First BIAB coming soon...
- Thread starter TonyF
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Coodgee
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yeah Saccharification rest is the part of the mash where the starches are converted to sugars. This is the essential part of the mash. Different enzymes that are responsible for converting the starch to sugar favour different temperatures. One type of enzyme creates more complex sugars while the other type creates simpler sugars. so mashing at different temperatures results in different proportions of complex/simple sugars in the wort. Complex sugars are harder for the yeast to ferment so a higher proportion of complex sugars in the wort makes for a beer with more unfermented sugars or more "body". The enzymes that result in more body in the beer prefer temperatures closer to 70 degrees while the thin beer enzymes like it down around 62 degrees best. Mashing at 67-68 gives you a medium body beer. you can read all this on john palmers how to brew website. sorry if you know this alreadyTonyF said:
TonyF
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Well.. finally got it down and learnt a few lessons at the same time.
- 68C water is pretty hot... don't put your hand in to try and push the bag down (brain fart moment indeed)
- Going from no boil to boilover happens very quickly... don't wander out of the garage trying to find a nice spot to empty your grain bag into a plastic bag
- Poking your measuring stick (no euphemisms intended) into your boiling wort can also cause "boiling over"
- Don't do your first BIAB brew after work on a week day or else you won't be in bed till past 12!
- A 19L pot aint **** for 16.5L of water and 2.5kg of grain.... Get a bigger bloody pot!
- Need to pay more attention. Got my hop additions the wrong way around and threw the 20g aroma hops in at the beginning (no biggie... just a little less aroma and a little bit more bitterness).
- Dropping the remote for you wireless thermometer into the icebath because you are lazy and don't find a good spot to put it is just plain dumb.
Rehydrated a full pack of Danstar Nottingham (probably a bit of overkill)... and pitched at a little too high a temperature but it should've dropped down fairly rapidly with the ice bath as it's only about 10L (it probably dropped a little as I syphoned it from BV to FV as well).
In the end I had a few small hiccups and made a number of mistakes. I accidentally let the grain get up to 73C while mashing as I relit the burner but didn't pay attention closely enough to it. Hope this doesn't affect too adversely. I did a bit of a "ghetto sparge" and ended up with about 2L more pre boil than I was supposed to. I decided therefore to let it boil for about 5-10 minutes more and after cooling ended up with about 1L less than I was supposed to... oh well. My OG after boiling seemed to be about 1.035 which is below the 1.050 target. **** efficiency? This leads me to a question:
When I first measured post boil I'm fairly certain my refractometer read 1.035 or thereabouts. I later took a reading from what I left in the bottom of the pot after syphoning to the FV being sure not to pick up any of the crud (I let it settle for about 5-10 minutes) I took a reading and it read 1.060. What gives? Shouldn't the wort at the bottom of the pot have the same gravity reading?
Here's a few pics
On a side note... I gotta learn to do the image linky thing where when you click on the thumbnail it opens the image "over" the current thread you're reading rather than loading the image in place of the thread (i.e. so you can click the close X rather than have to hit back on your browser).
- 68C water is pretty hot... don't put your hand in to try and push the bag down (brain fart moment indeed)
- Going from no boil to boilover happens very quickly... don't wander out of the garage trying to find a nice spot to empty your grain bag into a plastic bag
- Poking your measuring stick (no euphemisms intended) into your boiling wort can also cause "boiling over"
- Don't do your first BIAB brew after work on a week day or else you won't be in bed till past 12!
- A 19L pot aint **** for 16.5L of water and 2.5kg of grain.... Get a bigger bloody pot!
- Need to pay more attention. Got my hop additions the wrong way around and threw the 20g aroma hops in at the beginning (no biggie... just a little less aroma and a little bit more bitterness).
- Dropping the remote for you wireless thermometer into the icebath because you are lazy and don't find a good spot to put it is just plain dumb.
Rehydrated a full pack of Danstar Nottingham (probably a bit of overkill)... and pitched at a little too high a temperature but it should've dropped down fairly rapidly with the ice bath as it's only about 10L (it probably dropped a little as I syphoned it from BV to FV as well).
