BjornJ
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- 15/2/09
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Some time ago there was a discussion on here about sparging when doing BIAB.
The consensus from several brewers was that sparging after mashing in a high volume of water was a waste of time, it had limited functionality.
Having some spare time on my hands, I wanted to try it out on my setup to see what the difference would be for me.
(you know what they say of idle hands..)
I BIAB and the last couple of beers I have not sparged, only raised the grain bag and let it drip into the urn before discarding the grains. Not even squeezing it.
I use 60% efficiency in beersmith when calculating the recipes and hit my target volumes and OG, or possibly get 2 gravity points too much.
On Sunday I brewed again, a 100% pilsner malt grain bill of 7 kg.
With 60% efficiency the OG was supposed to be 1.048.
The wort in the fermenter was OG 1.064, that's 79% efficency!!
(Volume was correct at 27 litres)
What I did differently:
Usually I mash for 60 mins, the add heat and stir for the 10 mins it takes to mash-out temp of 76-77 and hold for 5 mins before raising the bag. No squeezing, no sparging, just let it drip then discard the grains.
This time I mashed for 90 mins, then put the grain bag in my fermenter and added about 8 litres of water at 77 degrees. Tapped the water out through the tap and put it in the boil before doing a normal 60 min boil.
So two things are different:
1: 60 min mash + mash-out VS. 90 min mash with no mash-out.
2: No sparge VS. sparge
There clearly was lots of malt sugar in the sparge liquid I got out, from looking at it and tasting it.
So other BIAB'ers do you sparge or not?
What efficiency % do you use in beersmith/promash to accomodate your setup?
On another note, I will need to dilute this after fermentation I think,
Old Volume/New volume x OG = new OG
Old volume/New volume x IBU = new IBU, etc but with the higher OG the IBUs are not 36 as calculated at 1.048 but 32, so less IBUs to dilute as well, hmm..
thanks
Bjorn
The consensus from several brewers was that sparging after mashing in a high volume of water was a waste of time, it had limited functionality.
Having some spare time on my hands, I wanted to try it out on my setup to see what the difference would be for me.
(you know what they say of idle hands..)
I BIAB and the last couple of beers I have not sparged, only raised the grain bag and let it drip into the urn before discarding the grains. Not even squeezing it.
I use 60% efficiency in beersmith when calculating the recipes and hit my target volumes and OG, or possibly get 2 gravity points too much.
On Sunday I brewed again, a 100% pilsner malt grain bill of 7 kg.
With 60% efficiency the OG was supposed to be 1.048.
The wort in the fermenter was OG 1.064, that's 79% efficency!!
(Volume was correct at 27 litres)
What I did differently:
Usually I mash for 60 mins, the add heat and stir for the 10 mins it takes to mash-out temp of 76-77 and hold for 5 mins before raising the bag. No squeezing, no sparging, just let it drip then discard the grains.
This time I mashed for 90 mins, then put the grain bag in my fermenter and added about 8 litres of water at 77 degrees. Tapped the water out through the tap and put it in the boil before doing a normal 60 min boil.
So two things are different:
1: 60 min mash + mash-out VS. 90 min mash with no mash-out.
2: No sparge VS. sparge
There clearly was lots of malt sugar in the sparge liquid I got out, from looking at it and tasting it.
So other BIAB'ers do you sparge or not?
What efficiency % do you use in beersmith/promash to accomodate your setup?
On another note, I will need to dilute this after fermentation I think,
Old Volume/New volume x OG = new OG
Old volume/New volume x IBU = new IBU, etc but with the higher OG the IBUs are not 36 as calculated at 1.048 but 32, so less IBUs to dilute as well, hmm..
thanks
Bjorn