Jc Goes Ag

[tcraig20]

Finally! I did my first AG the other day. Trying to get out of it with the least amount of equipment and mucking about I went with a quasi-BIAB method. I had originally planned to do this as a straight BIAB, but thought that this would be easier logistically.

The equipment that i had on hand was a couple of metres of Swiss voile, an esky, a digital thermometer, a 60 L stock pot and my gas stovetop. Many things that I did were done simply because I didnt want to buy more equipment right now.

I wanted to keep the recipe as simple as possible:

4.5 kg Maris Otter
300 g medium crystal

45g EKG @ 60
20g EKG @ 20
20g EKG @ 1

Irish moss @ 10 min

Mash at 65-66 C

Makes 19 L, Ferment with dry Windsor.

Step one: Heat water in the stock pot to strike temp on the stovetop. Line esky with piece of Swiss voile. Add grain to the eksy.

Here is the setup:

Add 12L water. I hit a couple of problems here getting strike temp. First I forgot to pre-warm the mash tun with some hot water, second some of the grains had come straight from the freezer and forgot to compensate for the fact that they were -20 C. Nothing that a few litres of boiling water didnt fix anyway. I know that I probably should have added the grain to the water too, but it still seemed to work.

Doughing in with'Mash' paddle:

Mashing temp, eventually:

I mashed for 90 mins to try to compensate for any errors I made, then batch sparged in 15 L @ 70 C. This is where it gets a bit like the fox, the chicken and the wheat. First I heated the sparge water on the stovetop in the stockpot. Next, I transfered the grain 'bag' to the stock pot to sparge, leaving the first runnings behind in the mash tun. After a 20 min sparge, I lifted the grain bag from the stock pot, transfered the first runnings to the pot from the mash tun and returned the grain bag to the mash tun to finish draining. It helps to have a brewing assistant with you for that bit... I know that all seems like a little convoluted, but it saved me having to come up with another bucket to sit the spent grain bag in.

Here is the sparge:

And the wort ready for boiling:

My initial plan here was to try to split the wort between the stock pot and a second pot that I had. Unfortunately, while I was setting up I noticed that the second pot had a couple of pin-prick holes in the side of it, so I had to go for a full volume boil. Turns out that there wasnt enough power in the stove to do a full volume boil after all - I never really achieved a rolling boil - at best I got a 'roiling' boil. I think that this may have affected protein coagulation, etc. as I managed to suck a hell of a lot of crap into the fermenter when I transfered the wort to the fermenter. Transferring the wort hot probably wouldnt have helped either.

For chilling, I went for a 'slow chill' transferring the wort to a fermenter which then luxuriated in a bath of ice water in the laundry sink overnight. Unfortunately, because I ended up with so much crap in my wort I didnt get a decent SG reading. Ill slow/no chill in the stock pot next time around.

Well, job done at the end of the day, and a wee reward:

I had a taste this morning when racked to a secondary to try to get rid of as much boiler crap as I could. Tastes fine - nice hop bitterness and the malt backbone that was missing from all my kit and extract brews, so happy days.

 

[manticle]

I'm assuming the reward is not the pair of trousers but the beer?

Congrats on taking another step.

 

[zoidbergmerc]

Id' be pretty stocked either way.

I like your setup with your mash tun, I might have to try that.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

well done on your brew - looks like nothing too much went wrong.

1. - The crap in your wort will not effect your SG reading. Unless the chunks are big enough to actually physically interfere with your hydrometer, things that are not in solution do not effect SG. If the chunks are so big you are worried - filter it through a bit of kitchen paper towel. It makes it taste like cardboard, but will get enough gunk out of the liquid so your reading will be fine. BTW - the fact that the crap is visible in your wort - means that it came out of solution and your boil did its job. If your wort was turning over, if you were getting bubbles come to the surface... good enough. I have exactly the same 60L pot as you - and on my older and crappier looking gas stove, with the pot across multiple burners I can get 50L to a boil that I consider acceptable. 25-30L... no problem at all, I had to turn off a couple of burners to stop it being higher than I wanted. I suspect your stove would have done it too... so I'd say your boil isn't an issue.

2. - You didn't do a "slow chill" or any such thing. You just chilled your wort like anyone else. Putting the pot (or a fermenter) into a sink of ice water is rapid chilling just like an immersion, counterflow or plate chiller is. If you are willing to stand there and give things a swirl every now and again... its nearly as fast and just as effective as any other wort cooling method.

3. - While your quasi BIAB technique was perfectly legitimate as a way to make wort. I am not knocking it! - It has me buggered how you could imagine it was logistically easier than straight BIAB. Simplify it down to a list and your method (without even including the fandango you did with the wort swapping to and from the eski) was.

