Move To All Grain For Thirty Bucks

[misfit]

does anyone have a xxxx gold clone reciepe for these small batches????????????
Thanks in advance

 

[Nick JD]

does anyone have a xxxx gold clone reciepe for these small batches????????????
Thanks in advance

In the best interests of your brewing progressing, how about you come up with one?

Cluster hops and BB Pale.

We can steer you in the right direction - but recipe formulation promotes a greater understanding of your brewing.

Give it a go.

 

[misfit]

In the best interests of your brewing progressing, how about you come up with one?

Cluster hops and BB Pale.

We can steer you in the right direction - but recipe formulation promotes a greater understanding of your brewing.

Give it a go.

I understand what you are saying and I do plan on getting a greater understanding of all things brewing.
But as this will be my first attempt at biab/ag I was after a tried reciepe of a style of beer I drink,get that one under my belt and work from there.
Cheers Brett

 

[Nick JD]

I understand what you are saying and I do plan on getting a greater understanding of all things brewing.
But as this will be my first attempt at biab/ag I was after a tried reciepe of a style of beer I drink,get that one under my belt and work from there.
Cheers Brett

No worries.

Try this in a 19L pot:

20L XXXX Gold

3.4kg BB Pale
50g BB Caramalt

(mash in 12L at 66C for 60min) - calculate your strike temp.

When you've squeezed the bag and sparged a bit (if you want to) top up to 14L for your boil with hot water. Ideally you should have 14L of 1.050 at the start of the boil. Remember that SGs are taken at 20C, or you must use software to calculate.

20g Aus Cluster (6.7%AA) for 60min

Top up with cold tap water in your fermenter to 20L

2 packs of Fermentis 34/70 @ 12C (or 1 pack of US05 at 18C if you must)

 

[misfit]

Thanks mate
That is what I was after as my first attempt will be more about getting the feal of thing and finding out what I have forgotten to plan for,once I have the process right then I can build on that.
Thanks again I appreciate you steering me in the right direction
cheers Brett

 

[chunckious]

Go for it Brett.......this shit is gonna blow your mind. :kooi:

 

[misfit]

thanks chunkious,I think I have covered all bases and all will be good.
And yes I think this shit will blow my mind,When I have all my shit together & ready to go I will start a thread and let you all know.
Thanks for the support.
Cheers brett

 

[mikec]

Hey Nick (or anyone really)

I'm getting ready to do my first BIAB.
A question re the SG.
In the guide at the beginning of this thread, you take a gravity reading prior to boiling, and calculate it to be 1.048.
Won't I lose some water when boiling, thus increasing the SG?

 

[Nick JD]

Won't I lose some water when boiling, thus increasing the SG?

You will. However, don't worry too much about SGs. The point of this is to just make wort and not get flustered about hitting SG targets and stuff like that - because that's the kinda stuff that makes people put AG in the Too Hard Basket.

When you put it in your fermenter and say it's boiled down to 1.055, you can ferment a slightly more bitter, smaller volume, 5.5% beer - or you can top it up with some cold water for a 4.5% beer.

Measure the SG in the fermenter and dilute as desired.

This thread is more a "Proof of Concept" for those wondering if they can do it. Download Brewmate after you've done this and it'll all become magically clear to you - which is the point of this slaphappy tutorial: putting the (confusing) theory into practice, so then the theory all makes perfect sense. You'll have a 30L pot and be winning brewing comps soon with world-class brews ... it's only difficult at the start. The rest is easy.

 

[Rob S]

Just my 2c for this thread.

I quickly made the move from K&K after 2 attempts of pissweak tasteless lager straight to BIAB after much research on the web.

Already had the Coopers kit from Big W and a temp controller for the fridge.

$20 for a 25l stainless steel stock pot off ebay

$6 for 2 metres of swiss voile, folded over to make a perfectly fitting 4-ply bag

$34 for my bag of grains, hops and wyeast from MHB (plus about a hours worth of free advice that increased my knowledge 10x - and thanks for letting me rummage through your hops fridge smelling all the different types of hops. It took my nose about a week to recover)

Made exactly 24 tallies of quality pilsner which I'm currently enjoying. I fucked up heaps with this, it didn't go to plan. End of the day it's bloody lovely.

Since then I've put down Lloyd's Krispy Kolsch and about to put down a Newcastle Brown Ale clone.

Positives....
BIAB is easy to make. BIAB is cheap for people stepping up from K&K to trial before buying a $3500 BM setup. BIAB is very forgiving, you can miss a strike temp, **** up your additions, leave the hot break on top of the boil, add the cold break to the fermenter etc etc and still end up with drinkable beer.

