Full Batch (23L) BIAB in 19L Kettle

[Mrdanielpcollins]

Hi

So tonight I tried my hand at my first full batch All Grain brew.

I saw a Recipie I liked the look of on YouTube for a Candied IPA, ordered all my grain/hops etc, and I gotta say everything went pretty good.

I'm just wondering how to enter everything into Brewsmith, when I input my sessions data it tells me I had over 100% Mash Efficiency.... I wish.

What I can tell you is I mashed in with 4.5kg of grain into 15L of strike water at 73°C. This dropped the temp pretty fast done to 64°C so I added 250mL of boiling water and let her sit for 60mins.
The temp dropped roughly 2 degrees during this time. I then cranked up the heat and mashed out at 73°C for 10mins.

My final volume after taking out my grain was 12L

I then batch sparged in a 9L bucket with 2L of 73°C water at a time (any more and it over flowed).

I bought my volume up to roughly 16L in my main Kettle and took a gravity reading and it was 1.062

I continued to batch sparge and had two extra pots on the boil with 6L between them I added extra Wort to the main kettle as it boiled off until I only had 2 pots boiling away.

After my boil I steeped some hops for twenty mins and poured into my fermenter to chill in my freezer over night before I add my yeast.

My final volume of wort was 20L at a gravity of 1.062. I was aiming for 1.05 for around 23L so I added 3 L of water.

Niw when I try to add these figures into brewsmith I cannot figure out how to get it to work for my set up.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Sorry for the long post. Guess I'm just excited to have completed my first ever all grain brew, and want to ensure my Recipe and procedure in brewsmith is correct.

 

[mongey]

Did you add hops to the boil or just steep some ?

 

[Mrdanielpcollins]

Yea I added hops to the boil

Recipie called for 7g Citra for 60 mins

 

[MHB]

mongey, I had the same question when reading the OP.

I don't use brewsmith so not at all sure about the settings but. if you look at the 20L of 1.062 wort you ended up with. The way to calculate the amount of extract you got is to use a simple equation
Mass Extract = Vol of wort * SG * oP (Plato being WW% and roughly SG=(4*oP)/1000+1
Mass Extract = 20 * 1.062 * 0.155 (As oP is % that's 15.5/100 or 0.155 when in an equation)
You got 1.65kg of extract out of your 4.5kg of malt
Without more information just assume the malt has a potential of 75% (Potential being the amount of the malt than could be extracted under perfect conditions)
Potential Extract = Mass of malt * 0.75 = 3.375kg
Efficiency being What you got / What you could get as a percentage. Efficiency = 1.65/3.375 = 0.488 call it 49%

Couple of other points you should pay attention to: -
Mashing heavy will change the wort, 4.5kg of malt in 15L (~15kg) of water is 3.3:1 L:G (Liquor to Grist (brewing talk for Water to Grain). Mashing heavy will favour the action of Protease and Glucanase but will inhibit Amylase that makes fermentable sugars. 3:1 isn't too extreme but I wouldn't go much heavier unless you know what you are doing and understand the processes involved.

You can calculate your Strike Water Temperature fairly precisely SWT being the temperature the water needs to be at so that when you mix in the grain you end up at the right temperature. There is an equation or you can use an online calculator, I stuck an explanation of this equation in another post a few days ago - have a read if interested.
If you are doing an Isothermal Mash (one temperature) you really do need to be mashing around 67oC (give or take a degree or two) to get a decent balance of the various enzymes working well. Its worth doing the calculation and getting to know your equipment so you hit your numbers.
Decent insulation will stop the temperature dropping too much and remember that it will loose a lot more heat around the sides and stay much more stable nearer the centre.

A Mash out is a high enough temperature to stop enzyme activity and to increase the fluidity of the wort (hotter sugary water flows easier than colder, so your wort drains better) 73oC isn't a mash out!
You really need to be getting close to 80oC but about 77oC is the minimun.

If you are doing large sparges, hotter works better. Try water at or close to 80oC, the one downside is that you can start to dissolve out some unpleasant flavours if you sparge too hot or too large a volume. adding a little acid to the sparge water will help block the extraction of Tannins (well Polyphenols). Wont take much I use Lactic Acid and you will only need a couple of mills for your volumes.

I would recomend you not try to make more beer than the pot will hold. You will get better beer and more control over your processes if you can contain it all in one pot.
Try making 15L of beer, do the basics right and your efficiency should be up near 80% - when you think that's 30% better or every third or fourth grain bill is effectively free it starts to make sense.
With no-chill there is nothing stopping you doing a couple of brews, putting them in smaller cubes, then adding two cubes to your fermenter.

