Using An Urn For Brew In A Bag - Tutorial

[under]

I never used to do a sparge with my BIAB, never had an issue with efficiency, but the last two batches I did just out interest. Put 2 litres less water into the mash, then poured 2 litres out of my kitchen kettle over the grains that was sitting in an empty bucket. I was suprised how much sweet wort was extracted came out of the bag when I squeezed it the second time!

Again, it could have been a complete waste of time and acheived nothing for my efficiency, but it does get a fair whack of trapped sugars out of the spent grain.




YES!

There's a spreadsheet that PistolPatch gave me that gives me the exact quantity of water to use. If you use a urn I cant recommend it highly enough!

I have a 50L converted keg. And im also baffled on how much water to use per recipe.

 

[Phoney]

I have a 50L converted keg. And im also baffled on how much water to use per recipe.

Here you go. You change the figures in red based on your recipe and your equipment... The figures in there at the moment are set to my 40L urn and Dr Smurto's Landlord ale.

View attachment Equipment_Set_Up_Volumes.xls

 

[under]

Here you go. You change the figures in red based on your recipe and your equipment... The figures in there at the moment are set to my 40L urn and Dr Smurto's Landlord ale.

View attachment 33367

Thanks mate. Is this from the original BIAB topic Here

Im assuming this is for straight sided kettles i.e urn. Not a keg??

 

[geoff_tewierik]

"wouldn't it be great if they made a 50L urn"

Got a 45L one that I don't use at the moment. Need a sparky to wire me up a 15 amp socket, as the urn runs a 3K+watt element on a 15 amp plug.

 

[RdeVjun]

I don't know if anyone is having luck with this method, maybe RdeVuyn would have some comments as he's a small batch guy.

Dunno if that's a compliment or not??!! :lol: But Thirsty, I'm seriously blushing and there's no need for that!! Buggered if I can find the post either... I guess its about time to pop a link in the sig block. When I find it... maybe this one?

Anyway, NickJD's the guy for small stock BIAB batches although today he's upping the ante with a high- gravity boil. I've basically been doing what he's shown us this evening, and as I've been doing it for a while now, can safely say the smaller vessel need not be an impediment to filling a fermenter. 3/4 fill the vessel with water, mash whatever the grain bill is (if there's not enough room then reduce water volume), lift & drain, dunk sparge+mashout with enough to fill the vessel. Redunk with a few more litres aiming for a similar mashout temp, add this to top up the vessel during the boil. Should get high- 70s efficiency, if not better. Dilute at pitching, no matter how you chill, although I've heard that dilution after fermentation might be worth a whirl too, some might consider that sacrilege though.
Additional Water Volume = Actual SG / Target SG * Actual Volume - Actual Volume
(A fairly rough calc, Nb. SG 1.045 expressed as 45, 1.072 as 72 etc.)

Again, I'd have to second what Thirsty and others say, that the sort of farting about I go through for this process is not for novice BIABers, please do the no- sparge version until familiar with the equipment. After that, everything should become fairly obvious and things like sparging and dilution should be a simple enough process.

Edit: Spleeing.

 

[thanme]

I'll add that to my reading list
It's good to know what I can possibly pull of with my current equipment. I think for my first go, I'm going to go for a smaller batch size, just to make life a bit easier. No doubt I'll report back when I'm done, and have another plethora of questions on how to move forward

 

[gone brewing]

Does any one have any success stories with BIAB in a 30L urn?? I want to move to BIAB, and have a 30L urn and want to give it a go before forking out for something bigger and better.
I read Thirsty Boys guide and it seems pretty straight forward.

I think your 30L urn is fine for making single batches around 20-22L. I have done 4 all grain batches by the BIAB method with my 30L urn and you are right, it is quite a straightforward process.

As a rough guide, you could think about using around 19L of water with 4.5kg of grain (4:1 ratio) for the mash. Too much more than this and you might spill some wort when you lift the bag or mix the mash. I then do a batch sparge in a 19L stockpot using about 8L of water. That gets me about 23L of wort at the start of the boil. I could do another sparge but I don't see the need as the mash efficiency is already good enough.

Towards the end of the boil, I add some boiling water to have about 23L in the urn at the end of boil. I lose some of this to trub and end up with about 20L in the no-chill cube. I can then add a bit more water in the fermenter if I need to adjust the SG/volume.

Not saying that all this is the best way to do it but it works for me and might be a starting point for you if you aren't sure where to begin.

I should add that for my first couple of batches I didn't have the bag sewn. It was just a huge sheet of voile shoved in the urn, so don't let that stop you.

 

[under]

A really informative post yet again, Thirsty! I had wondered about lifting, draining and then adding near- boiling water for sparge + mashout and what effect that might have on enzymes. It sounds like it is better to gradually raise the temperature of the mash rather than dumping a heap of heat in there with at least some portions of it being overheated and probably reducing or destroying their activity. I might get that round cake cooling rack out again and slip it under the bag so I can just apply some heat.

Many thanks indeed for clearing all that up! :icon_cheers:

Edit: Clarity.

Actually sounds like a good idea. Im thinking -

- Upon completion of mash, raise bag, until out of wort.
- Place a large cake cooling rack inside vessle on the bottom. Lower bag into wort.
- Turn on heat, raise to mashout temp, pull out bag, drain, squeeze etc.

This way im getting a quick sparge before adding heat, and a sparge after mashout.

Sound ok??

 

[Phoney]

Why not put the cake cooling rack inside the vessel on the bottom before fitting the bag to begin with? ie: before the mash. That way you only need to lift the bag out once.... As TB mentioned, you dont even really need a sparge, let alone two.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

A cake rack into your BIAB kettle.. well I never

sorry guys - its another one of those coming full circle things. Cake racks in BIAB vessels were one of the things that were thought to be "probably necessary" when the method was first being developed.

