Lessons (re)learned yesterday...

Posted Sep 23rd 2011 | By:

Erroneous

Thinking about it, I know 3 factors to my super low efficiency of 40% yesterday. 1) Did not sparge BIAB. I know people say they don't and get good eff but every time I don't it drops a good amount. And I squeeze. 2) ALWAYS check the pH. I didn't, so now I'm not sure it was low enough. All I had was 2 row and crystal 120. Dunno if the crystal would lower the pH enough. 3) make sure the bag for BIAB is at least as wide as the pot OR at least use a higher water/grain ratio. I added 20 qts to 15 lbs (1.3) which normally would be fine, but my bag was really just too small for that amount of grain in that large of a pot. Next week for my belgian dubbel I'm going to do 2 half amount mashes and sparge it. Doing the half batches will let me use my smaller pots and also save a bit on propane.

Posted in

personal

4 COMMENTS

Leave Comment

Justibone

Posted:

October 1, 2011 • 04:28 PM

I don't know about those people who don't sparge their BIAB. Are they mashing with extra water? Or are they partial-mashing?

What kind of water do you use? The 2-row should have dropped the pH enough on its own, right? Hmm...

Erroneous

Posted:

October 3, 2011 • 05:28 PM

IDK the exact method the no sparge BIABers do but from here on I'm sparging. As for the water I used Crystal Springs bottled water from Home Depot. Not sure if the pH was even a problem since silly me didn't check it. I'm brewing
again today using my old BIAB method of 2 mini BIAB batches and then I'm going to boil them together.