My Biab Method

[primusbrew]

Hi All,

I have recently started brewing partial mash beers with a BIAB setup and would like to know if there is anything that I am doing wrong or if there is anything that I could improve upon. The setup/process is as follows:

All equipment is sanitised and a yeast starter is prepared.

I have a 12 litre capacity stock pot and a hop bag that is of equal size. This allows me to mash to mash 3kg of grain comfortably. I would not want to do any more as I have to boil in the same pot and don't want the gravity of the boil to be too high.

I mash 3kg of grain in around 10 litres of 67 degree C water for 60-90 mins. This is done in the stock pot. I have to turn the gas on occasionally as the mash temp drops. Once the mash has finished I remove the hop bag that contains the grains and allow it to drain for 10 mins above the pot. I then place the hop bag in an empty fermenter and pour in 5 litres of water at about 75 degrees C. The liquid in the fermenter is then poured into my pot. I figure that this leaves me with about 12 litres of wort. 10 litres to start with less 3 litres for grain absorption plus 5 litres for the water added to the fermenter.

The efficiency that I am getting with this method is around 65%. This gives me a boil gravity of roughly 1.045. The wort is then boiled for sixty minutes with various hop additions depending on the recipe. With 15 minutes to go in the boil I had the required amount of LDME. My last brew required 1.5kg of LDME.

After the boil I place the pot in the kitchen sink with some cold water or ice if a have it. I allow it to cool and then transfer the wort into my fermenter. The fermenter is then topped up with tap water to 23 litres. Yeast is pitched and then fermented at the required temps.


Can anyone see something that I am doing wrong here? Is there anyway of increasing the mash efficiency or is this as high as I should expect to get with my equipment?

I am aware that I could do with some better/larger/more equipment but that is not an option at this stage.

Thanks,

Jesse

 

[PostModern]

I wouldn't get hung up on efficiency with this sort of operation, all you can really change is crush, mash temp, water chemistry, run off rate... and you might get a few more %. If you want to agonise over a hundred grams more DME, then come back

How do your brews taste?

 

[geoffi]

Try a teaspoon of citric acid in your mash water.

 

[marlow_coates]

I agree with Geoffi. We had a similar set up (larger scale though) and balancing the mash to pH 5.2 or close helped our efficiency. Get some pH strips and add citric till satisfied.

The other thing we found, and I have read from others as well, is that a finer crush of the grain will help. Not too fine mind you or it becomes like flour and creates all new problems.

On the other hand 3kg of grain isn't all that expensive, so you could try adding a few more hundred grams if you think the pot may take it?

Otherwise sounds like a solid system

 

[the_fuzz]

why add citric? How do you guys know what his local water supply is like? Why do you think he has a high Ph?

Before adding any additions to your water, download or get your hands on you local water report

 

[geoffi]

why add citric? How do you guys know what his local water supply is like? Why do you think he has a high Ph?

Before adding any additions to your water, download or get your hands on you local water report

Well, I brew with rainwater. Has to be pretty soft, right? Must have low mash PH, right? Well, I've never done a PH test on my mash, but I found that by adding citric acid (and gypsum usually) my efficiency was noticeably improved (from ~75% to ~85%).

It's cheap, simple, safe, and I think it's definitely worth a shot.

 

[primusbrew]

How would I get access to my local water supply info? Would the local council have the details? I live in Seddon, Melbourne which is near Footscray, so if anyone has the water supply details for this area could you let me know?

When should I measure and adjust the pH? I assume at the beginning of the mash but I could be wrong.

 

[primusbrew]

How do your brews taste?

Only one is ready to drink so far. It was an adaptation of a recipe on this site for a clone of Little Creatures Bright Ale. It has come out very well. No odd or nastyy flavours. However the bitterness is a bit lower than I wanted. This is because I forgot to adjust the hydrometer reading that I took at the end of the mash. The wort was at about 65 degrees C and the hydrometer read 1.030 so I calculated my hop additions with that value. Later I realised that the corrected gravity was 1.044. I guess this is how we learn.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

I've never bothered worrying about pH. 4grams of Five Star 5point2 pH buffer and I'm away. It's lazy, but...

