High Gravity BIAB

Hi, everyone! I would like to hear from those that have done BIAB brews with high OG. What have your experiences been, what are the challenges etc. Please weigh in! I really liked brewing RIS at least once a year in my partial match extract days, and am already plotting on doing so with my new BIAB setup. Thanks!

Just be prepared with the large mash volume, lower efficiency, and heavy bag and you'll be fine.

I did a barley wine og 1.105 biab. I Mashed two sets of grain. The second set was mashed in the wort from the first. It worked and the beer was good.

Urkelbot said:

I did a barley wine og 1.105 biab. I Mashed two sets of grain. The second set was mashed in the wort from the first. It worked and the beer was good.

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This didn't totally screw your pH all up?

Honestly if you have a pot and a bag that can handle the grain bill for your batch size, you should be just fine. Don't forget to pitch enough yeast.

pricelessbrewing said:

Just be prepared with the large mash volume, lower efficiency, and heavy bag and you'll be fine.

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I have a 20 gallon kettle and a very sturdy and ample sized brew bag. By low efficiency, are you saying high gravity BIAB brews tend to yield lower efficiency than moderate gravity?

PhinneyWoodBrews said:

I have a 20 gallon kettle and a very sturdy and ample sized brew bag. By low efficiency, are you saying high gravity BIAB brews tend to yield lower efficiency than moderate gravity?

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That's what most people observe in practice.

Brew on

There's no law that says you have to mash at full preboil water volume.

cannman said:

Honestly if you have a pot and a bag that can handle the grain bill for your batch size, you should be just fine. Don't forget to pitch enough yeast.

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Thanks for your input! I'll need a few more brews to dial in my expected efficiency, then I'll be able to calculate what volume I can do in my kettle. I've learned the hard way-through stalled fermentations-the importance of pitch rates on those high OG brews. Cheers!

Weezy said:

There's no law that says you have to mash at full preboil water volume.

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Indeed, there is no such law. Are you suggesting sparging, or that I can mash with a lower grist/water ratio than normal?

RE: "This didn't totally screw your pH all up?"

I recently tried splitting the mash, and it seems to have worked fine (I'm at the tail end of fermentation). The key on the pH balance is to split the grains in such a way that the pH isn't effected. You can check that with the Bru'n Water Calculator. I fiddled with different configurations and found what I could put in for each batch and still maintain the same pH. I measured each batch's pH, and they were off by only .1. Since I'm happy with anything between 5.2 and 5.6, though I aim for 5.3 to 5.5, this was well with my tolerances.

As long as your pot and bag are big enough, you should be fine. I do 5.5 gallon batches in a 9 gallon pot and sparge the bag in a bucket after mashing, and I'm stuck around 1.090 max without multiple mashes or lower batch size, but my 2-row here in China only offers about 1.031 potential gravity - I could make a bigger beer with more-expensive imported base malts like what most people in the Western world use.

For my current RIS, I actually used two bags for ease of removal/sparging/squeezing/draining - put the first bag in, mixed half my grainbill in, put the second bag in, mixed the rest of the grain. I had issues measuring the temp and couldn't stir the bottom half of the mash, but I still got over 80% efficiency, so the jury's out on whether it was worth it.

I do high gravity beers in a 9 gal kettle with a partial-volume mash, then ratchet out the grain bag and sparge the rest of the boil volume through the hanging bag, keeping a spray bottle handy for boilovers, of course.

Brew_Bro said:

I do high gravity beers in a 9 gal kettle with a partial-volume mash....

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Hi, and thanks for you input. What's the lowest you go on your water\grist ratio for these high gravity brews?

The thickest biab mash is still likely to be more than any traditional mash thickness, don't worry about it. Just sparge up to your preboil volume

I recently brewed a 1.080 holiday ale - 5.5 gal batch in a 9 gal BK. My bag sits in a fryer basket in the BK. I mashed about 15 lbs at 1.2 qts/lb, did an infusion mash out and then a sparge through the raised basket with the remainder for a 6.75 gal boil. I use my old 5 gal BK to hold the mashout and sparge water. My BK is a tall pot so my boiloff isn't too bad.

I normally get 80% efficiency on the nose. This one I got 75% so I just boiled a little longer. In general, I seem to lose about 2-3% efficiency for every 10 gravity points over 1060. Now that I've figured that out I just plan accordingly with more grain or a longer boil.

