Looking to do my First BIAB

[mattyg8]

So got around to doing my first BIAB last night and I must thank you all for helping me through it!

I have no chilled and will ferment it over the weekend. I will be able to work out the efficiency once the wort cools down to room temp.

One query I had was after the 90 min mash period I took the insulation off and the lid and turned the urn up to 78deg for mash out. Whilst it rising in temps I continued to stir the grain using the paint stirrer until it hit 78 deg.

Once at 78 deg I turned off the urn and placed the lid on for 10 mins, Is this correct?

Thanks again all!

 

[mattyg8]

So got around to doing my first BIAB last night and I must thank you all for helping me through it!

I have no chilled and will ferment it over the weekend. I will be able to work out the efficiency once the wort cools down to room temp.

One query I had was after the 90 min mash period I took the insulation off and the lid and turned the urn up to 78deg for mash out. Whilst it rising in temps I continued to stir the grain using the paint stirrer until it hit 78 deg.

Once at 78 deg I turned off the urn and placed the lid on for 10 mins, Is this correct?

Thanks again all!

 

[Rocker1986]

One query I had was after the 90 min mash period I took the insulation off and the lid and turned the urn up to 78deg for mash out. Whilst it rising in temps I continued to stir the grain using the paint stirrer until it hit 78 deg.

Once at 78 deg I turned off the urn and placed the lid on for 10 mins, Is this correct?

Thanks again all!

Sounds fair enough to me. That's basically what I do with mine as well. I have a themometer probe dangling in the wort so I can switch the urn off when it gets to around 78 (or whatever temperature step I'm raising it to).

How did it all go? No major hiccups or anything?

 

[mattyg8]

Sounds fair enough to me. That's basically what I do with mine as well. I have a themometer probe dangling in the wort so I can switch the urn off when it gets to around 78 (or whatever temperature step I'm raising it to).

How did it all go? No major hiccups or anything?

Yeah I stirred and held the prob of the digital thermometer in the wort. Yeah it went pretty good actually. I'm sure there's a few things I can do next time to make it more time efficient

 

[Rocker1986]

Yeah, you'll get to know and work out your system a little more each time you do a batch. I'm still working out ways to improve my processes after nearly 3 years of doing it. Most of it is down pat now but there are a few little things that I think of every now and then.

Glad to hear that it went well though, it's a pretty simple process and if you do it right, it produces some great beers.

 

[mattyg8]

Managed to put this in the fermenter tonight... I got a sg of 1.060 which puts the efficiency at about 74% not to bad for my first attempt with all your help.

One thing was I only got about 19 litres of wort when I aimed to get 21L. There was a bit of wort left in the urn but it had all the bits in it.

I only had treb loss at 1.5 in the spreadsheet but seems there was more left in the urn. So I can assumed that I need to raise the loss up a bit more in the spreadsheet?

I ended up adding some more water to get it up to 21L

 

[Rocker1986]

What SG were you aiming for?

Maybe somehow try measuring the amount of trub left over next time you do a brew? It's pretty hard to estimate how much is in there just by looking at it.

 

[mattyg8]

I set the spreadsheet to 60% efficiency as I have never done it before and it predicted a 1.048 sg

 

[Rocker1986]

Ah yep. Definitely gone over that 60% then, not a bad thing either. What was the SG after you added the couple of litres water to top it up?

 

[mattyg8]

It was about 1.056-1058

 

[Rocker1986]

A fair bit over the predicted then, nice work! Your efficiency may increase a bit more as you refine your processes and get more used to your system as well but that's a decent start.

I think my first one I got 65% or something, but now I regularly get between 70% and 75%, mostly towards the higher end though. I'm happy enough with that though, the consistency makes recipe design easy.

 

[mattyg8]

Yeh thought it would be best to start with a low predicted efficiency and adjust it for future brews.

Cant wait to decide on the next recipe to make

 

[Rocker1986]

It's a good idea yeah. It'll take a few runs through it to get an idea of what your average efficiency is, but once you work that out, it can be used as the default in your brewing software. When you get to the stage of designing your own recipes, it makes it much easier.

I jumped in the deep end a bit when I started AG, did that one recipe from Craftbrewer which came with basic instructions on the BIAB method, then went straight into designing my own recipes. I had done some recipe design with extracts though so it wasn't too much of a step to using grains. One lager I did came out about 1.5% more ABV than I was expecting because my efficiency was higher and I hadn't changed it in the software. :blink: :lol:

 

[oglennyboy]

Nice work mattyg8, I found with only a couple of brews that efficiency was regularly mid-80% when measuring before transfer to the fermenter. It was the variability of the trub volume that threw out my efficiency measured into the fermenter, sometimes knocking it back from 85% to 65%.
So I started being a bit more lax in what I let into the fermenter: not being so fussed with the fluffy cold break, but stopping before too much of the denser looking hot break & hop gunk came through. It's worth another 2-3 litres or so into the fermenter and there appears to be no impact on the quality of the final beer - clarity & taste are fine.
There's a good comparison floating around here, links to a chap who did an experiment where he fermented the clean runnings off the top of the urn in one batch, then all the crap in the bottom half. End result: doesn't really matter. A more compact trub in the fermenter gives you a little bit more final volume compared with trying to leave it in the urn.
cheers!

 

[mattyg8]

Yeh I see what you are both saying...thanks heaps!

 

[Rocker1986]

You have to be a little careful how much of the trubby **** goes into the fermenter - if only because the popular style of fermenters in Australia are the bucket and tap type ones. If you siphon the beer I guess it's no issue but if using the tap it'd be preferable for the trub layer to settle below it. Last batch I just bottled last week I dumped a heap of trub and **** in with it from the cube, but it was a bit too much and the layer was about on the tap level. I prefer it lower than that simply to avoid getting it in bottles. The taste of the beer is fine, however.

Depends on your system too. On my system I've worked it out to be able to completely fill a 25 litre cube and leave only trub in the urn. That last batch I mentioned was a screw up in that part of it, but usually it's no problem.

 

[mattyg8]

took a reading and its at 1.020 at day 9, the recipe calls for 20g dry hop. I have never really dried hopped before so when would be best to do this? I tend to cold crash for 3-4 days

 

[Rocker1986]

What yeast did you use on it? Doesn't sound like it's finished fermenting yet, although it's far enough through that you can add the dry hops with no issues. If you prefer, you can wait until it finishes fermenting, throw in the dry hops, give it another couple of days before cold crashing for your 3-4 days.

Also, I forgot to mention this - there really isn't much point in shifting bittering additions to account for no-chill. The difference between a 60 minute boil and an 80 minute boil is sweet **** all in terms of bitterness extracted, and it would be even less when during the extra 20 minutes or whatever it is, the wort isn't even boiling, and is cooling down. So yeah, in the future I wouldn't worry about it. That adjustment theory is more aimed at late kettle additions. And even then, I question a "standard" 20 minute rule for everything.

 

[mattyg8]

I used us-05 usually it gets down to about 1.014, Ill wait a few more days do a reading and add hops for few days then cold crash

 

[Rocker1986]

Ok, yeah, I'd expect 05 to get down lower than 1020. Maybe try bumping the temperature up a couple of degrees and see if that kicks it along a bit.