First Biab In My 40lt Urn

[Crusty]

Thanks guys.
I'll be heading to Bunnings sometime this week.
Cheers

 

[Crusty]

I picked up my Ozito drill yesterday & gave it a whirl on the Mini Mill & it's awesome. Bye bye crank handle. :beerbang:

I also bottled my first BIAB today, an APA hopped with Centennial & Cascade. Being my first BIAB & not knowing what to expect, I ended up with a much higher OG than expected & slightly less volume so I ended up pitching the yeast after watering the brew down to my starting OG of 1.049 from 1.061. I ended up adding a tad over 4lts to the fermenter & decided to hop tea after a week of fermentation. I worked out that I would need to hop @1g / lt of wort & less trub, I will need 20g of Cascade. I used a 4cup coffee plunger, tossed in 20gms of Cascade & poured boiling water in & let it infuse for 15mins, plunged & poured the hop tea into the fermenter & left it for another week. I had a taste today whilst bottling & I think I am looking down the barrel of the best beer I have ever made. It has a full body, awesome grain flavour & a beautiful hop note to it, it's unbelievable. :icon_drool2:
So to sum up my first BIAB in a 40lt urn, well I'm totally convinced that BIAB & no chill is awesome. I am so glad I went this route & I am looking to do my next brew ASAP.
Cheers

 

[BreathingHeat]

For the record, I have brewed many 8%+ 24 lt final volume BIAB batches with a 40 lt kettle without adding supplementary fermentables.

I had an 1.080 OG just last Sunday....before adding the candy syrup to the fermenter.

 

[Camo1234]

For the record, I have brewed many 8%+ 24 lt final volume BIAB batches with a 40 lt kettle without adding supplementary fermentables.

I had an 1.080 OG just last Sunday....before adding the candy syrup to the fermenter.

Hey mate, is that in a gas fired kettle or an urn? I think the limitation with the urn is its ability to boil something at 1.80?

 

[Bribie G]

Hey mate, is that in a gas fired kettle or an urn? I think the limitation with the urn is its ability to boil something at 1.80?

Please explain :huh:

 

[BreathingHeat]

Hey mate, is that in a gas fired kettle or an urn? I think the limitation with the urn is its ability to boil something at 1.80?

It's a gas burner, but I don't think the specific gravity should affect your boiling point.

 

[Bribie G]

Actually wort will boil at a higher temperature than water if that's the point. Urn can handle it perfectly, in fact RdeVjun and I had a boilover when we did the RIS last year and it was my first ever boilover. <_<

 

[danielmanners]

Hi Guys

Apoligise for jumping on this thread, but I found all the information very useful and wanted to ask some questions due to your brewing experience.
I started off with BIAB with my 40L crown urn, but then switched to a 36L round cooler setup with a RIMS system to recirculate
and keep the temperature of the wort. The reason why I switched was to recirculated the wort through the grain bed to achieve a clearer wort before boiling. The question is do you recirculate when you BIAB? Also with the drill that you have mentioned, can it be set to turn at low speed and have enough torque to turn the rollers when the grain hopper is full off grain?

 

[bignath]

I started off with BIAB with my 40L crown urn, but then switched to a 36L round cooler setup with a RIMS system to recirculate
and keep the temperature of the wort. The reason why I switched was to recirculated the wort through the grain bed to achieve a clearer wort before boiling. The question is do you recirculate when you BIAB? Also with the drill that you have mentioned, can it be set to turn at low speed and have enough torque to turn the rollers when the grain hopper is full off grain?

Hi mate, and welcome to the forum..

Firstly, that drill is excellent. I use one of them. Insame amounts of torque. I have had 7-9 grain bills in my hopper and it has no problem starting from stop. You certainly don't need to start the drill before loading the hopper. My drill actually tries to lift my hopper and lid assembly off of my catching bucket with 6kg of grain in it. You will not stop this drill anytime soon. I'ts intended (i think) for mixing concrete and i'm led to believe that it has a proper steel gearbox, but don't quote me on that last bit of info.

RE: Recirculating BIAB.

Yep, it may have been done before....by more than a few of us...

Have a look below in my signature, there's a thread i started with my take on the whole thing. Personally, i don't recirculate my BIAB rig to gain clarity of wort, but rather maintain temp. I'm coming from 3V brewing though, and all i really wanted was to simplify my setup, cleaning, pack down, storage space required etc... which is why i went with my system. Can still be used as a HLT in my 3V rig though so i can go back to my old ways with the drop of a hat.

use google search and type in things like "biab rims" "recirculating single vessel" etc and you'll find truckloads of info on other brewers builds.

Cheers,

nath

 

[Crusty]

Hi Guys

Apoligise for jumping on this thread, but I found all the information very useful and wanted to ask some questions due to your brewing experience.
I started off with BIAB with my 40L crown urn, but then switched to a 36L round cooler setup with a RIMS system to recirculate
and keep the temperature of the wort. The reason why I switched was to recirculated the wort through the grain bed to achieve a clearer wort before boiling. The question is do you recirculate when you BIAB? Also with the drill that you have mentioned, can it be set to turn at low speed and have enough torque to turn the rollers when the grain hopper is full off grain?

