First Biab

[Hammo7]

G'day All.
Last Weekend a friend and I decided to do our first all grain brew.
I had finished my keggle with Craftbrewer 2200w heating element, Gav Provided the Bag, I had the ingredients, so away we go!
We Decided to do the Nelson Sauvin Summer Ale.

So we got all our gear ready, while waiting for the kettle to heat up, we started to mill the grain. I cannot stress the importance of a high torque motor to drive the MM3-2.0 mill enough. Not even half way thoough the milling, I had smoke bellowing out my poor little GMC hammer drill. During the test/cleaning run, it ripped through it. A tumble dryer motor with a 10:1 reduction gearbox will fix that!

Grain finally crushed, water at strike temp, we dough in. After a good stir, we find the temp had gone up considerably. We check the thermometer against another thermometer, and there was a 4 degree difference and rising. So grabbed another thermometer to do a "majority wins" comparison.
We had been trying to cool down the mash, but it was only at 64degrees. 2 minutes with the heating element and more stirring got it to mash temp.

Makeshift lid on, wrap in a sleeping bag and doona, time to measure out hops.

30 mins into mash, unwrap and check temp, wow, only dropped 1 degree, oh well, unwrapped, may as well give it a bit of stick (heat stick that is), back to mash temp, wrap back up.

Time to hoist out bag - simple enough? No, not really. I had not cut the hole big enough in the keggle, the bag hit the sides coming out and leaked wort everywhere, no biggie, just need to take a bit more time..
Hoisted the bag out enough to get my hands in to squeeze the bag, hoist a little more, squeeze, hoist - you get the picture!
Meanwhile heating the wort to start the boil - where is that cube?
Right, cube sanitized! Um, question to self? How am I going to get the wort from the kettle to the cube?
20 minutes later, 1 makeshift racking cane.
Time to add bittering hops - man, did i mention these NS hops smell amazing? In they go what a great smell, I can now see why people do this!
80 mins and 3 hop additions later in goes the whirlfloc.
Last hop addition (nah, Ill leave it out and pop it into the fermenter on day 4.
Flameout (or in my case switch off), cover, 20 wait for the wort to stop moving, whirlpool time.

Trying to get a nice flowing whirlpool going, nothing happening, bloody rack/false bottom not allowing the paddle to go to the bottom. After some careful balancing, was able to get the rack out. Whirlpool time (again).
Lid on and gave it another 20 minutes for the hot break and flowers to settle. Racking can in hand, silicon hose full of starsan, time to siphon.
Another note to self - do not use 1//2" copper tube for racking can next time. Kind of wrecked the whirlpool, and the hose was too hot to try and clamp with my fingers - oh well, the flowers will settle in the fermenter.
Cube now has 18 litres of 1053 wort in it, squeezed out majority of air. Kept sample for tasting and have approx 1 litre in the flask for a starter.
30 minutes clean up time and approx 8 hours since start time, I can relax. What a day.
I have to say, Kit and Kilo is sooo much easier. For a similar cost, I could get another FWK and that is even easier again.
But there is nothing like the satisfaction of sitting back and looking at a 20 liter cube of fresh hot off the kettle wort, with a cold beer in hand and thinking "I made that - from raw materials" and I actually believe it tastes better (to me) than the NS FWK.

This is what I call "Winning"

Sounds like a big ordeal, but at least I know what to do, and what not to do next time.

Cheers. Matt.

 

[yum beer]

Good work Hammo,



Just put pot on to heat up to mash temp for a partial BIAB and Euro Kit...waiting on grain order to come in for next All Grain.

Have to agree its a little more mucking around than straight kits, but its a whole lot of fun and smells freaken awesome.
Hope yours comes out great.

 

[jamiefbacon]

hey hammo
sounds like one busy day you had there. Ive only done two biab brews so far and im happy to tell u the second went much smoother and was about 2hrs quicker so hopefully ur next one is a bit easier and quicker
good luck

 

[Newbee(r)]

I had a bit of fun with my first too, the gap between the grain bag and the 40L kettle is zilch when hoisting the bag, slow and steady does it otherwise wort lava down the sides of the kettle. Agree, more effort, but end to end it isn't that much more, and the smells and satisfaction of making it from scratch have me hooked.

 

[beerbog]

It does get quicker, I can now do go to whoa in about 3 - 3.5 hours. You just have everything planned and set up beforehand. :beerbang:

 

[Hammo7]

Thanks Guys.
The main thing is that I know I can put down a brew with all the gear I have, it will be just about improving my processes, have just finished sewing up a custom grain bag, so will see how that goes.

 

[bignath]

Good job Hammo,

i never get sick of reading peoples first "brewday" experiences once they start getting into the trickier methods of wort production.

My first one was much the same, you think you have everything sorted and mapped out in your head, and then you get to a crucial part and realise you're missing something or have done something wrong. Makes for fantastic reading i reckon.

As others have said, your next will be sooooo much easier and faster provided you kept notes where things went wrong and also importantly, where things went right.

BIAB, yeah 3-3.5 hours (gibbo) is very achievable but i'm 3 vessel not biab, and it takes me longer due to the sparge/runnings collection processes.

A typical brewday for me is 4.5 hours, but i'm working on a couple of simple things to drop this back to around 4 i reckon.

As much fun as my first one was, my second was even more enjoyable as it really started making sense, and i could appreciate what everyone here told me about processes and targets better. Started hitting temps reliably, actually got all my shit required for brewing out BEFORE i needed to go find it at last minute etc...

Enjoy the next one mate!

Nath

 

[theredone]

hahaha sounds similar to my first baib, ive done bout 10 now, and it does get easier, but so far every brewday has problems/glitches/little things that can be done better, all small things but hey im learning, and makeing beer

efficiency seems to be a big poblem for me at the moment, though i have spilt maybe a ltr of wort i should have got 52 ltrs of good stuff last night, but i only have 46 , will reconfirm when wort coolto 20 degrees and i tak a reading

maybe water/grain ratio needs to go up a bit

 

[Bribie G]

Well done, my first BIAB (urn) was hair raising but I got there in the end. A few useful concepts I've come across in the last 2.5 years of BIAB

Definitely get BrewMate software, plan your recipe with it then use the "Brew Day" feature and the other calculators which will tell you how much water you will need and at what strike temperature - you can even enter your grain temperature for exact result.

Don't worry too much about temperature drop during mashing, as most of the frantic action takes place in the first twenty minutes or so, the rest is just the mash fine tuning itself. So 1.5 degrees drop, for instance, is quite acceptable. I just use heavy lagging and never bother trying to apply heat during mashing.

Get a skyhook if you don't have one already.

If you are any good at metalworking or have contacts, then get a ball valve tap for the keggle. Edit: then by using a good floccer in the boil you should be able to settle the trub down below the tap level and run off clear wort without relying on whirlpooling.

You should get it down to 4 hours from dough in no problems :icon_cheers: