All Grain Experiment

I have every intention of getting proper equipment to do all grain soon but not right at this minute. However, with expected warm temps this weekend, I am debating a BIAB full boil AG experiment. I understand the BIAB process (I think) but still have one issue with my current equipment list: if I am doing a full boil, and do not have the benefit of adding a bunch of cold water to the wort afterwards, how do I cool it down fast enough without a wort chiller? How fast can you get the temp down to pitch levels with a water bath/swamp cooler? Am I looking for trouble by trying this before I go out spend the $ on a proper mash tun and wort chiller?

I have a propane burner and a 5 gallon pot. I am going to buy a larger pot this week (I'll need it eventually). I am planning to use a 5 gallon paint strainer (thoughts on that?) and other than that, the process doesn't look a whole lot different than the PM partial boil method I've used in the past.

Ridire said:

I have every intention of getting proper equipment to do all grain soon but not right at this minute. However, with expected warm temps this weekend, I am debating a BIAB full boil AG experiment. I understand the BIAB process (I think) but still have one issue with my current equipment list: if I am doing a full boil, and do not have the benefit of adding a bunch of cold water to the wort afterwards, how do I cool it down fast enough without a wort chiller? How fast can you get the temp down to pitch levels with a water bath/swamp cooler? Am I looking for trouble by trying this before I go out spend the $ on a proper mash tun and wort chiller?

I have a propane burner and a 5 gallon pot. I am going to buy a larger pot this week (I'll need it eventually). I am planning to use a 5 gallon paint strainer (thoughts on that?) and other than that, the process doesn't look a whole lot different than the PM partial boil method I've used in the past.

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Try this link below, works for me. EDIT sorry tried to post a link for you but it didn't work, go to articles (tab at top of page) and look for, Cooling Wort Fast Without A Chiller

HomeArticlesTechnical ArticleCooling Wort Fast Without A Chiller

Thanks. With BIAB, I assume I am following the same rules as with a mash tun, as far as water volume per grain weight, correct?

Ridire said:

Thanks. With BIAB, I assume I am following the same rules as with a mash tun, as far as water volume per grain weight, correct?

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Yes.

I use the 5 gal paint strainers, on large grain loads I use 3 of them, that way i can divide up the weight of the grain, clip them to the top edge of pot to keep them just off the bottom of my pot when adding a bit of heat to keep my mash temp right. (I use the big black office clips) not sure what they are called, Black about 1 1/2" wide with 2 chrome swiveling wire tabs to open the clip with. lol

When using a 5 gal pot you can't do a full volume mash, so what I use to do is a partial volume and top off with the cold water, with your new pot yes use it just like a mash tun, but if your temps drop you can always add a bit of heat as needed too.

A really simple BIAB is start off with full volume including your boil off water and grain absorption water, so lets say 7.5 gal + or - depending on your grain bill.

You can do BIAB so many different ways, you can dunk sparge with your old pot, I use 2 pots, 1 for my sparge (Big Pot) and the other for a 10 min @ 169 deg dunk sparge on most of my brews, then dump the sparge into the big pot and boil.

Hope this helps.

Cheers and good luck

Not usually.

Typically with BIAB you start with the full volume of water plus water for grain absorption and boil-off. If you are doing a 5 gal. batch that could be 8+ gallons to start.

With a 5 gallon pot, you can either do a 2-2.5 gallon batch in typical BIAB fashion, or you could mash with as much water as possible, sparge to bring the volume up to about 4 gallons, boil, then top off to bring it up to 5 in the fermenter. I would suggest the first option, especially since it's an experiment...much less prone to problems.

To be clear, I plan to have an 11-15 gallon pot by the time I do this. I thought too much water ratio to grain during mash is bad. I'm so confused

WileE - I am a desk jockey. I call those things Acco Binders.

Oh and be careful not to use to much dunk water in your 5 gal pot if you go this route, you don't want to over flow it the first time, like I did lol

Cheers

Ridire said:

WileE - I am a desk jockey. I call those things Acco Binders.

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Thanks, good to know.

Cheers

Ridire said:

To be clear, I plan to have an 11-15 gallon pot by the time I do this. I thought too much water ratio to grain during mash is bad. I'm so confused

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Thats a yes and no answer question, full volume BIAB is full volume, and it works great.

I have a 15 gal pot, (15 gal pot is a bit to big for this IMO) this is a very generic explanation, I start off with 5 gal of water in big pot, heat to about 10 deg above mash temp, add grains in 3 5 gal paint strainers, mash, then move grain bags to dunk pot with 2.5 gal in it @ 169 deg for 10 min, remove bags squeeze out liquid, add 2nd sparge to big boil pot and boil.

This all depends on your grain bill, all amounts of water change with the grain bill and recipe your using.

As far as doing a full BIAB and boil, if using 1 pot only start off with ALL water needed including grain absorption/boil off water included.

if doing a dunk sparge in another pot, then split your water up, like 5 gal in big pot and 2 to 3 gal in small pot, remember these amounts are just to show you something to get a rough idea, the water amounts will need to be tailored to your grain bill/recipe.

Im really not trying to confuse you here.

But like Euphist said, you can start off with 8+ gallons of water depending on your grain bill and doing BIAB with 1 pot.

I miss spoke when I said Yes to using standard sparge water amounts, sorry I type very slow and was trying to answer fast, my bad.

It works just fine, you will loose water to the grain and in the boil, so you will end up with 5 to 5.5 gal of wort.

Cheers

Do you have BeerSmith? or access to a brewing program? this will tell you how much water to add when doing BIAB, this will make your brewing so much simpler when doing All-Grain batches.