Looking at your pictures attached above, that wort looks pretty cruddy, did you leave the Trub (brewspeak for ****) in the kettle? You really do want to send clear wort to the fermenter.

To me its better to make less good beer than more crap beer
Mark

 

[Mrdanielpcollins]

mongey, I had the same question when reading the OP.

I don't use brewsmith so not at all sure about the settings but. if you look at the 20L of 1.062 wort you ended up with. The way to calculate the amount of extract you got is to use a simple equation
Mass Extract = Vol of wort * SG * oP (Plato being WW% and roughly SG=(4*oP)/1000+1
Mass Extract = 20 * 1.062 * 0.155 (As oP is % that's 15.5/100 or 0.155 when in an equation)
You got 1.65kg of extract out of your 4.5kg of malt
Without more information just assume the malt has a potential of 75% (Potential being the amount of the malt than could be extracted under perfect conditions)
Potential Extract = Mass of malt * 0.75 = 3.375kg
Efficiency being What you got / What you could get as a percentage. Efficiency = 1.65/3.375 = 0.488 call it 49%

Couple of other points you should pay attention to: -
Mashing heavy will change the wort, 4.5kg of malt in 15L (~15kg) of water is 3.3:1 L:G (Liquor to Grist (brewing talk for Water to Grain). Mashing heavy will favour the action of Protease and Glucanase but will inhibit Amylase that makes fermentable sugars. 3:1 isn't too extreme but I wouldn't go much heavier unless you know what you are doing and understand the processes involved.

You can calculate your Strike Water Temperature fairly precisely SWT being the temperature the water needs to be at so that when you mix in the grain you end up at the right temperature. There is an equation or you can use an online calculator, I stuck an explanation of this equation in another post a few days ago - have a read if interested.
If you are doing an Isothermal Mash (one temperature) you really do need to be mashing around 67oC (give or take a degree or two) to get a decent balance of the various enzymes working well. Its worth doing the calculation and getting to know your equipment so you hit your numbers.
Decent insulation will stop the temperature dropping too much and remember that it will loose a lot more heat around the sides and stay much more stable nearer the centre.

A Mash out is a high enough temperature to stop enzyme activity and to increase the fluidity of the wort (hotter sugary water flows easier than colder, so your wort drains better) 73oC isn't a mash out!
You really need to be getting close to 80oC but about 77oC is the minimun.

If you are doing large sparges, hotter works better. Try water at or close to 80oC, the one downside is that you can start to dissolve out some unpleasant flavours if you sparge too hot or too large a volume. adding a little acid to the sparge water will help block the extraction of Tannins (well Polyphenols). Wont take much I use Lactic Acid and you will only need a couple of mills for your volumes.

I would recomend you not try to make more beer than the pot will hold. You will get better beer and more control over your processes if you can contain it all in one pot.
Try making 15L of beer, do the basics right and your efficiency should be up near 80% - when you think that's 30% better or every third or fourth grain bill is effectively free it starts to make sense.
With no-chill there is nothing stopping you doing a couple of brews, putting them in smaller cubes, then adding two cubes to your fermenter.

Looking at your pictures attached above, that wort looks pretty cruddy, did you leave the Trub (brewspeak for ****) in the kettle? You really do want to send clear wort to the fermenter.

To me its better to make less good beer than more crap beer
Mark

Thanks for the detailed reply

I strained the wort through a sieve when pouring it into the fermenter which seemed to catch a whole lot of trub.

I don't have a tap at the bottom of my kettle so just pour it in slowly through a sieve.

The brew does look similar to a Hazy IPA I made a few months ago which settled fine in my fermenter, but I get what your saying.

Here's hoping I havnt stuffed this batch. It did taste good so that's a start.

I'll take what you said and put it into action next batch.

Thanks

 

[MHB]

Have a look at whirlpooling and syphoning the wort to a cube.
Leaving the trub in the kettle is a big step toward making better beer. You cant sieve out trub, well you can take out the hop detritus but the important part is the protein/polyphenol complex called hot break. its a jelly like snot that will break up and go through a coarse sieve or just block a fine one.

