Grinding Grains Finer For Better Biab Efficiency?

[Truman42]

I read on another website that when you order your grains from a HBS already ground they grind it for traditional brewing methods. However if you tell them your a BIAber and to grind it finer you will get more sugars and better efficiency.

Is this the case? I order my grains from G&G but have never told them I BIAB.

 

[ekul]

the finer i grind the more trub i get, so i found a 'traditional' grind works better for me.

 

[Diesel80]

I have done 2 BIAB brews thus far.

1st was gound with a pasta maker - not real fine, but crushed. Achieved 50% efficiency with that brew
2nd fellow BIABer and AHB member ground it for me, much finer. Achieved 75%+ extraction efficiency.

Squeezed the bag on both occaisions, but squeezed more in the second BIAB.

Not conclusive i know, but somewhat backs up what you heard / read.
Cheers,
D80

 

[felten]

the finer i grind the more trub i get, so i found a 'traditional' grind works better for me.

I agree 100%. IMO there is no need to grind your grains to powder for BIAB.

Personally I have noticed no efficiency loss going from a very fine grind to a standard grind (YMMV). But I have noticed less trub with the latter.

 

[Nick JD]

I grind mine into molecules, then I grind it some more. Then I often add wheat flour - so when I put it in the strike water it goes, "HHHIEEEKKKKK" and turns into a foot round beer dumpling.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

in general, grinding finer than "standard" will, up to a point, give you a somewhat better mash/lauter efficiency with BIAB - and there is no particular reason not too, the main reason for not grinding very finely in normal brewing is because it interferes with the sparging process.

But as some people have pointed out, if you go too far, you might well experience on increase in the amount of trub you get in your kettle - and if you are, as you should be, leaving that behind - you will leave along with it some good wort, thus decreasing your overall system efficiency.

So its a balance - go finer, it will help a little, but at some point of increased fineness, it will most likely stop being a good thing and start being a bad thing. stop just before that.

OP - You said you were getting G&G to crush your grains for you? tell them you BIAB and ask if they will please run it through the mill twice for you. That gives a moderate increase in the intensity of the crush, a small efficiency boost and a workable BIAB without excessive trub. Its what Spills and I do when we do BIAB demos at G&G and i write those recipes with the expectation of getting 78-79% mash/lauter efficiency on a standard BIAB regime. We usually get within a point or two of expected.

But Nick pulverises the **** out of his grain, so he's obviously getting the maximum benefit of a "fine" crush - and he doesn't seem to be getting issues from excessive trub. So theres ways and means. You dont sparge do you Nick? just straight up BIAB? what mash/lauter efficiency do you usually get? - that should bookend the range of potential "improvement" people could reasonably expect. Where they are now at one end, what Nick gets at the other - what they can expect from changing their crush... somewhere in between.

 

[katzke]

I do not grind finer, however I do run it through the store mill 2 times. I seem to get less whole grains and intact husks that way.

When I brew with raw wheat, I soak the grain and run it through a food mill/meat grinder and get a grainy mash of wheat that way.

 

[Truman42]

OP - You said you were getting G&G to crush your grains for you? tell them you BIAB and ask if they will please run it through the mill twice for you. That gives a moderate increase in the intensity of the crush, a small efficiency boost and a workable BIAB without excessive trub. Its what Spills and I do when we do BIAB demos at G&G and i write those recipes with the expectation of getting 78-79% mash/lauter efficiency on a standard BIAB regime. We usually get within a point or two of expected.

Thanks for the advice guys. I will mention BIAB when I order my next lot of grains from G&G TB and get them to run it through twice. I have enough problems with trub as it is. Only once did I manage to get that nice cone you got at the demo, so don't want to over do it.

 

[seamad]

I have run my grain through from .8 to1.1 mm with not a lot of difference, a little better with fine crush. As far as trub management goes I try to get only clear wort into the cube and pour the remainder into a stock pot, bring to a boil with lid on and seal for a couple of days then decant off. Use that either for starter or small boil for late addition hops.hope that helps.

 

[Bribie G]

Over a year ago Craftbrewer kindly ran a couple of bags of 5K through their mill twice for me to see if that would make a difference, but I couldn't discern any improvement.

In the recent systems war exercise in Brisbane all our efficiencies came out around the same, so I'm inclined to think that crush doesn't have much to do with efficiency, as long as you are crushing fine enough to give good access by the mash liquor to the grain innards.