I do add some gypsum to my English Brown Ales, but that is based on no science whatsoever, just a hair-brained idea that there's a fair bit of karst in England.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

for now - I'd forget about mash ph and just brew a few more batches. After you have done it a few more times - its amazing how the efficiency can creep up.

Physical things -

When you pour your sparge water on the bag - are you stirring it all up really really well? You need to.

You can just use a bit less water in your mash, and a bit more in the sparge. That will help. Try 8L in the mash and 7 in the sparge.

Also - If you pour 75 water into a cold eski on top of a bag of grain that is at 67 - then the temperature the whole mix reaches isn't going to be 75. Do a little testing to see how much heat the eski sucks out - check what temperature your sparge water plus grain equals out at. You can add hotter sparge water and/or you can pre-heat the eski with a little hot water from the kettle. Try to make it equal out to 76-78C after its all mixed together and stirred thoroughly. Let it sit for a few minutes at 76-78, stir it again and then pull out the bag.

After that - squeeze the bag out a bit - yeah yeah - everyone will bleat about tannins - but in all probability you wont manage to extract any of them if you don't try to wring it completely dry, but you will get yourself another 500ml or so of wort... which on the scale you are talking about is a couple of percent of your extract.

When you want to be bothered with it - you can buy pH strips from your local homebrew store (which would be G&G seeing as you are in Seddon) and if, when you measure your wort ph - it is above 5.4 - then you might think about adjusting your water. Otherwise don't bother.

With what you are doing - I would expect to be able to get mash efficiencies in the 80+% range - so if you care about it, there is room to improve. Or you could just buy a dollars worth of extra DME and call it a day.

Good luck

TB

 

[marlow_coates]

Didn't really look where he lives so don't know the profile of water there.

Worth getting though and adjusting the pH IMHO h34r:

Primusbrew, I reckon it is worth building these little bits of info into your brewing knowlege bank, so one day when you upgrade and increase capacity it won't be a viscous learning curve like we had.
Went from 23L K + K brews to 55L BIAB AG brews overnight

 

[afromaiko]

I've never bothered worrying about pH. 4grams of Five Star 5point2 pH buffer and I'm away. It's lazy, but...

I do add some gypsum to my English Brown Ales, but that is based on no science whatsoever, just a hair-brained idea that there's a fair bit of karst in England.

:icon_offtopic: When do you add this stuff to the water, before or after you add the grain or doesn't it matter? 4 grams is less than half the amount I've heard of others here using.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

You add 5.2 to the water before you add anything else - and from talking to some US brewers who have been mucking about with this product for longer than we have been able to get it, at the recommended dose, you can taste the stuff. But at about half dose, it still does the job but doesn't contribute any minerally character to the beers.

5.2 is only a buffer though - if your water is way out of whack you will need to adjust it with acid - but if its close enough to be adjusted with a bit of gypsum or cal chloride etc - then 5.2 will do the trick.

On Melbourne tap water .... 5.2 is plenty good enough. According to the guys at G&G, Melb tap water can do with a small Calcium injection for yeast health, so I usually add 5-6g of calcium chloride if I am brewing a malty beer, or Gypsum if I am brewing a hoppy beer. But I put it in mid boil.

For mash pH - I use either nothing for darker beers or 5.2 for really light ones.

I still maintain that mucking about with pH is something to worry about on your 10+th AG, when you are no longer running around like a chook with its head cut off just trying to get the mash to the right temperature - but if you are going to worry about it - 5.2 is the easiest way to go.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Thirsty Boy's covered the thing pretty much, but also showed that I was a tad unclear. I add my salts, etc to the boil, in an attempt to alter flavour. Again, in my case, it isn't very scientific - just based on what I think I am interpreting to be the impact of these salts and things on malt and hop flavour.

I certainly wouldn't advise that anyone bother with it until they've got a handle on the rest of the process, though. There's plenty enough to obsess over during your first few mashes.