Four ideas -

1) Sparge
2) Boil longer to reduce volume more
3) add some extract at the end PM style
4) or don't bother and just use more grain

Thee are all the same solutions people have with high gravity beers with other mashing methods, BIAB is no different in this regard.

Depending on the style (e.g. Belgian) you could also add some corn sugar or candy sugar in the boil.

PhinneyWoodBrews said:

Hi, and thanks for you input. What's the lowest you go on your water\grist ratio for these high gravity brews?

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I can't say I've forded that deeply just yet as to come up with a definite ratio, as I've only been doing BIAB since June. What I've done thus far is just fill the kettle to about 5-5.5 gallons, put in my grain bill, see how my volume corrects, and then top off the water up to about an inch from overflow and bring it up to mash temp.

I neglected to mention that I've started bringing the temp up to boil while I'm sparging and the bag is draining into the pot, hence the somewhat out of context spray bottle comment.

I frequently do medium to high gravity BIABs (1.060-1.090 range) without any problem. I have a 10gal kettle and mash with 7gal mash water and then sparge after the mash to get up to my preboil volume (typically 9.5gal). This has always worked great for me and I typically get in the low 80% range for efficiency.


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I did a 16% RIS a couple years ago. About 3% of that was sugar additions during fermentation though. Same as others I split my 30lb grain bill between two mashes. Mashed the second in the first. Got 85% mash efficiency on the first and 60% on the second.

I just did an english Barlewine.. OG was 1.104.. i sampled gravity today (2 weeks later) and it was 1.027.. im hoping to get down to 1.024.. but anyway.. it wasnt really that difficult. I only did a 1.5 gallon batch though. I used a 4 gallon kettle.. 3 gallons of water and a 2 hour boil

My biggest issues are lower than expected efficiency combined with being forced to do small batches. I do split volume BiaB with a 5 gallon and a 6 gallon pot. Normally I mash with 60% volume in my 6 gallon and then transfer the grains to my 5 gallon pot with the rest of the volume for 15 minutes of steeping at 165-170F and then transfer everything in to my 6 gallon pot.

It increases my efficiency a bit over full volume in one pot and it also allows me to make 5 gallon batches of medium gravity beers without needing a much larger single pot to fit water and grains.

Downside is, I need a bigger pot(s) if I want to do something like a 5 gallon 1.1 OG beer or something.

The biggest I've ever made at reasonable volume is a Schafly Pumpkin Ale clone which ended up at around 1.091 OG (higher than I planned, but it is SOOOO tasty) with just shy of 4 gallons. I didn't have a whole lot of head space with everything steeping in both pots. Gravity shot high, but I wasn't including the effect of the pumpkin and butternut squash I added to the mash when I did my original calculations, which I think added 6-8 points of gravity (maybe more, it was 45 ounces of pumpkin and butternut squash in 4 gallons...).

The biggest beer I've ever made made was an oatmeal coffee RIS which ended up at 1.108 OG, but I only managed to brew a 2.5 G batch, this was back when I only had the single 6 gallon pot and not the other one. Only 62% efficiency on the thing (I had been shooting for 1.12OG).

A lot of my lower gravity beers (1.055 and under), I end up closer to 74-78% efficiency, my mediums (1.055-1.070) I tend to be in the 70-72% range and my heavies (>1.07) tend to be below 70% with worse numbers the higher I go.

Though I have exceptions. Darker beers tend to do better, probably due to more acidic mash water, than lighter (SRM) beers. Darker beers seem to get 2-3% better efficiency than my lighter beers (example, my first Pilsner that I just brewed at 1.054OG turned in only 76% efficiency, but a black wheat that was 1.058OG managed 80% efficiency and a belgian porter that was 1.065OG PRE-candi sugar addition ended up at 76% efficiency and a light Amber ale that was 1.062OG ended up at 70% efficiency).

RyeGuy said:

I did a 16% RIS a couple years ago. About 3% of that was sugar additions during fermentation though. Same as others I split my 30lb grain bill between two mashes. Mashed the second in the first. Got 85% mash efficiency on the first and 60% on the second.

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You know, that is an awesome idea I never considered for doing a super high gravity beer if I want a large volume, is to do two mashes.

I obviously don't want to just throw efficiency to the wind, but frankly I don't care that much if a brew costs $4-6 more in grain costs because of somewhat lower efficiency.

