bob3000

Recipes 

I'm sure this topic has been well covered but I did my first AG yesterday and I want to check the method I used made sense.
The part that I'm still not too sure about is sparging. I have minimal equipment so I looked around and came up with a method that seemed right for me.

Here's what I did:

Beglian Farmhouse Ale

15 litre batch

2500g larger Malt 75%
500g wheat malt 15%
300g sugar 10%

For a mash tun I used a 5 gal cooler with a fine mesh bag inside.

Mash in 8 litres at 65c for 75mins
Mash out 5 litres at 75c for 10mins

Then I poured off all the wort into another vessel. I then added all my sparge water (another 8 litres at 75c) and let it sit in the mash tun for 10mins before mixing that with the rest of the wort.

I got a gravity of 1.030 before boil and 1.050 OG. Bang on what beer smith said.
Tasted wort today and it has strong taste of cooked corn and is a little astringent.

here's my questions:
Is this a good way to sparge or should i just use the "no sparge" method or should i split it into two stages like a batch sparge?
Should i bother with the Mash out?
Beer Smith said to hit mash out temp i should add water that is 93 c this seemed high, what happens if your water is too hot?

Anyway hope thats not too much for one post. As an anxious AG newbie any help in refining my proccess would be much appreciated.

Mysticmead

Recipes 

how long was the boil? did you boil with a lid on the kettle? cooked corn sounds like a DMS problem.

bob3000

Recipes 

Boiled for 60mins i did leave the lid on until i reached a boil (It took a while)

Mysticmead

Recipes 

with lager malt (or pilsner malt) boil it for 90 minutes to drive off the DMS.

I say ferment it out and see what the finished product is like.. will probably be very different from how it stasrted.

Mysticmead

Recipes 

not sure why you are bothering with the mesh bag.. BIAB is normally done in the brew kettle. If you replace the mesh bag with a manifold or bazooka tube (or similar) you'd have a traditional MLT

bob3000

Recipes 

Cheaper and easier. I didn't see any reason why it wouldn't work. I might make my self a manifold in time if i feel I need to.

bob3000

Recipes 

Ah. Well you live and learn. hopefully it will sort its self out with some time cold conditioning.

I need to get a proper boiler built. Is there any reason that i can't suspend a heat stick into my cooler and use that as a boiler as well as a mash tun?

Reelale

Recipes 

IIRC, BIAB is traditionally done as a no-sparge. 93 c (199 F) sounds a little hot to hit 168 or so mash-out, but I see you only used 5L, which seems correct. I no-sparge, and do not mash-out. IMO, it's not necessary when doing no-sparge as I am not doing a prolonged sparge sequence. In other words, the time from run-off to boiling is minimal. I'm already heating to boil as the MLT is draining into the BK. The same would hold true with no-sparge BIAB. I think you'll run less risk of water pH and temperature problems if you BIAB the traditional way. But, you've made beer! It's probably going to turn out fine, in the end.