Investing in a weldless bulkhead fitting is another option.
Mark

 

[Mrdanielpcollins]

Have a look at whirlpooling and syphoning the wort to a cube.
Leaving the trub in the kettle is a big step toward making better beer. You cant sieve out trub, well you can take out the hop detritus but the important part is the protein/polyphenol complex called hot break. its a jelly like snot that will break up and go through a coarse sieve or just block a fine one.

Investing in a weldless bulkhead fitting is another option.
Mark

I just had a look at the fermenter and can see 3kg of trub sitting at the bottom, ive dropped the yeast in and will see how it turns out.

I'll look at getting a weldless fitting with the pick up tube sitting around 3L above the bottom.

What sort of negative flavours will I be likely to get having as much trub in my beer as I got.

 

[MHB]

Yeast will use some of the break material to build cells. It wont care that Hot Break is made up of a protein/tannin complex, as it eats the proteins it will liberate the tannins which can contribute a harsh bitterness. A bunch of other reactions can take place to, some involve getting more lipids (oxidised lipids are described as Rancid) back into solution which can contribute to accelerated aging of the beer (staling) and haze formation. Too much in solution can inhibit yeast and mute hop flavours... There are lots of good reasons to keep hot break out of your fermenter.
Not necessarily instantly fatal to beer, but one of the many components that make the difference between beer, good beer and better beer.
Of the half a dozen or so reasons for boiling a wort for an hour or more that you better know if you ever sit an exam in brewing, one of them relates to hops (bitterness and flavour/aroma) all the rest are to do with protein removal, tannin (polyphenol) reduction, sanitation, enzyme denaturing... But home brewers only ever think about the hop related functions and appear to ignore all the other effects.

Part of what you are seeing (that ~3L in the bottom) is Cold Break, which is a very different part of the equation, its not a bad thing to have some proteinatious stuff there for the yeast to eat, cold break is the food of choice as it supplies what the yeast needs without the problems that come with hot break. Unless there is a ridiculous amount of cold break you can ignore it.

Which means that you can probably leave a lot less than 3L in the kettle, the normal range is in the 5-10% of wort so we are talking less than 2L and probably closer to 1-1.5L
When you think it through, leaving 1.5L in the kettle actually gives you more beer as its half the amount you are looking at now (which I would be dumping ASAP).

Before you go drilling holes for a bulkhead, I would look at syphoning and measuring how low the tap can go, or look for an adjustable pickup for the bulkhead.
Mark

Must be time to post this again - averaging once a week
Have a read, not highly technical but a good foundation.
M

 

[mongey]

Id get a bigger pot. the whole process sound painful. get a 50l with a tap already installed and your good to go

 

[MaggieO]

Have a look at whirlpooling and syphoning the wort to a cube.
Leaving the trub in the kettle is a big step toward making better beer. You cant sieve out trub, well you can take out the hop detritus but the important part is the protein/polyphenol complex called hot break. its a jelly like snot that will break up and go through a coarse sieve or just block a fine one.

Investing in a weldless bulkhead fitting is another option.
Mark

There are differing opinions regarding leaving trub in the fermenter and off flavors. Science and testing backs both to a degree. Doesn't seem to be a right or wrong just what works for you. I dump it all in and get good results.

 

[MHB]

There is NO debate among other than the some home brewers. No professional brewer would even consider sending hot break material to the fermenter, that's because they know what they are doing.

Point to one piece of evidence in "science or testing" other than brulosophy which is as much science as is Mythbusters, their only criterion being that the product tastes good to them - more a comment on their palate than on brewing sicence.

Lacking any supporting evidence, quit promoting BS!
Mark

 

[Mrdanielpcollins]

Update on my brew. Would have to. Be the Palest Brew I have ever made, but it tastes Dam fine.

I dry hopped with some Citra and Centennial and am really happy with the outcome.

 

[MaggieO]

I do 12 liter batches. It's what I can do comfortably with the kit I have. Also, I get to brew more often to keep my pipeline full.

When I started brewing I did nineteen liter batches because, well, that's what everyone did. I had two pots on the boil thus double the boil off. It was a pain.

Smaller batches made life a lot easier. More variety on hand. Get to brew more often, which is the fun part. Just works better for me.

 

[mongey]

Update on my brew. Would have to. Be the Palest Brew I have ever made, but it tastes Dam fine.

I dry hopped with some Citra and Centennial and am really happy with the outcome.

nice. end of the day if you end up with a nice beer you enjoy tha'ts all that matters

tell everyone its a hazy and you have nailed it

 

[nanuk]

There is NO debate among other than the some home brewers. No professional brewer would even consider sending hot break material to the fermenter, that's because they know what they are doing.