Heck, I do BiaB in part to save on equipment costs (and storage of it) and in part to save time over doing fly sparging without too much care that it might be costing me $2 more per batch because I am getting 2-4% lower efficiency than a good fly sparge. What's another few percent in the end on an occasionl brew?

I brewed a RIS with OG of 1.105. I have a 10 gallon kettle so I obviously didn't do a full volume mash. I did a double batch sparge and ended up with about 8 gallons pre-book and hit around 65% efficiency.

It's definitely doable, it just makes for a long day and that bag is heavy as hell!

I will probably have to try this. I've been itching to brew another RIS or maybe do a barley wine soon. I'd like to do a large batch, so I might have to try doing the double batch sparge dealie and see what it leaves me with. Probably going to shoot for something in the 1.11-1.12 range, but 4-4.5 gallons, which I am not going to be able to manage in my current pots.

Thanks for all who commented and shared their experience on this topic!
I brewed an imperial porter last weekend, 10g, aiming for 1.084 OG. Grain Bill was 34 lbs, mashed into 11 gallons of water for 60 minutes, temps were 153-155 for the duration. Stirred at 30 minutes and 45 minutes, turned the burner back on for the last ten minutes of the mash. I sparged with 2 gallons of 170f water after hoisting the bag out. Unfortunately, my bag developed a tear, probably due to contacting the thermometer probe in the kettle. And my brew friend just ditched the bag on the deck, rather than letting it drain into a bucket as I had planned. At any rate, pre-boil gravity came in at 1.066, lower than the expected gravity of 1.077 as predicted by beersmith(based off a efficiency of 70%). This was my first time using a new grain mill, so we had a somewhat inconsistent crush, as we fiddled with the gap settings. I know the water\grist ratio was really low for BIAB-about 1.3 quarts per lb, which probably contributed to the low efficiency, which came in at 56%. Added 3lb of DME to get to target gravity, ended up with just 9 gallons in the fermenter--looks like I need to recalculate my boil-off rate, too. Just wanted to share my experience, comments and input welcome! Thanks for all the advice, it's been a great help as I try to get my system and processes dialed in. Cheers!
Alex

I regularly make belgian style beers with OG 1.070-1.090 with BIAB, and have recently made an imperial stout with OG of 1.100. I've also failed to make my expected OG a number of times in the past attempting the same beers.

I've learned several things from HBT that have helped a lot
1) Crush your grain finer--I have had up to a 10% improvement in efficiency with the finer crush
2) Mash a larger volume and boil longer--this really helped a lot--in stead of planning my mash volume to leave me with 6.5 gallons (and a 1 hour boil), I've increased the mash volume to end up with 7.5 gallons.

Other option is to cheat: do you best BIAB, and add 1-2 pounds of light DME if you don't hit your numbers.

t

High gravity is nary a problem. The trade off is volume because of the large grain bill. I had to fill a 7 gal. bourbon barrel with an RIS. I just brewed 2 batches and blended them in the barrel after fermentation.

On thing that will definitely help is double-crushing your grain bill to improve efficiency. I use a no-sparge BIAB process with a 170F mash-out.

I just brewed Biermuncher's Black Pearl Porter and hit 1.080 no problem with an 85% brewhouse efficiency and had plenty of room to push a 5 gallon batch north of 1.095.

PhinneyWoodBrews said:

Thanks for all who commented and shared their experience on this topic!
I brewed an imperial porter last weekend, 10g, aiming for 1.084 OG. Grain Bill was 34 lbs...

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So I forgot to mention my ultraship 75 I had planned on using to measure grain was DOA, and we had to guesstimate the poundage of the 2-row out of a 50lb sack. I thought we would probably be off by a couple pounds, but my new scale(accutek shippro) confirmed we were WAY off. Only put it 15 lbs of 2-row instead of 25. Yikes. I blame my brew partner on that one. Adjusting the numbers, it turns out the efficiency was pretty good. 77%.

My volume to weight changes quite a bit depending on my gravity, but because I do a two step batch sparge with my 6 and 5 gallon pots, I am usually looking at between 1.1-1.5qt/lb for a "typical" gravity that I brew at (1.055-1.07 range are my typical beers).

Urkelbot said:

I did a barley wine og 1.105 biab. I Mashed two sets of grain. The second set was mashed in the wort from the first. It worked and the beer was good.

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Why have I never thought of doing this? :smack: