First Biab

[Schober]

Hello All,

I recently put on my first AG BIAB on an electric stove top in a 19 L pot. Milled grain in a "mill" attachment on a Kenwood kitchen appliance, which is basically a small blender with the base larger than the top (stopped milling as soon as no whole grains were present). Instead of using the swish swiss material, I used a fine grade cheese cloth (13 holes/cm). No grain bits came through when squeezed so I'm happy with the material, plus it doesn't melt when heated.

I did a scaled down (15 L) version of DrSmurto's ESB Golden Ale, with a slight change in the hop schedule. Here is the recipe.

1.8 kg pilsner
0.6 kg munich
0.6 kg wheat malt
0.19 kg caramunich

Strike temperature: 70 C in 15 L
Start of mash: 68 C
End of mash: 61 C
Mash duration: 90 min, with 15 min stirring
Did not mash out or sparge... just squeezed.

Amarillo (8.2%)
60 min (15 g)
15 min (13 g) + 0.5 whirlfloc tablet
5 min (5 g)
0 min (5 g)

US-04 (at 26 C with 0.5 L overnight culture). Bubbled crazily for 24 hr and then dropped back a lot, probably due to high pitch rate.

After the boil, a sample was taken and allowed to cool to room temperature. SG 1.043 (expecting 1.050 from recipe), should I be happy with this? I was expecting a little more. Will mashing out at 80 C significantly help?

Also, is it worth while utilizing more of the 19 L pot volume during the mash with this grain bill (instead of a total mash volume of about 16.5 L)?

Sometimes I think that I over measure (and over think) the process. I'm sure it will be super tasty.

Cheers,
Schobes

 

[seemax]

Looks fine to me, efficiency seems reasonable. Typical mash range is 65-70 ... low means more fermentables (drier) , higher means less fermentable (chunky) so that will effect your final gravity (FG).

Mash volume is typically 2.5L/kg so in theory you could mash with 7L then perhaps sparge in another pot or simply top up with water to your preboil volume.

Keep in mind that hop utilisation (and hence IBU's) varies based on the SG of the wort and also the boil volume.

Consider investing in some brewing software such as Beersmith or similar..

 

[Housecat]

+1 for the brewing software.

I got both Beersmith and Brewmate but I am leaning towards Brewmate as I find it a bit simpler to use.

Horses for courses though!!

HC

edit: shpeeling

 

[roddersf]

+1 for beersmith here - its really bought my brewing to a new level. I havent used brewmate but I'm sure its just as good, whatever you get used to really.

Re. your BIAB, like seemax said if you keep it around 2.5L/kg you'll be right, what I usually do with BIAB is brew with a smaller volume, then measure gravity, and then use beersmith to tell me how much water to top up with to get desired SG - that way you'll get close pretty much every time.

Cheers,
Rod.

 

[Schober]

Thanks guys,

I know that 19 L is smaller than optimal and I kind of wish I had a 40 L pot, but my electric stove is unlikely to handle it. It's good to know that 2.5 L/kg figure (thanks seemax + roddersf). I'm keen to try either an 80 C mash out, or a 7.5 L mash with a 7+ L sparge on my next brew. Is it overkill to do both? Does anyone do this?

I am a MAC user and I'm using the BrewTarget software which is fairly good for scaling recipes and general AG design on a mac. But I kind of wish that beersmith was available on OSX. Since the last brew was my first, I'm going to keep in mind my hop utilisation with respect to mash efficiency. My plan is to do a scaled down 15 L BIAB version of Doc's Bavarian Weissbier next, and using BrewTarget keeping in mind style and the fact that you get a more hoppy beer with a lower efficiency and a less hoppy beer with higher efficiency (while trying a happy medium with my hops and grain). Is this a decent approach?

This is an excellent site for improving homebrew quality (awesome).

Cheers,
Schobes

 

[keifer33]

You could always jump on http://www.biabrewer.info/ and grab the calculator on there which will help you with water amounts and mash volumes etc. You will have to join up but its definitely a good resource to have for additional info. Its an excel document so isn't OS dependent.

