First BIAB yesterday

[jackdaw]

After about 6 mths of researching I bit the bullet yesterday.
Hope someone can verify if my procedure and outcome are ok.

48L electric urn
30L water @ 71C

2.50 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter

0.80 kg Munich Malt

0.80 kg Wheat Malt,

0.25 kg Caramunich Malt

15.00 gm Amarillo (60 min)

20.00 gm Amarillo (20 min)

20.00 gm Amarillo (0 min)

SafAle US-05)



Grains added to bag and kept stable @ 68C for 60 mins
Bag lifted to clear element and temp raised to 75C for 10 mins
Bag left to drip over stoked up urn, then lowered into bucket and 1.5L water @ 75C rained over and contents added to urn.
Rolling boil for 75 mins with hops added as above.
21L extracted and put in cube for non chill.
Put in carboy today @ 18.5C
SG is 1.040 (which I think could be on the low side)

Any suggestions for improvements on my next brew much appreciated!

 

[Alex.Tas]

looks fine dude. Nice work on your first all grain beer!

I reckon if you are going to bother with a sparge step, then reserve a bit more of your initial 30L and add it to your 1.5L. It may help boost your OG a little.
Just in case you are not away, typically people add 10-20 minutes onto their hop additions (i used 15 min) to account for the slow drop in temperature post boil.

So mathematically if you were to work out how many IBUs you get from each of your additions you described above, the 0 min addition would be calculated as a 15 min addition, the 20 min as a 35 min addition and the 60 as a 75 min addition.

While you may not want to get hung up on the mathematics of brew design its good to know this simple change, because if you find a recipe on the internet that wasn't designed for nochill, you need to adjust it accordingly.
ie if you found one that had a 60 min addition and a 15 minute addition, you should add your hops at 45 min and put the 15 min addition into the cube, then just transfer the hot wort onto it. Failing to do this may result in your beer not having the flavour/aroma you hoped for.
You may already know all this so i won't go into it any further, but if you need more info let me know.

All in all though, looks like your brewday went smooth, great job

 

[contrarian]

Looks like a pretty good process. I put your grain bill into the BIABacus and estimated that you could have hit 1.047 so you weren't too far off the mark. Just out of interest did you measure this out of the kettle or the fermenter? Was it with a hydrometer or refractometer? Both need temperature corrections to about 20C and refractometers also require a correction for alcohol once wort is fermenting.

Rather than a sparge you might do well to increase your mash time to 90 minutes and see what impact that has first, in my experience it does make a difference.

In terms of the hop additions it is really up to personal taste. There is very little difference in bitterness levels between a 60 min and 75 min addition but there are a number of ways to approach flavour and aroma additions. Some people don't change recipes at all and a re happy with results. Some only add late additions into the cube while others find this can produce grassy flavours. Unfortunately the only way to find out what works for you is to make a lot of beer using different approaches and then continue to sample it! I know, it's devastating.

All in all I doesn't sound like there were nearly enough spills or burns for a proper first brew day! I'm sure it will be the first of many!

 

[jackdaw]

Thanks guys! Yea Alex, I know what you mean now in regard to the hop editions. Something to consider next brew.
Contrarian It was measured ex fermenter with a hydrometer at around 18C.

Yea, I might leave the sparging on the next brew and up the mash time.
No spillages, fires, burn or electric shocks fortunately. I'd planned my process out in my head and on paper many times
and I was actually surprised how smooth it went!

The urn will be firing again on the weekend! Maybe even 2 times!

 

[SBOB]

Rather than a sparge you might do well to increase your mash time to 90 minutes and see what impact that has first, in my experience it does make a difference.

I'll +1 this suggestion. I use BIABacus to do my calcs, but with a 90 minute mash and adjusting my boil off rate to suit my system I have hit expected OG numbers (or been slightly over) on my last few brews and I haven't need to bother with messing with sparge steps.