My First Biab

[sean_0]

Hi guys,

Moved to Australia from Ireland about 2 years ago, used to brew a lot at home but I haven't managed to do any in Oz until now. Got my housemate interested and the two of us decided to do some brewing on Saturday. Over the years back home I managed to assemble some decent kit, but starting from scratch again made me reconsider some stuff and after reading a lot of threads here we decided to use the Brew in a bag method and the no chill method. One really nice thing about brewing here in Melbourne was how easy it was to get both equipment and ingredients. I just hopped in the car at 9 on Saturday morning owning no brewing equipment, and by 10:30 I was at home with everything we needed for the day.

Some stuff I learned:

1. Bbq side burner is a poor method of boiling over 30L of water/wort.
2. Hop pellets are a lot different to whole hops.

We went for a simple best bitter type beer, something I've brewed before, using a good ale malt with only a small amount of crystal added. it was such a pleasure to be able to order this on Friday and go collect the malt freshly crushed on Saturday morning, and mixed as I wanted it. Basic recipe, 5KG ale malt, 300g crystal, fuggles for bittering (60g), east kent goldings for aroma (25g), and some more at the end.

Anyhow, the set up is a cheap 40L pot on the side(wok) burner of the barbie. I bought the grain bag cos I don't have much in the way of sowing skills. It seems to be good and strong, and was easy to get clean after.



The only real problem we had was with the burner. We got to mash temperature after a long wait, and only got a good boil started after I put the lid on with about 5kg of weight on top of it. Once it was boiling we were able to open up the lid a bit (maybe 30%) and keep the boil going. Far from ideal but hopefully it should work out ok. We'll definitely invest in a burner before next brew day, we probably added a good 2 hours to the session just from having such a crappy heat source.

Anyway, here's what the mash looked like:

I tried to do a mashout, but after 10 minutes of high heat I was barely hitting 70 degrees, so decided to just take out the grain bag and drain it. Again the crappy burner causing issues. Hit around 70% efficiency. Pretty happy with that, and a proper mashout would probably have brought it even higher. I actually planned for 70%, so I should end up with the beer I wanted.

Anyway, here's a picture just at the hot break:

By the way the floating thermometer was just for comparison. I also had a good glass one. I know from experience that even if you have a good one you end up questioning whether there's something wrong with it. Having two helps calm your nerves.

Anyway once we got a good boil going the first hops went in. These were hop pellets which I hadn't used before. As you guys probably know they just disintegrate when the hit the wort, so cause a bit of a mess in the kettle. Also I've since found out that they have higher utilisation, which means that my finished beer might be more bitter than I wanted. I had dialed the bitterness back a little because of the no-chill, but I think it went up another 9 I.B.Us when I toggled between whole and pellets in Promash. Oh well, it should still be fine, and I'll know better next time. I tasted the wort before we put it in the fermenter yesterday (sunday), and it did seem more bitter than I expected.


Anyhow, after starting the brew at 2:30, we got the wort into a cube at around 7:30 (dang that burner!!). Because it was only staying there until it cooled, I didn't worry too much about getting all the air out, though I did have it on it's side for a while. We got 19L at an S.G of 1.058 into the cube.


Pitched a rehydrated sachet of safale s04 yesterday at 1:30, and it had a nice krausen going when I took a look last night at 9:30. I added 3.5L sterilised water to the fermenter to bring it up to 22.5L at 1.049. This should give me the beer i want.


Overall very happy, just need to get a decent burner (suggestions very welcome), and maybe a hop bag (those pellets made a mess), and I'll be happy with this set up. Just for your interest we spent $180 on gear, and $40 on ingredients. Another $80-100 for a burner and we'll be sorted for the foreseeable future. BIAB seems to be a good affordable way to get into All grain brewing.

I'll report back on this brew when we move it on, planning to go to secondary maybe next weekend, then bottle it 2 weeks later.

Thanks to the many posters on aussiehomebrewer.com whose posts helped me figure out this BIAB business

 

[Bribie G]

Good one, Sean. Yes a burner would be the way to go, or maybe an immersion element. Is it my imagination or did you leave some wort in the no chill cube? (edit: or is that just sanitizer in the cube?) I just pour all mine in, any cold break or hop debris just settles down into the junk at the bottom of the fermenter and forms a compact layer so no beer wasted.

Nice first post mate.

 

[sean_0]

Good one, Sean. Yes a burner would be the way to go, or maybe an immersion element. Is it my imagination or did you leave some wort in the no chill cube? I just pour all mine in, any cold break or hop debris just settles down into the junk at the bottom of the fermenter and forms a compact layer so no beer wasted.

