First Partial, Mini Mash In A Bag.

[Brewtus]

I am on holidays with the kids so I found some time to go and buy some voile. I have been toying with the idea of a mini mash and thought I could learn about BIAB basics at the same time. With time running out, I went to the LHBS yesterday and bought, with advice from the owner, 2kg of JWM Traditional ale malt, milled, some US05 yeast, some Galaxy pellets and a tin of Morgans Qld lager. The idea was the Qld lager is bitter without much hop flavour, the Galaxy have lots of flavour and I don't have time for the full hour boil (this might be my undoing). I have an 8l pot and a 6l pot. Today I started to sew up the bag at 2:30pm. It took a while and the circle was a bit small but it did the job. Next I heated water in a pot to 72deg checking with my meat thermometer. I filled the bag with the 2kg of grain and put it in the large pot. I filled the pot with water and soon found out what a mash paddle is for. I added a little boiling water to get it to 65 deg and kept it there by putting the lid on and putting it in the oven set to 65 deg. I topped up the other pot and warmed it to 65deg.

I took the large pot out of the oven after about 30 min of mashing and wrung the bag out as best I could and dunked it in the other pot to do a batch sparge. This is not a method I have heard of before, batch sparge in a bag, but then I have never done any of this before and worked with what I have. I also use the steamer that comes with the pot to wring the bag out as best I could.

I tipped it all in the big pot and put it on the BBQ wok burner to boil. When it boiled I added 20g of hops, boiled for 10, added 15 and boiled for 5 min more. I don't know if that was enough and the wort was milky when I tipped it into the fermenter via some voile to remove the hops. I know I have ignored hot breaks, efficiencies and chilled by adding cold water and probably did not boil for long enough but I learned a fair bit and hope it works out OK. I pitched at 32 deg and 1038. It is taking a while to go down so with luck it will be a cold night and this will bring it down to 20deg.

Sewing the bag was interesting but not that hard and with practice I could do it pretty well. I probably over did it with double sewing the seams but I didn't want a broken bag first time around.

Any comments are welcome and any other mini mashers who want to swap tales, go for it.

 

[Muggus]

Always interesting to hear how different people do it with improvised rigs the first time.

Personally never tried a BIAB setup. The idea of a bag screams potential ****-up to me, so I stick to other forms of straining.
Anyway, i'm probably the best person to sit here and critque your partial techniques, but it sounds like a reasonable effort.

There are a few things that worry me however...
Did you at any point take a sample of your mash liquid? Cause i love the taste of that stuff
On that note, did you take any sort of on-going gravity readings? Helps to know if your mash has got some potential
How long did you do a full boil for? It seems short...60 min should be what you're aiming for
And, this is the one that has me a bit confused, why idd you pitch the yeast at 32 degrees!?!? Sure, it'll start up quickly, but you put alot of pressure on the poor little guys at those temps and they tend to give off bad flavours because of this.

 

[Cocko]

Hey Brewtus,

Good work I says - you had a mission and got there in the end!!

My uneducated tips would be:

Don't squeeze the bag too much, yeah you wanna get all the wort you can but my first partial I squeezed it till the bitch was dry.. and a nice beer it was - I swear I could taste grain... is that tannins... I don't know....

Also grats on the sewing; a tip on seaming your bag is try doing 'French seam' - you sew the seam, invert and re-sew the unfinished edge into another seam so you end up with a tube sort of and NO exposed material edge!

Enjoy you holi's and I hope your brew comes up millhouse!

Cocko

 

[buttersd70]

Brewtus...
Para 1 sounds fine.
para 2 - I know sfa about biab, so can't really comment, except on the time....personally, I would be mashing for longer than 30, unless it passed an iodine test already. But maybe the higher water ratio in biab allows for shorter mash times? I don't know.
para 3 - I think it would have been better off with a longer boil. Most grain boils are odne at either 60 or 90, depending on the base grain used, and this is not so much for the purpose of bittering, but is to drive off the precursors for dms. And I think the pitch temp was too high.

All in all, the method you have used is relatively sound, and will just need tweaking, and I wouldn't really get my knickers in a bunch too much over it. The only thing that causes real concern is the pitch temp......

Hopefully it will all go well, and turn out good.

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

A quick response: squeeze the bag as much as you want, it will not make a difference if you have grain converison.Your pitching temp is too high but you can alter that next time.Boil time needs to be 60 mins +other wise you are not going to get hop IBU's.Most important record what you have done and alter for the next brew. Good luck and if you have any questions Pm me or Pistol patch.Patch is the guy to ask on this stuff.
GB

 

[rclemmett]

Congrats on the partial Brewtus, there is no turning back now! :beer:
I too started doing partials with kits, and also used to do my grains on the stove top. If you can, use unflavoured malt extract and do your own hopping, you will be pleased with the results. :icon_drool2:

 

[Brewtus]

Thanks for the comments and encouragement

Brewtus...
Para 1 sounds fine.
para 2 - I know sfa about biab, so can't really comment, except on the time....personally, I would be mashing for longer than 30, unless it passed an iodine test already. But maybe the higher water ratio in biab allows for shorter mash times? I don't know.