Negatives....
Stainless Steel stock pots can be expensive unless you're patient and shop around. Trying to boil 20+ litres of wort on the stove can be a PITA unless you have a gas stove with a big burner. Ummm..... Bueller, Bueller.

Like I said. Just my 2c. I'd love to move to BM one day but for now I'm totally satisfied with BIAB and my 20L batches of beer.

 

[mikec]

Cool, makes sense, thanks Nick.

I'm one of those "jump in the deep end" people, and so this has been researched to the nth degree!
And my fianc is a chemist.
So this should be a walk in the park.

The only downside of all this is that I am looking at the 3 or 4 cans of extract we have left in the cupboard with some level of disdain...


Edit: Nice one Rob S. That is comforting. You made the move much sooner than I did, well done. I've done about a dozen K&K so far (with various additions).

 

[Nick JD]

Cool, makes sense, thanks mate.

I'm one of those "jump in the deep end" people, and so this has been researched to the nth degree!
And my fianc is a chemist.
So this should be a walk in the park.

The only downside of all this is that I am looking at the 3 or 4 cans of extract we have left in the cupboard with some level of disdain...

The deep end is much safer to jump into. I never understood that saying!

Sounds like you have it covered - making good beer is all about yeast. The strain you choose and it's care.

 

[mikec]

The deep end is much safer to jump into. I never understood that saying!

Sounds like you have it covered - making good beer is all about yeast. The strain you choose and it's care.

It follows on to "sink or swim". In the deep end, you'll do one or the other.

First batch will be a CPA - so reculturing the Coopers yeast from the bottle. So much good info on this site, even that looks easy!

 

[mikec]

OK, gave my first AG brew a go yesterday. Coopers Pale Ale clone, 11.5L batch.

I was just using a blender to crush the grain. I had a polyester BIAB bag from ESB, but I was worried that too fine a grind might just fall through the bag. How does this bag compare with a swiss voile? Are the holes too big or are they just right?

I happened to be doing this as AHB was offline yesterday morning... so I decided just to wing it.
I tried not to run the grain through the blender for too long, so that I didn't end up with dust. All the while hoping that it was ground just enough to get the sugars happening!

The top centre bit is more dust than the rest, this was the small amount of wheat and crystal malt, which I ground a little finer than the pils.

Anyhoo after the mash was complete, I found two things:
1. Very little dust had escaped the bag, and
2. The SG was a little lower than I'd hoped. (accounting for temperature)

So, correct me if I'm wrong here, but next time I should grind a bit finer, and this would give me better efficiency?

To bring up the SG I just added a bit of cane sugar, as the original CPA recipe called for this anyway.

Pitched late last night, now the wait begins!

 

[pyrosx]

How does this bag compare with a swiss voile? Are the holes too big or are they just right?

That bag has much, much bigger holes in it that than my bag (the craftbrewer one, which I think is swiss voile) - which is so fine that it's hard to tell that there actually -are- holes in it, apart from the fact that it's semi-transparent....

 

[Nick JD]

1. Very little dust had escaped the bag, and

The dust turns to maltose!

How far off your target SG were you? I see you have quite a few whole grains in your bowl there. If you have 5% whole grains in your crush, then you'll be 5% down. Pretty sure whole grains are close to 100% unconvertable. Just blend the living crap out of it - clear wort is nto necessary for great beer.

I can get a crystal clear wort with a blender crush anyway ... just don't squeeze the bag (takes ages, but the wort is crystal), the finely blended husks are a great filter.

 

[mikec]

The dust turns to maltose!

How far off your target SG were you? I see you have quite a few whole grains in your bowl there. If you have 5% whole grains in your crush, then you'll be 5% down. Pretty sure whole grains are close to 100% unconvertable. Just blend the living crap out of it - clear wort is nto necessary for great beer.

I can get a crystal clear wort with a blender crush anyway ... just don't squeeze the bag (takes ages, but the wort is crystal), the finely blended husks are a great filter.

SG was about 1.035. Topped up with 300g of raw sugar to get to about 1.044, and I figured I'd lose some water when boiling. I finished up at 1.047.

So that bag is OK then? Go for a fine grind, maltose is good anyway, don't squeeze the bag, win?

 

[Nick JD]

SG was about 1.035. Topped up with 300g of raw sugar to get to about 1.044, and I figured I'd lose some water when boiling. I finished up at 1.047.

So that bag is OK then? Go for a fine grind, maltose is good anyway, don't squeeze the bag, win?

Grind it to dust and squeeze! Still makes great beer; it's a myth that clear wort = great beer.

 

[mikec]

Grind it to dust and squeeze! Still makes great beer; it's a myth that clear wort = great beer.

Roger.

Might give it another go this weekend.

 

[Nick JD]

Coopers grind to dust, so you're in good company with this "terrible" technique!