy thermometers off ebay are crap

I heated strike water to 70degrees and sprinkled the grain into a 30l esky, dont really trust the ebay thermometer and due to whinging toddler, wasn't 100% confident the mash water was sitting around 66 degree mark once I closed the lid. Gave it a good stir and left it alone for 90 mins, popped the lid and I think the temp was probably a bit low, probably closer to somewhere between 60-65 degrees.

Some things I need to work out for next time:
Total efficiency was set at 65% and Beersmith estimated a pre boil volume of 16.29l however I got 17.90l without going too nuts squeezing the bag...why?
Estimated preboil gravity was 1.043 and I got 1.036... mash temp too low?
Estimated batch size into fermenter was 11litres @ 1.055 and I ended up with 14litres @ 1.044... Should I have boiled longer than an hour?
For the the next one should I just drop my overall efficiency to 60% and don't change anything?

Thanks guys
 
When using pilsner malt I usually do at least a 75 min boil.. It seems to take longer to do it's stuff than say a pale malt.

As for accurate temperatures. If you want easily reproduceable results they are paramount, if you want to make reasonable beer, they are less important
Near enough should make something you can sit down and relax with.

If you ended up with more than expected the boil might not have been as aggressive as your brew software calculated, but so long as you saw that "rolling boil" you'll be fine.
Also different grains seem to soak up more or less water in my limited experience.
I always add a bit more sparge water to my mainly UK pale driven brew than pilsner for this reason.

From your numbers it seems to me your grain/water didn't quite match up to your gear - don't worry - tweak it a bit for the next brew and your numbers will start to correlate.

I'm just dialling in close numbers for my mini/midi biab setup - of course I'm about to switch to a converted commercial keg so they'll be out the window

Don't stress too much about being a bit off to where the software says you should be at - especially if the finished result tastes good.

It can take quite a while to dial in the right numbers for your setup but all the experiments on the way can be enjoyable.

Let us know how it turns out.

edit: Oh and as for the thermometers I just bought 2 for $12 off ebay and tested them against a certified thermometer - they were both within 0.2C

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/111204453978?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Second edit: sorry.
The little round ones similar to this http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/DIGITAL-COOKING-FOOD-MEAT-PROBE-THERMOMETER-kitchen-bbq-oven-temperature-/220941835365?hash=item337128dc65:g:sNAAAOxycD9TSL~i

Are about as accurate as sticking your finger in the pot and trying to work out the temp.
 
Thanks mate, will get one of those thermometers you linked for the next brew.
So far so good, nice krausen starting to form. I used glad wrap on top of the fermenter this time so I can actually see what's going on.
I'm planning to bottle and use carbonation drops, am I right in assuming this will bump the final ABV up by about .5%???
 
Depends on what the FG is as to what the ABV ends up being. The priming sugar should add about 0.4% to the ABV.
 
Gravity already down to 1016 so pretty happy with that, beersmith estimates 1012 but hoping it will finish a bit lower than that to end up with an ABV % a bit closer to what I originally expected. Not that it matters as long as it tastes good.

If I had boiled for 90 mins instead of 60 but were following a recipe that only had hop additions from 60 mins, would I still just stick to that?
 
Yeah, you simply boil it for 30 minutes before adding the first hop addition. There is more to boiling wort than just adding hops, MHB has posted some articles and papers about it in various threads, interesting reading.
 

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