New to BIAB and Beersmith - how to scale recipe to suit 19L mini-BIAB?

[markau]

Hi fellas,

Having done a few successful kits, I wanted to try AG, so bought the ingredients for a 23L batch of Dr Smurto's Golden Ale from my local homebrew shop. I've also bought Beersmith, a 19L pot, and the other stuff I need for BIAB.

In Beersmith, the OG and ABV etc. all look sensible for a BIAB (13 Gal/50L), however when set to a mini-BIAB (5 Gal/19L), it does not change the amount of ingredients required as I expected it would, and instead predicts an OG of 1.091 and ABV of 9.7% . I don't mind strong beer but that's ridiculous

I tried scaling the recipe, but it did not change anything.

Either I am mistaken about using less grain, or I am doing something wrong in Beersmith. Can anyone point out my problem?

I see there is a LOT to learn, but I feel this is a straightforward recipe and I want to give it a go - I just need to be sure I have the plan straight before actually diving in.

Thanks for reading!!

 

[doon]

Your not going to produce a 23l batch in a 19l pot. Not sure on exact numbers but final volume will be diluted down to 23l or whatever volume gets you desired gravity

 

[markau]

Yep, the mini-BIAB method is effectively a half batch due to the smaller pot size - it should be a 16.3L boil and 11L into the fermenter.

 

[markau]

Am I meant to manually adjust the amount of grain in Beersmith to achieve the same OG as the full batch recipe?

If i halve everything it's quite close. I thought this would be automatic though.

 

[Tex083]

In Beersmith you need to go into the equipment profile, in here you will find BIAB 40l urn.
Right click and copy this, open and edit it to a 19L capacity. Save it and use this equipment profile in the recipe design. This might help the scale of the recipe if not just subtract grain and hops till it meets the Sg and IBU of the original recipe.
Hope it helps

 

[markau]

Thanks Tex083, copying the other profile didn't seem to work (water level was too much for the pot), but if it's acceptable to just tweak the amount of grain and hops, to get it close enough, then that's fine. Thanks for the reassurance.

 

[jaymzica]

yeah i did a 23lt recipe in a 19lt pot. turned out to be the same about 9.7%
I boiled another 6lt of water put that in my keg, chilled it, hit it was C02 then added my 10lt of wort.
Its in the fridge chilling now and i just gott get the hang of force carbing.

 

[anthonyUK]

I'm using the mobile version of Brewsmith but I guess the features are similar.
Select the recipe you want and select edit. From here there is an option to scale recipe size which I think will need a profile available to suit your equipment but there is a 2/3/4/5g mini BIAB profile.
I use this feature a lot for scaling US 5gal (19l) to 5Gal (23l)

 

[Black n Tan]

In Beersmith set up an equipment profile for your equipment then with your recipe open go to the home page and then chose scale recipe and chose you equipment. Then it will appropriately scale the recipe.

 

[shmang]

Click on the Scale Recipe icon,
Select your equipment profile (mini-BIAB in your case),
Under the heading "Old batch Size" tick the "Match original gravity, colour and bitterness" box,
Click OK,
It be the same recipe just smaller/ larger volumes than the original.

 

[flano]

I have done this recipe many times with great success.
In 19l pot and BIAB
This how I do it

2200 wey pils or trad pale malt
800 wey pale wheat
800 munich1
200 cara munich 1

mash in 66 for 60 mins approx. 13 litres
sparge with about 6 litres at 75 dgs ( I just use a little digital candy thermometer with a beeper ) .
I fill the pot with enough sparge water to fill the pot to about 2 inches from the top .

60 min boil.

60 mins 20 grams Amarillo
15 mins 15 grams Amarillo
10 mins 1/2 whirlfloc tablet
5 mins 15 grams Amarillo
YEAST = US-05 or that bry -amErican ale yeast . The latter seems to get the job done a bit quicker IMO.
dry hop 20 grams Amarillo just as the krausen started to pull back a bit...usually day 3 or 4.

easy peasy.