Butters,

This is based on a AG demo I saw the other week where the guys said that after 20min there is not much change if you leave it for an hour. They had worked this out over many brews. They also batch sparged for 20min so really it was about 40min mash but changing the water half way.

para 3 - I think it would have been better off with a longer boil. Most grain boils are odne at either 60 or 90, depending on the base grain used, and this is not so much for the purpose of bittering, but is to drive off the precursors for dms. And I think the pitch temp was too high.

This is the first time I have been made aware of driving off precursors for DMS. This explains the hour boil better than for hopping as bitterness arrives at 30 min. If the beer smells of cabbage than I will let you know. I will remember this for next time and may as well ditch the kit and use straight extract and boil the hops. I was due out for dinner and yesterday was my best chance to get it done, hence the rush.

All in all, the method you have used is relatively sound, and will just need tweaking, and I wouldn't really get my knickers in a bunch too much over it. The only thing that causes real concern is the pitch temp......

Hopefully it will all go well, and turn out good.

Going out is why I pitched so high and didn't wait. 32 is about the highest without real trouble. It is now sitting at 20 bubbling away nicely.

A quick response: squeeze the bag as much as you want, it will not make a difference if you have grain conversion. Your pitching temp is too high but you can alter that next time. Boil time needs to be 60 mins +other wise you are not going to get hop IBU's. Most important record what you have done and alter for the next brew. Good luck and if you have any questions Pm me or Pistol patch.Patch is the guy to ask on this stuff.
GB

GB,
Thanks for the comments. The kit was there for bitterness but if the DMS theory above is correct I won't do it again and use hops instead. Have you had tannin issues squeezing the bag?

Hey Brewtus,

Good work I says - you had a mission and got there in the end!!

My uneducated tips would be:

Don't squeeze the bag too much, yeah you wanna get all the wort you can but my first partial I squeezed it till the bitch was dry.. and a nice beer it was - I swear I could taste grain... is that tannins... I don't know....

Cocko,
I will consider this next time and try and find out what a good compromise is. I will let you know if there is a tannin taste.

Also grats on the sewing; a tip on seaming your bag is try doing 'French seam' - you sew the seam, invert and re-sew the unfinished edge into another seam so you end up with a tube sort of and NO exposed material edge!

I did this with a wide stitch so it should last a while.

Again, thanks for the comments. Also to note, the smell it gave off when boiling was wonderful but my kids hated it.

 

[katzke]

A couple of things are being said here about boiling.

The precursors for DMS are not what are boiled off it is the DMS.

A full boil is needed when using grain to let all the reactions happen that are required for clear wort. Much more complicated then that but it will do.

I am a firm believer that we do not need to understand everything about brewing if we follow the directions. It is when we start to mess with the directions that it becomes important to know all the reactions that are happening. Then we can make informed changes knowing the possible results.

I am sure what you did will make some kind of drink like beer. It may even be darn nice. I think it will have clarity issues, and I am not sure what will happen with the color. I do not think you will have much of a problem with DMS if your fermentation is active. I do think you would have had a better chance if you would have followed the instructions and boiled well for at least an hour.

 

[reviled]

A couple of things are being said here about boiling.

The precursors for DMS are not what are boiled off it is the DMS.

A full boil is needed when using grain to let all the reactions happen that are required for clear wort. Much more complicated then that but it will do.

I am a firm believer that we do not need to understand everything about brewing if we follow the directions. It is when we start to mess with the directions that it becomes important to know all the reactions that are happening. Then we can make informed changes knowing the possible results.

I am sure what you did will make some kind of drink like beer. It may even be darn nice. I think it will have clarity issues, and I am not sure what will happen with the color. I do not think you will have much of a problem with DMS if your fermentation is active. I do think you would have had a better chance if you would have followed the instructions and boiled well for at least an hour.

So if im only doing a 60 min boil and I have slightly cloudy beer could this be a reason? Not that im worried too much about it cos the beer still tastes good, but if I want to be a perfectionist down the track I would be...

 

[buttersd70]

So if im only doing a 60 min boil and I have slightly cloudy beer could this be a reason? Not that im worried too much about it cos the beer still tastes good, but if I want to be a perfectionist down the track I would be...

Its possible. There are a lot of reasons as to why the beer could be cloudy, this could be one. It takes time to break down the proteins and form a good break. I'm not saying that a longer boil would magicallly fix it, but it wouldn't hurt.