I went from igloo cooler mash tun to PID controlled 3V rims & now BIAB in a 40L urn. So many people believe that for some reason, you need crystal clear wort into the boil kettle for optimum results. This is just plain nonsense. Will you get a better beer by having clear wort to the boiler? Of course not, it's makes absolutely diddly squat of difference. My last BIAB was quite turbid into the boiler & has been bottled for just over a week & it's crystal clear. I use nothing for clarity except kopperfloc 10min from the end of the boil.
I have the mentioned drill also & with the MashMaster MiniMill, you could crush rocks to dust, it's got so much torque & can run really slowly with the hopper full of grain. Great drill.

 

[RdeVjun]

danielmanners, IMO amateurs' pre- boil clarity is largely meaningless and of no consequence, if you have a think about what happens during any boil (aggregation of proteins and other complexes), after which it usually sits for half an hour during which time particulates settle, then it begs the question of why we would care about the runnings' clarity if the vast majority of it stays in the kettle? Having said that, this thread has some technical info on the topic that is worthwhile reading. Lots of folks will marvel quite vocally at their clear runnings however directly linking that to any particular attributes of the resulting beer is tenuous at best, even the professionals around here have said as much. I'd also point to the BIAB competition successes over recent years, says to me that the method isn't flawed as might be suggested by critics of turbid run off.
To answer your actual question though, no most BIABers don't recirculate at any point, a great many BIABers are keen to eliminate the added complexity of lautering, recirculation etc. Those that do recirculate are numerous though, as per Big Nath's post.

 

[Crusty]

Second BIAB complete, another APA. Target for recipe was 23lt batch, 70% efficiency.
I ended up with 20.5lt into the no chill cube with 2.5lt trub loss. Volume was spot on, 23lt but gravity was better than expected with 1.056 instead of 1.046. This gives me a mash efficiency of 85% & a brewhause efficiency of 76%. I will have to adjust my recipes now to 75% efficiency. The brew day went perfectly without a hitch. BIAB in the urn is so easy & I am now sampling my first APA that has been bottled for two weeks, very, very nice beer. Like the last APA, I will have to dilute with about 4.2lt water to achieve my 1.046 starting gravity in the fermenter & again I will hop tea this one with 1g/lt of cascade hops.
Cheers

 

[Bribie G]

I agree re the wort clarity.

As there has been some discussion about mills here, I bought a new Marga last week to replace my dead one (drive shaft was stuffed, I'd bought it second hand anyway). There is a gap "control wheel" which comes with a few factory drilled holes for fine flour, coarser flour, groats etc. This is a flour mill so to do a gap for barley crushing you need to drill an additional hole like this guy did on the
"Modding a Marga" thread.



As a shortcut I just used the control wheel from the old marga which a previous owner had drilled exactly as in the photo. However while I had it all apart I thought "hmmmmmmm.." and drilled a hole midway between the homebrew crush hole and the groats hole.

Like the OP I've been running on around 74% efficiency but the crush with the new setting got me 86% - as Tidal Pete is my witness

No problems at all with draining the BIAB bag. I'll keep an eye on this in case that was a fluke, but I'll be going the finer crush from now on. Obviously the coarser crush is more suited to 3v etc where set mashes can be a problem.

 

[Crusty]

Second BIAB complete, another APA. Target for recipe was 23lt batch, 70% efficiency.
I ended up with 20.5lt into the no chill cube with 2.5lt trub loss. Volume was spot on, 23lt but gravity was better than expected with 1.056 instead of 1.046. This gives me a mash efficiency of 85% & a brewhause efficiency of 76%. I will have to adjust my recipes now to 75% efficiency. The brew day went perfectly without a hitch. BIAB in the urn is so easy & I am now sampling my first APA that has been bottled for two weeks, very, very nice beer. Like the last APA, I will have to dilute with about 4.2lt water to achieve my 1.046 starting gravity in the fermenter & again I will hop tea this one with 1g/lt of cascade hops.
Cheers

It seems I was actually measuring my efficiency incorrectly. I was not including my 2.5lt loss to trub & chiller, so 23lt @1.056 gives me 85% efficiency. Very happy with that.

 

[hughman666]

I went from a great 3V system to my brewbot, which is really just BIAB tuned up a little. The main reason was the space restriction on moving to an inner-city townhouse.

As far as benefits of a 3V vs BIAB go, I would say the 3V system gave me more scale. The ability to brew high gravity batches using 10kg+ of grain to increase output. i know this is technically possible with BIAB but in reality it is pushing a system beyond its intended design and is a pain in the ass. Doing a 10kg batch allowed me to produce 40L+ of finished beer.

It's then also easy to upgrade from there with a 3V system, increasing the kettle size etc. all the way up to 100L+.

With my brewbot I am limited to single batches - no big deal for me personally these days. I could always upgrade by adding a second element to increase heating output but the limitation is around the mash basket.

The difference between the two methods is no big deal until you get to the 50L+ batch output, then it becomes a clear decision to go 3V - or buy a 200L+ Braumeister...the hoist thing is still a bit of a worry there though IMHO