1 - Heat water up. 2 - Put it into eski. 3 - Try to get the temperature right. 4 - Bag in eski. 5 - Mash. 6 - Put water into pot. 7 - Heat it up. 8 - Take bag out of eski. 9 - Put bag into pot. 10- Jiggle/rest. 11 - Take bag out of pot. 12 - Throw bag in a bucket. 13 - Put wort from eski into pot. 14 - Add anything that drains out of your bag back to the pot. 15 - Boil.

Whereas a straight BIAB would be

1 - Put water in pot. 2 - Heat it up to strike temp. 3 - Put bag in pot. 4 - Mash. 5 - Take bag out of pot and toss in a bucket (your eski?). 6 - Add anything that drains out of your bag back to the pot. 7 - Boil.

Less than half the steps & much less jiggling about of stuff - thats the way that BIAB was (quite carefully and deliberately) designed. To make the process of making wort as simple, use as few bits of gear & be as logistically manageable as possible. Give it a try. Unless you have an issue that I cant see..... I think you will be pleasantly surprised by how much easier it can be. Like I said, there was nothing wrong with your process - you just made your life harder than its needs to be thats all.

Whichever way you decide to brew - congrats on your first AG. I'm sure it will turn out great. And keep on brewing, the more your do it, the easier, more predictable and more enjoyable it gets.

TB

 

[tcraig20]

1. - The crap in your wort will not effect your SG reading. Unless the chunks are big enough to actually physically interfere with your hydrometer, things that are not in solution do not effect SG. If the chunks are so big you are worried - filter it through a bit of kitchen paper towel.

Unfortunately, they did have an effect - the SG I took read 1.080. What I should have done is passed the hot wort through a fine sieve (which I have on hand and used for filtering hops with kits and bits, but forgot about here).

BTW - the fact that the crap is visible in your wort - means that it came out of solution and your boil did its job. If your wort was turning over, if you were getting bubbles come to the surface... good enough. I have exactly the same 60L pot as you - and on my older and crappier looking gas stove, with the pot across multiple burners I can get 50L to a boil that I consider acceptable. 25-30L... no problem at all, I had to turn off a couple of burners to stop it being higher than I wanted. I suspect your stove would have done it too... so I'd say your boil isn't an issue.

Thats a relief - the boil was the part that most worried me. After all, how rolling is rolling? I can manage to get the pot straddled across two burners - three would be ideal, but Ill be investing in an electric immersion element soon and move the whole operation outside.

3. - While your quasi BIAB technique was perfectly legitimate as a way to make wort. I am not knocking it! - It has me buggered how you could imagine it was logistically easier than straight BIAB. Simplify it down to a list and your method (without even including the fandango you did with the wort swapping to and from the eski) was.

I know that it might look more complex but there are a couple of reasons why its not. First, I didnt have a way of getting the bag off the bottom of the pot and was worried about scorching it. I know, its easy enough to get a cake stand or similar, but it was 'logistically easier' to do it this way than to spend a couple of hours on buses assing about trying to find what I need. The second reason was more for saftey's sake. You cant really see it in the photos, but there is a little ceiling/ledge above my stovetop. With the pot on the stove, I only have about a foot of clearance to move grain bags in and out. I wasnt confident that I could get a full, wet grain bag out without knocking 40 litres of hot wort onto myself.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I know that it might look more complex but there are a couple of reasons why its not. First, I didnt have a way of getting the bag off the bottom of the pot and was worried about scorching it. I know, its easy enough to get a cake stand or similar, but it was 'logistically easier' to do it this way than to spend a couple of hours on buses assing about trying to find what I need. The second reason was more for saftey's sake. You cant really see it in the photos, but there is a little ceiling/ledge above my stovetop. With the pot on the stove, I only have about a foot of clearance to move grain bags in and out. I wasnt confident that I could get a full, wet grain bag out without knocking 40 litres of hot wort onto myself.

The bags don't scorch if you are stirring whenever you add heat - and you very very definitely should be stirring whenever you have the heat on.

But you don't need the heat on with the bag in anyway. Heat up the water, drop in the bag, stir, close insulate, walk away.

I get the shelf above the stove issue though - you'd need a brewing partner to help you lift the pot onto and off the stove. Pot on stove to heat up, pot off stove to mash and pull the bag, pot back on stove to boil... pain in the bum. Still, you said you needed an extra body for your process anyway.... so maybe there is a way to give both methods a go and see which is actually easier.

You will not regret the immersion element - With that, your BIAB set-up will be nearly what I consider to be the "ideal" BIAB rig. A 60-70L pot and an immersion element is the perfect combo. I think your life will be better if you also put a ball valve in the kettle and on the move outside give yourself a way to suspend your bag.

Good luck, have fun

TB