If you have either a hidden element urn (ie the Crown Urns) or a normal pot on a gas burner, then you don't need a cake rack - just stir whenever you have the heat on, thats is enough. If you have an exposed element urn or a fixed element in a pot... then you "might" get away with it not being sheilded - but its probably a bit risky. So... an upside down collander seems to be the weapon of choice for urn brewers. I'm sure something similar can be dreamed up for any given situation.

 

[under]

I made something up today thats pretty bloody good. Ill post my pics of my completed setup (finished today) tomorrow.

 

[bullsneck]

Hey all

I was after the excel spreadsheet which helped you ascertain boil volumes and starting volumes for BIABing.

I did have it, but computer troubles have rendered it missing. I tried the search function to no avail.

Thanks!!

Edit - Found it!

 

[Cocko]

Hey all

I was after the excel spreadsheet which helped you ascertain boil volumes and starting volumes for BIABing.

I did have it, but computer troubles have rendered it missing. I tried the search function to no avail.

Thanks!!

Hey Bullsneck,

Why not learn the math yourself?

So:

Grain in a BIAB mash ratio will suck up a couple of degree or 3... depending on vessel. So heat your water to 69 or so if you wanna mash a around 66!

Then the the grain will SOAK up about a litre a kilo of water added - loss.

Kettle loss 1-2L.

SO,


eg: using 5 kg of grain and want 23 into fermenter..

Assuming urn can handle it...

37L into urn.

Heat to 69 degress.

Put in bag, then grain and stir.

Temp should be around 66.

Maintain for an hour.

Pull bag out = Loss of 1L per kilo [If you drain, or go 1.5L if you dont] SO

37 - 5 =32 L in urn. [Pre boil]

Allow for up to 15% loss during boil, might not be that bad but calculate it as that figure until you know your rig.

SO, post boil is 32 - 15% = 27 odd L's.

Take 1-2 L kettle loss = 25L

Then cooling loss and trub etc..... I reckon that would put 23L or so into bottles!

OR someone may have posted the spread sheet by now and all this is arabic jargon!

Either way, brew beer!


:icon_cheers:

Bribie, am I wrong here? Sorry if so, have only ever BIAB'ed n a 50L vessel....

 

[leiothrix]

I have a 40L crown urn. For a 23L batch:
~5kg grain
~33L water

After mashing & draining the bag for a bit and giving it a good squeeze i have 30L

After a 90 minute boil there is 25L

2L lost to trub, deadspace, etc, so 23L into fermenter.

My urn has the boil-dry protection removed so it does a constant boil. If you haven't done this the boil turns on and off, so you'd get less evaporation.

I also have a pickup tube on the tap so that gets more wort out of the urn.

HTH,
Rob.

 

[under]

Here you go. You change the figures in red based on your recipe and your equipment... The figures in there at the moment are set to my 40L urn and Dr Smurto's Landlord ale.

View attachment 33367

Here is the setup sheet

 

[bcp]

"Any disadvantages of doing BIAB in a 40 litre pot in general also apply to urns, for example a 25 litre brew of extremely strong beer such as a Russian Imperial Stout would not be a serious candidate for this style of brewing"

Ok, so why? I looked at a recipe for Russian Imperial Stout and can't see what the problem is? I'm thinking about going the urn route so what else would be difficult to do?

 

[Thirsty Boy]

your problem with a BIG beer, is just that you will have more trouble fitting everything in the pot at once. A 40L urn is getting pretty full when you do a reasonably strong 23L batch... when you do a very strong one it is overfull. In most cases, the need to reserve some water for a sparge or top up addition is optional... with a big beer like an RIS, you will find it is necessary.

So there is no absolute reason you cant do an RIS in a 40L urn as a BIAB - but you will be required to use an "alternate" strategy. You will need to sparge quite a lot or do a re-iterated mash or other variations on the basic method like that. If you have the equipment to do it... no problems, if you don't it presents a problem.

You will probably find that you get distinctly less efficiency than normal too - all brewing methods tend to get lower efficiency when they have big grain bills, batch sparging is worse than fly sparging, BIAB is worse than batch sparging. Basically the less thoroughly your sparge, the worse it is - and all the the variations of BIAB have less intensive sparging regimes than other methods, so suffer a bit more drastically when the OG goes up.

This is a pretty stock standard brewing issue - lots of brewers have faced the "my mash tun isn't big enough to do a barleywine/RIS/IIPA" problem - you can get around it most of the time, its just a matter of it being a PITA. If you brew a lot of stronger ales, then your life will be stacks easier if you buy a mashtun or BIAB pot that is appropriately big.

TB

 

[Bribie G]

Yes it's an urn thing, not a BIAB thing. I was talking to Pistol Patch a few weeks ago and we both agreed it would be wonderful if Birko made a 50 litre urn.

 

[malbur]

Yes it's an urn thing, not a BIAB thing. I was talking to Pistol Patch a few weeks ago and we both agreed it would be wonderful if Birko made a 50 litre urn.

My urn is a 45 litre Aus made Woodson urn.
getting closer to 50L, not sure if there available anymore

 

[Bribie G]

My urn is a 45 litre Aus made Woodson urn.
getting closer to 50L, not sure if there available anymore

Never heard of them, however I see they are still in business and make urns but largest is 30L nowadays Hang on to yours Malbur, you have the king of urns for BIAB

One thing that I'm sure many would frown upon, but is fortuitous in my own case, is that my two mainstream styles are UK Real Ales and Aussie / International style lagers, both of which I use some sugaz with as part of the style. So a bit of sugar can remedy a million efficiency problems.

Of course I wouldn't dream of doing so with a Bohemian Pilsener or a German of any description.