A few times I have also added a bit more amarillo ( 30 grams ) at the start and combined the dry hop with an extra 15 of Chinook as well..
Have also used 15 grams of galaxy with the Amarillo in the last two hop additions of the boil and another 15 with the Amarillo dry hop.

All turned out great

good luck.

 

[wombil]

Try Brewmate,It's free.
Box on the top has the batch size.Change this to whatever you want and all other amounts automatically scale to fit.

 

[NealK]

If you use the scale recipe button and select mini biab that should scale it to fit your equipment.
I have been trying to upload the file but can't work out how to attach it to this post.
Oh, I think I might have cracked it. I hope this works!

View attachment dsgaminibiab.bsmx

 

[of mice and gods]

+1 brewmate.. it's free and it scales automatically to any litre size you enter, or you can lock your ingredients.

Have you thought about maxi-biab? That's what I've been doing with my 19L big W pot. Make a stronger wort and add cooled boiled water in the fermenter just remember to set your batch size as the size you are hoping to achieve after adding extra water. It's pretty easy way to go about it, however I wasn't hitting my numbers so i upped the mash to 90 minutes.

 

[markau]

Hi all,

some really good info here, thank you!

It turns out I needed to click the 'adjust gravity', 'adjust bitterness' and 'adjust ABV' buttons, and that seems to have worked.

I am keen to do a maxi-BIAB .. didn't realise it was as easy as that (I'm sure there's a bit of guess work, but sounds totally do-able!).

Brewmate looks great, but I already bought Beersmith, and I don't mind for interchangeability of recipes.

Thanks again, looking forward to getting this batch on the boil!

 

[of mice and gods]

I'm sure people will tell you maxi-biab is a sin, but if you're like me and trying to getting into AG from kit and don't want the complete expense then it works pretty well.

The super non-scientific way is work out your grain bill (include a kg of DME in there unless you can mash in a bigger container).
- Fill your pot about 3/4 to 4/5 (for 4kg grain bill) and have a few litres of warm water on hand
- put in your bag and get to your strike temp (mine has been 71 degrees for a 66 degree mash).
- once strike temp reached take pot off heat.
- Dough in all your grains to your bag but not your DME. Mix it up and make sure there are no dough balls.
- top the pot up as full as you can get it (using either hot, warm or cold water to maintain your mash temp.
- tie up your bag while trying to keep it as loose around the grain as your fabric size allows (if you leave the bag over the outside of the pot your will lose wort to capilliary action. (obviously leave bag in the pot)
- put the lid on the pot with wrap with towels and blankets to insulate it and leave for 90 mins (I put mine on the carpet with a towel underneath it and throw a couple fo bean bags around it.. holds temp within 1 degree for 90mins)
- after 90 min mash, take out grain bag and drain over a bucket
- transfer pot of sweet wort to heat source and crank the temp.
- after the majority of flow has stopped from the bag, empty wort from bucket to the boiling pot
- put bag back in bucket and sparge with warm (70 degrees? someone?) water until the bucket can take no more.
- after a few minutes drain grain bag over bucket and add to boiling pot
- repeat this process until the pot is a couple of inches from the top.
- while achieving boil watch closely for boil-over. have on hand a spray bottle with water in it, adjust nozzle to heavy mist/shower. If the boil starts to errupt, squirt it with some water and bobs your uncle.
- once you hit boil temp, take the lid off, start your boil timer and do your thing
- 5 mins from flame out add your 1 kg of DME and stir in
- put the lid on and transfer pot to laundry tub full of cold water to chill.
- once in the tub, use a sterilized ladle to whirpool your pot to help settle out the trub
- once cooled close to desired temp carefuly (as not to disturb the trub) pour wort into fermenter.
- if your fermenter has Litre marking, just add water to desired mark (remembering the additional water will also change the wort temp).
- pitch yeast as desired temp and tada!

..that makes it sound difficult but it's a peice of piss. I've been mainly doing basic (3.7kgs of Pale with 300 grams of carapils for some maltiness, and 1kg LDME) single hop beers this way to get an understanding of hop characteristics.