In the end I had a few small hiccups and made a number of mistakes. I accidentally let the grain get up to 73C while mashing as I relit the burner but didn't pay attention closely enough to it. Hope this doesn't affect too adversely. I did a bit of a "ghetto sparge" and ended up with about 2L more pre boil than I was supposed to. I decided therefore to let it boil for about 5-10 minutes more and after cooling ended up with about 1L less than I was supposed to... oh well. My OG after boiling seemed to be about 1.035 which is below the 1.050 target. **** efficiency? This leads me to a question:
When I first measured post boil I'm fairly certain my refractometer read 1.035 or thereabouts. I later took a reading from what I left in the bottom of the pot after syphoning to the FV being sure not to pick up any of the crud (I let it settle for about 5-10 minutes) I took a reading and it read 1.060. What gives? Shouldn't the wort at the bottom of the pot have the same gravity reading?
Here's a few pics
On a side note... I gotta learn to do the image linky thing where when you click on the thumbnail it opens the image "over" the current thread you're reading rather than loading the image in place of the thread (i.e. so you can click the close X rather than have to hit back on your browser).
TonyF
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Yeah I thought my refractometer was ATC and I'm fairly (though not 100%) sure that I took the 1.035 refractometer reading after I had cooled it to 27C. I'm probably going to do another one to use up the other 2.5 Kg of Maris Otter I have so will see how this one goes.
Blind Dog
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Congrats on the first BIAB. in terms of the low OG, if you're sure temperature wasn't an issue, was the wort thoroughly mixed? It can stratify and I know I've had weird readings in the past because of it.
Letting your mash get up to 73 wasn't ideal, as its outside the range you'd normally aim for to optimise alpha and beta amalyse, but I doubt it had a major impact if it was for a short time. I used the yoga mat, towels and sleeping bag method mashing in the 19L Big W pot to keep temps stable - probably not a good idea if you're using a burner though. If you are using a burner during the mash, make sure the bag is off the bottom as scorched plastic flavoured beer isn't pleasant
You can reduce the amount of water you use to mash if you want to avoid having a really full pot, and up the sparge water to compensate. You already have a very thin mash at over 6L per kg, so reducing the water to get a mash thickness of, say, 5 L per kg isn't likely to cause any issues. In fact you could go a fair bit lower than that if you wanted, but I'll leave you to read up on mash thickness in your own time rather than derail this thread.
Letting your mash get up to 73 wasn't ideal, as its outside the range you'd normally aim for to optimise alpha and beta amalyse, but I doubt it had a major impact if it was for a short time. I used the yoga mat, towels and sleeping bag method mashing in the 19L Big W pot to keep temps stable - probably not a good idea if you're using a burner though. If you are using a burner during the mash, make sure the bag is off the bottom as scorched plastic flavoured beer isn't pleasant
You can reduce the amount of water you use to mash if you want to avoid having a really full pot, and up the sparge water to compensate. You already have a very thin mash at over 6L per kg, so reducing the water to get a mash thickness of, say, 5 L per kg isn't likely to cause any issues. In fact you could go a fair bit lower than that if you wanted, but I'll leave you to read up on mash thickness in your own time rather than derail this thread.
TonyF
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Thanks Blind Dog. I'm not 100% sure what caused my weird OG readings... it seems to have fermented quite nicely though, so we'll see how it turns out in another couple of weeks.
I've stuffed the temp thing again... I did a second batch on Saturday night with my brother in law (this time it crept up to about 78 for about 5-10 minutes) and one thing I'm quickly learning is don't play darts and drink beer while trying to make beer!
I'll do a bit of reading up about mash thickness
I've stuffed the temp thing again... I did a second batch on Saturday night with my brother in law (this time it crept up to about 78 for about 5-10 minutes) and one thing I'm quickly learning is don't play darts and drink beer while trying to make beer!
I'll do a bit of reading up about mash thickness