Brewtus, the length of the mash only needs to be as long as what is needed for conversion, so with well modified malts, a 40 min mash including the batch sparge may well have been fine for what the guys were doing. They would be pretty familiar with the paramaters of their own setups, mash schdedules, grist ratios, etc, all of which are taken into account. So I wasn't trying to say a 30 minute mash is wrong, because it's not. But it would be better to check that conversion is complete, at least untill you have done it often enough that you can be confident enough in your processes and equipment that you feel you really don't need to. And don't worry too much about possible vegetal flavours. The short boil doesn't mean it will happen, just that it's more likely to happen. As has been said, there are other factors, such as yeast health and strength of the fermentation, that contribute to this, anyway.

 

[Beer&Kebab]

After spending much time reading all the wonderfull posts on this forum I have decided to give a partial a go.. Pretty much along the same lines as Brewtus here.. I bought a digital thermometer from Dick Smith's and I bought a 19 ltr pot from BigW for $20.. I have a pillow case that fits snuggly into the pot that I will use until I either purchase a ready made or make a swiss violle bag myself. I have used the pillow case for steeping specialty grains with success before.I will be using a can of Coopers Original Lager and 2.5 kgs of light Munich in the brew pot with 15 ltrs of water at 66c.. What I want to know is what kind of efficiency would be likely and how does that equate to say liquid malt that I would have otherwise added to this kit ? That is one thing I don't sorta understand when reading other posts..I want to be able to predict my hop regime. Thanks for any help on offer..

 

[razz]

If it's only a small amount of spec grain then don't worry about efficiency. Just work out your hop schedule for the 2.5 k of malt extract.

 

[Beer&Kebab]

I am not adding and specialty grain. I am just about to mash 2.5 of Light Munich base malt to add to the Coopers Lager. I am just wondering what the expected efficiency would using the BIAB method in 15 litres of water at 66c at start and how that would equate to liquid malt ? If the effiiciency is 50% would that be the same a 1.25kgs of liquid malt (half the weight of the grain) ?

 

[razz]

Sorry B&K, I misread your post. Generally speaking you would replace 1 kilo of grain with 750 grams of extract. For the BIAB munich malt work on 60 % so you can get an approx for your hops calculation.

 

[reviled]

After spending much time reading all the wonderfull posts on this forum I have decided to give a partial a go.. Pretty much along the same lines as Brewtus here.. I bought a digital thermometer from Dick Smith's and I bought a 19 ltr pot from BigW for $20.. I have a pillow case that fits snuggly into the pot that I will use until I either purchase a ready made or make a swiss violle bag myself. I have used the pillow case for steeping specialty grains with success before.I will be using a can of Coopers Original Lager and 2.5 kgs of light Munich in the brew pot with 15 ltrs of water at 66c.. What I want to know is what kind of efficiency would be likely and how does that equate to say liquid malt that I would have otherwise added to this kit ? That is one thing I don't sorta understand when reading other posts..I want to be able to predict my hop regime. Thanks for any help on offer..

Its hard to say exactly what your efficiency will be cos it can depend on many things... Id say maybe aim for 65-70% efficiency? But dont quote me on that, it could be better or worse...

I can just see it now, after this partial, youll be AGing in no time :icon_cheers:

 

[buttersd70]

Given the high water ratio, I would agree with reviled, 65-70. But it could well end up being more. My suggestion would be to work the schedule out based on 70%, but take a sample after the mash, and cool it to take a gravity reading before adding the hops in, and then if it's differant, just recalculate the hops before adding them. (which I think is a good thing to do anyway, unless you've done a whole bunch of brews with consistant efficiencies).

I find that after the mash, whilst everything is coming to the boil, there should be enough time to cool your sample to take the reading....and if not, just extend the boil. Extra boil time before the first addition won't hurt, in fact it can only help.

 

[Brewtus]

Bottled it yesterday after about a month in the 2ndry. Not the clearest brew but smells good. Will let you know how it goes when I crack the first in a few weeks.

 

[Brewtus]

After a few weeks I tried this batch, in time for Xmas. It was really nice except it was more bitter than I planned but not as far gone as a toucan. It also can out as clear as any of my K&B beers. It was better than any of my previous beers and went over well with my non-megaswill friends. The galaxy hops worked well and I could easily smell and taste them. Given the comments above and the loss of control over bitterness I think I will ditch the kit and just use malt extract to add to the mini mash and do the full hour boil with all the hops I need.

 

[Gavo]

Given the comments above and the loss of control over bitterness I think I will ditch the kit and just use malt extract to add to the mini mash and do the full hour boil with all the hops I need.

And you will never look back. Soon it will be AG. Thats where I will be once I finish of a bulk buy of LDME.

Cheers
Gavo.