 

[Schober]

Cheers Keifer33,

I've already gone to BIABrewer. "The Calculator" suggests that with a 19 L pot the best you can aim for is 9 L of beer at the end, and I refuse to admit that it is the best I can do. The advice that I got was to buy a 40 L pot and do a MAXI-BIAB to achieve a 23 L batch. I'm happy with a 15 L batch size, which I'm sure I can do with a 19 L pot. Do you know anyone that does this?

The fact is that I haven't even had my last 15 L biab batch in the fermenter for more than a few days (I go two weeks minimum). I'm sure that it's a great brew, but I'm also sure that it's not the exact brew I calculated in my software.

Cheers for your time!

 

[Schober]

Cheers Keifer33,

I've already gone to BIABrewer. "The Calculator" suggests that with a 19 L pot the best you can aim for is 9 L of beer at the end, and I refuse to admit that it is the best I can do. The advice that I got was to buy a 40 L pot and do a MAXI-BIAB to achieve a 23 L batch. I'm happy with a 15 L batch size, which I'm sure I can do with a 19 L pot. Do you know anyone that does this?

The fact is that I haven't even had my last 15 L biab batch in the fermenter for more than a few days (I go two weeks minimum). I'm sure that it's a great brew, but I'm also sure that it's not the exact brew I calculated in my software.

Cheers for your time!

 

[felten]

There's two threads out there for 20L BIAB, one is Nickjd's here on this forum, and RdeVjun's on the BIAB forum, they're both good methods to follow and neither requires a 40L pot, but you will have to add a sparge step.

I can't find the links to them atm but I'm sure someone has them handy.
[edit] http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=352

 

[seemax]

Beer Alchemy is the only Mac brewing software.. by all accounts it's pretty good too.

I have an iMac and Ubuntu laptop... both run Beersmith on Wine without issues. I store all my recipes on Dropbox so I can view them anywhere , anytime... come brew time I can see the recipe on my iPhone. Technology has its benefits

 

[RdeVjun]

felten's right, they're both good methods! [/modesty ] Here's NickJD's 20L stovetop guide BTW.

Schober, Maxi-BIAB on the BIABrewer forum or the link above to Nick's guide is a way to get brewlength > kettle volume. Both have sparge step and post- boil dilution, there's no 40L pot needed, just the 19L one you already have. For instance, yesterday I made 17L of 1.080, after a small trub loss and post- boil dilution that translates to about 23L of 1.055 in the fermenter, which is precisely what I was after, and all from the very same 19L stockpot on my domestic gas stovetop.

Edit: Oh, WRT Software for Mac, StrangeBrew2.0 is Java, so cross- platform and free. I use it on my unix box, it can be a bit fiddly and a few little things are broken, but it works well enough as a recipator, even has plain text ingredient databases!

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Beer Alchemy is the only Mac brewing software.. by all accounts it's pretty good too.

I have an iMac and Ubuntu laptop... both run Beersmith on Wine without issues. I store all my recipes on Dropbox so I can view them anywhere , anytime... come brew time I can see the recipe on my iPhone. Technology has its benefits

I can't get brewmate running on wine, which is a pain. I thought a basic program would would, but it doesn't. Crazy. I'm using qbrew on ubuntu, since it has a windows version as well, and just drop back efficiency by 5% to get a decent calc. Using beer calculus on line, but I really liked brewmate's calcs regarding mashing volumes, pre and post boil volumes, and other brew day calcs.

Goomba

 

[RdeVjun]

I can't get brewmate running on wine, which is a pain. I thought a basic program would would, but it doesn't. Crazy. I'm using qbrew on ubuntu, since it has a windows version as well, and just drop back efficiency by 5% to get a decent calc. Using beer calculus on line, but I really liked brewmate's calcs regarding mashing volumes, pre and post boil volumes, and other brew day calcs.

Me too LRG, couldn't get Brewmate going under Ubuntu, I looked at what might be the hassle with mono, in the end I just didn't have enough patience so kept using StrangeBrew2.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

mono and moonlight are flakier that running something under wine. It's crazy like that!

Goomba

 

[Schober]

I'm currently happy with BrewTarget, but I'm going to give a look at BeerAlchemy - looks like it could be good. Although, it appears to be a 30 day trail program, is it worth the 30 bucks?

Next brew I'll aim for a 15 L biab brew using a "full to the brim" approach with my pot. That is 18 L at the start of the boil, 15 L into fermenter after 60 min boil. Watching for over flows of course!

Cheers to all!