Nice first post mate.

No, that's a weak bleach solution - well spotted! I like to put everything away as clean as possible, must empty it out tonight actually. edit: snap!

 

[vykuza]

Sean, congratulations and welcome back to the fold! Sorry your burner was a bit of a fuss, but when it's all said and done it looks like you're going to have a lovely bitter to sip in a few weeks.

:icon_cheers:

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Welcome Sean O (and I thought my name sounded Irish. )

Looks good.

Yeah, hop pellets disintegrate, and I had some I chucked in dry hop once and they ended up in the break in the bottle, and I overcarbed the bottle so picking green junk out of teeth isn't a fun beer. So (and I will get flamed) I prefer a home made hop tea bag thing. My beer seem to turn out better with it.

Very irish looking brew too - EKG and Fuggles. Not sure if you are a hophead, but I'm liking the American varieties such as Citra, Amarillo, Willamette and the like. Won't suit an English Bitter or Irish Red necessarily, but fantastic for broadening horizons. Again, over hopping is an issue with higher AA% hops - this is a bigger learning curve than BIAB could ever be.

Goomba

 

[BjornJ]

sounds like you guys had a great first BIAB brew day!

Goes to show what you can do when you have the know-how, eh!

Good stuff.

Many of us use a hop sock for the hops so they are boiled in a bag that we take out at the end of boil.
This leaves the wort to be chilled or tapped hot into the cube without getting any more bittering.

http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/details.asp?PID=698




I know lots of people don't, just saying this is an option.
To me it just seems cleaner to be able to lift the hop sock out and take all the hop pellet parts out.

 

[Fents]

Nice one.

For a burner this is my pick of the lot - Italian Spiral Burner

http://www.beerbelly.com.au/burners.html

If you dont want to spend the $90 a three or four ring burner will be fine for the batch size your doing and they are a fair bit cheaper.

4 Ring burner here - http://www.auscrown.com/page/shop/flypage/...y/e/ringburners

Dont forget to get a stand with it.

 

[argon]

RAMBO!!!!.... If, like me, you hate waiting to get to temp have a go at one of these; I get room temp (24C) to strike (70C) in around 20 mins and from mashout to boiling 48L wort in about 10mins.

 

[ben_sa]

Awesome work Sean!

I did a 10 litre boil on my side burner (on the bbq) the other day, and i quickly realised once i move to BIAB, its not gonna cut the mustard! Cheers to all the above with your suggestions, Rambo looks the go!

 

[argon]

Awesome work Sean!

I did a 10 litre boil on my side burner (on the bbq) the other day, and i quickly realised once i move to BIAB, its not gonna cut the mustard! Cheers to all the above with your suggestions, Rambo looks the go!

If you like doing 10L boils, the Rambo will annihilate it. I did a couple of mashout decoctions last brew day (14L of liquid only) boiled in about 90 seconds. :kooi:

 

[ben_sa]

Hey Argon,

Ill be buying the Rambo for when i move into 40-50L batches... The side burner is alright for my 10L extract's for the time being.

Slowly, but surely, sourcing the parts (bag, burner, pot/urn - still undecided)

Aaaaaaah the joys :-D

Cheers

 

[sean_0]

Hi all,

Thanks for the info so far. I have a mate who's got an Italian spiral, so I might see if I can borrow it for a day and see how it goes. The rambo looks pretty good but I don't think we'll quite stretch to that for now. Still bubbling away nicely, and there's a beautiful smell in the understairs cupboard.

Not sure if you are a hophead, but I'm liking the American varieties such as Citra, Amarillo, Willamette and the like. Won't suit an English Bitter or Irish Red necessarily, but fantastic for broadening horizons.

Ya I intend to stretch my brewing a bit in the future, just wanted to start out with an old reliable and make sure everything works, and sort out issues like the burner etc. Though in saying that, I'm currently fermenting the beer I most like to drink, which I suppose is the point of it all afterall isn't it? :icon_cheers:

 

[IainMcLean]

I'll throw my hat into the ring re- burner:

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=53571

 

[sean_0]

Took a sample last night, it's down to 1.014 already. Tastes good too! The harsh bitterness I found on Sunday has mellowed out a lot and it tastes quite balanced. I expect the gravity to drop another 2-4 points so it should finish out nicely. I can't detect much in the way of hop aroma, perhaps because of the no-chill, but you never know how the final product will turn out.

The new plan is to bottle it straight from the primary in another week or two. Some research and discussion on this forum has led me to believe that there's little to be gained from racking it to a secondary, especially with such a highly flocculant yeast.