Point to one piece of evidence in "science or testing" other than brulosophy which is as much science as is Mythbusters, their only criterion being that the product tastes good to them - more a comment on their palate than on brewing sicence.

Lacking any supporting evidence, quit promoting BS!
Mark

There is a big difference between a large batch brewery and a small one.

The reason a “professional” brewer does something is geared towards a final outcome.
Most often that is crystal clear beer.
Any break material can affect that.

Ask those same brewers if they home brew, and how hot break affects their beer.
On a home brew level, it would appear it has NO effect.
After all, taste and appearance, NOT science, is what sells beer!

Your arrogant “elitist” attitude gets very tiresome quickly and is the reason many starting out no longer bother with forums like this.

Lacking any common respect, quit being an Ahole!

Brad.

 

[nanuk]

Update on my brew. Would have to. Be the Palest Brew I have ever made, but it tastes Dam fine.

I dry hopped with some Citra and Centennial and am really happy with the outcome.

Looks good.
Any beer that is enjoyable is GREAT beer!

 

[MaggieO]

I do what works for me.

I don't care what people think about what I do and how I do it. Been doing this over thirty years. My process is fine.

Actually, I get pretty clear beer and I usually dump the entire pot into the fermenter. Again, it works for me and I don't care what others think.

 

[MHB]

There is a big difference between a large batch brewery and a small one.

The reason a “professional” brewer does something is geared towards a final outcome.
Most often that is crystal clear beer.
Any break material can affect that.

Ask those same brewers if they home brew, and how hot break affects their beer.
On a home brew level, it would appear it has NO effect.
After all, taste and appearance, NOT science, is what sells beer!

Your arrogant “elitist” attitude gets very tiresome quickly and is the reason many starting out no longer bother with forums like this.

Lacking any common respect, quit being an Ahole!

Brad.

Whether a pro or home brewer, its or should always "geared toward the final outcome"
I wouldn't agree that its mostly about the beer being crystal clear, that's actually a symptom rather than a goal in and of itself, in that if you do everything well you beer will usually be crystal clear (with obvious stylistic exceptions). Same as we don't drink head, its purely visual, but get presented with a flat beer, one with a greasy looking coarse bubbled head and any beer drinker will be suspicious, again its a symptom of there being something wrong.

The beer being bright and having a firm head has become an expectation, based on generations of drinkers noticing that those beers taste better, and I agree that that's what sells beer. Brewing science is what helps brewers get there.

My aim is always to make the best beer possible given the ingredients and equipment available. There are lots of ways to use the same ingredients and equipment and to make very different beers with them.
The size of the batch has minimal effect, it doesn't change the way enzymes work, the rate hops isomerise at... or even the way yeast metabolises wort (including break material).

As mentioned above, you will usually get more beer by getting rid of the hot break, without the problems hot break can cause in beer.
Rather than quote a scientific paper try this from the online version of "How to Brew"
There will be a considerable amount of hot break, cold break and hops in the bottom of the boiling pot after cooling. It is a good idea to remove the hot break (or the break in general) from the wort before fermenting. The hot break consists of various proteins and fatty acids which can cause off-flavors, although a moderate amount of hot break can go unnoticed in most beers. The cold break is not considered to be much of a problem, in fact a small amount of cold break in the fermenter is good because it can provide the yeast with needed nutrients. The hops do not matter at all except that they take up room.
Another good option would be to search for complete beer fault guide.pdf (its written by a home brewer) and do a search for all the faults which hot break can cause/contribute to.
No known benefits to including hot break in your ferment, lots of well established benefits to keeping it out.
Unless your just too lazy to bother, or too stupid to understand that it does matter. While your at it, go find one pro brewer who brews at home (well lots do) and who dumps their hot break in their fermenter.

As for attitude - well if you find it all to difficult and tiresome - bye I wont miss you at all, lets face it you haven't contributed jack to this forum.
Mark

 

[MaggieO]

Amazing how so many people get so heavily invested in being right.

 

[nanuk]

Quote from “How To Brew”:
“although a moderate amount of hot break can go unnoticed in most beers”

So your rant was inane.

As for MY contribution, I am learning and reading Lots!
I learn from everyone, even you Mark!
You offer an invaluable service to this forum, and others!
But occasionally your arrogant “know-it-all” attitude gets a bit abrasive.

I only ask you put away your attitude and address us tycos with some respect.
Remember, you too were once a novice!

Brad.