Who invented BIAB?

[Screwtop]

Who invented it? Who cares and who will ever really know But Pat and others here definitely brought the technique to the masses and for that they deserve credit. I am sure the LHBS wouldn't be doing half the business if it weren't for BIABers.
Either way I would like to thank Pat and others for promoting the technique. If I hadn't found this forum years ago I would still be trying to refine a complicated 3v system and not concentrating on the important issues of getting my recipe right. It showed me a very cheep entry level into all grain brewing that I was looking for at the time and I havnt looked back (except for the odd experiment with a kit).

Here here! Who cares who invented the method, if it can indeed be attributed to one person!

When it comes to todays popularity of BIAB it is without doubt due largely to Pat's persistence and determination. While the method had it's fair share of "Nay Sayers" on this site, he persisted, results proving BIAB to be a valid method of brewing high quality all grain beer.

tasol

Screwy

 

[S.E]

Thanks for your reply Sean. I think this is the real key and is the point that Andrew was hoping to highlight.

Like so much of brewing terminology, the term, 'brew in a bag,' in hindsight, is quite ambiguous. While BIAB has a nice ring to it, a far better description would be something ridiculously long like, "Full volume mashing with a passive sparge in a single hard vessel". The key feature of the BIAB we originally intended is that the sparge is what can be regarded as a passive one - it is done at the same time as the mash and for this reason, only one vessel and one heat source is needed.

This leads on to...


Being able to remove two 'hard' vessels and one, sometimes two, heat sources as well as a pump or two gravity tiers is a major convenience of course. I think however you might be thinking that there is some sort of disadvantage in not doing an active sparge. One thing that many people believe is that not doing an active sparge will somehow lower your kettle efficiency. It doesn't. On simultaneous side by sides i identical kettles we have found no difference. Assuming time, temp, pH etc are the same, the key to kettle efficiency is actually how much water comes into contact with the grain rather than when it comes into contact.

The concept of an active sparge not being necessary can be a hard thing to come to grips with psychologically. In some ways it does not seem intuitive. For example, when we wash our clothes in the washing machine, the 100 litres or so that is used in the wash is split between a wash (mash) cycle and then several rinses (sparge) and spins (lauters). Why? Well, if all 100 litres were used at the start, the washing machine and its motor would need to be massive. In brewing, we have the same cycles except our spin cycle is nothing like the aggressive spin of a washing machine, it is just a slow drain. If your clothes washing machine just had a slow drain, your clothes (grain) will be cleaned just as well whether you add the water in one hit or in stages.

All this means that over the last few years, we've done a lot of work (stus did heaps) on creating formulas that auto-estimate your kettle efficiency for you. These work for both BIAB and traditional brewing. You can see this auto-efficiency formula working in the pre-release version of the BIABacus which also includes lots of other auto-estimates such as trub and evaporation to make things super easy. The file is only in a spreadsheet form but playing with it over a beer or two should enable you to see some of these interesting features working. (I think you still have to register to get that file but that only takes a sec.)

One final thing that might be worth noting is that there is a big diferene between the brewing technique of "no-sparging" and that of pure BIAB which is "passive sparging". The best way I have of explaining this is in this series of 'Sweet Liquor Shop' posts...

Sweet Liquor Shop 1
Sweet Liquor Shop 2
Sweet Liquor Shop 3

I think those three posts might help here a lot. Fingers crossed ,
Pat

[SIZE=12pt]Thanks for your enthusiastic and detailed reply Pat. It sounds like your method and the way I was brewing in the Electrim bin were almost identical with the exception that I lifted the bag and sparged or rinsed the grain with about 3 litres of warm water that had been heated in a saucepan on my kitchen hob. This nominal sparge didn’t present a problem for me as I was brewing in the Kitchen and already had a saucepan to hand.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]When I said “I am having trouble getting my head around what the advantage of not sparging is” I didn’t mean I was unsure how it would work, just why it would be better than not sparging or rinsing. On reflection though and as Lord Raja Goomba pointed out it would [/SIZE]minimise time and effort, especially if you weren’t brewing near a kitchen.

Cheers Sean

 

[dagryll]

I just noticed this thread kept going.... I should have realised biabylon would be elusive.... Thanks again, and thanks to Pistol Pat for showing up.

 

[mondestrunken]

Actually the earliest reference was found in ... Reflections of a God Fearing Man upon the brewing of a Shit-Hot IPA by the Grace of the Almighty (circa 1472) Wi

Without a doubt a classic of the brewing literature, and which is still surprisingly relevant today.