It figures your water amounts for you even if you change your grain bill by adding a specialty grain or two.

Cheers

Was planning to get Beersmith. Maybe now is the time to do it. I guess my real question is - with BIAB do I throw out the 1.5 quart/ 1 pound of grain mash ratio I have used in my PM brews?

Here is what my thought was on water volumes, using a hypothetical grain bill of 10 lbs to make things easy.

1. heat roughly 3.75 gallons of water to 160-ish and kill the heat. This is 1.5 quarts X 10 lbs. = 15 quarts, or 3.75 gallons.

2. Place bag in pot and dump all 10 lbs. of grain in the bag and let it stand for 45-60 minutes (adding heat if needed to keep between 150-155 degrees).

3. Heat another 3 - 3.5 gallons of water to 170 degrees while the grains are mashing (water volume dependent on calculated loss for boil and grain to get 5 - 5.5 at end of boil)

4. After 45-60 minute mash, sparge the grains with the 170 degree water.

5. Boil all water for 60 minutes with hops at scheduled intervals.

Voila...beer.

Am I going about this wrong?

EDIT: other than my "voila" was premature because I didn't pitch the yeast...

I'm not sure that there is a wrong way to do BIAB. As long as you have your crushed or ground grains in sufficient water to wet them thoroughly at the correct temperature for enough time for the starches to convert you have it right. You can no-sparge, sparge, mashout, or no mashout, its a wide open area. You don't even have to use hot water to sparge and still make great beer.

I start out with about 6 1/2 gallons of water in my 7 1/2 gallon turkey fryer, bring it to strike temp, and stir in the grains. Put the lid on, insulate it and walk away for 30 to 90 minutes. If your crush or grind is fine enough, the conversion will be done in less than 30 minutes. A poor crush will benefit from a longer mash.
When the mash time is over I pull the bag, let it drain a bit, then transfer it to a bowl with a colander inside so I can continue to drain it and squeeze out the wort. I dump the bowl frequently. I also have the heat on under the wort collected so the majority of my wort will be at mashout temp quickly. Once I have squeezed out all the wort I can, I use cold water to add to the grains, mix it up a bit and squeeze it out again. If I have my pre-boil volume I want, that's it. Otherwise I add a little more water to the grain and squeeze it out again. With my grains ground fine I tend to get 85% or more efficiency with that method.

RM-MN said:

I'm not sure that there is a wrong way to do BIAB. As long as you have your crushed or ground grains in sufficient water to wet them thoroughly at the correct temperature for enough time for the starches to convert you have it right. You can no-sparge, sparge, mashout, or no mashout, its a wide open area. You don't even have to use hot water to sparge and still make great beer.

I start out with about 6 1/2 gallons of water in my 7 1/2 gallon turkey fryer, bring it to strike temp, and stir in the grains. Put the lid on, insulate it and walk away for 30 to 90 minutes. If your crush or grind is fine enough, the conversion will be done in less than 30 minutes. A poor crush will benefit from a longer mash.
When the mash time is over I pull the bag, let it drain a bit, then transfer it to a bowl with a colander inside so I can continue to drain it and squeeze out the wort. I dump the bowl frequently. I also have the heat on under the wort collected so the majority of my wort will be at mashout temp quickly. Once I have squeezed out all the wort I can, I use cold water to add to the grains, mix it up a bit and squeeze it out again. If I have my pre-boil volume I want, that's it. Otherwise I add a little more water to the grain and squeeze it out again. With my grains ground fine I tend to get 85% or more efficiency with that method.

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Thanks a ton. You are doing 5 gallon batches in that 7.3 gallon turkey fryer pot? I have one of those, too. Maybe I'll try that the first time. I'll add as much water as I can to the mash without the grain displacing it onto the floor and then add water after the mash to get to 6 gallons +/- and then boil away.

EDIT: but if this is a good way to do it, then why is there so much emphasis on water to grain ratios when using a mash tun?

When you mash in a tun you need enough water to get all the grains wet to do the conversion but since you are depending on just gravity to extract the sugary wort you can't drain all the wort out. For that you need to have a sparge step that has sufficient water to contain the dissolved sugars.

With BIAB, if the wort won't come out on its own (it won't) you squeeze it out. Can't do that with a conventional tun, it would plug up for sure. To get most of the sugars out that requires a sparge or 2. That means you need to add more water so you start with your 1.25 to 1.5 quarts per pound so you can have a large enough quantity to do a good sparge.

The original BIAB was to put in all the water and forget about a sparge. That still works and when I have done it I can get about 80% efficiency but my turkey fryer is a little small and for a 1.060 gravity beer my turkey fryer pot is right to the rim when I get the grains mashed in. I decided that using a little less water made sense so I don't spill over but then I need a little more water to get the pre-boil. I could just pour water into the pot but why leave the sugars in the bag of grain? The yeast would like them and I like the amount of alcohol I get for a given amount of grain.

Ridire said:

Was planning to get Beersmith. Maybe now is the time to do it. I guess my real question is - with BIAB do I throw out the 1.5 quart/ 1 pound of grain mash ratio I have used in my PM brews?

Here is what my thought was on water volumes, using a hypothetical grain bill of 10 lbs to make things easy.

1. heat roughly 3.75 gallons of water to 160-ish and kill the heat. This is 1.5 quarts X 10 lbs. = 15 quarts, or 3.75 gallons.

2. Place bag in pot and dump all 10 lbs. of grain in the bag and let it stand for 45-60 minutes (adding heat if needed to keep between 150-155 degrees).

3. Heat another 3 - 3.5 gallons of water to 170 degrees while the grains are mashing (water volume dependent on calculated loss for boil and grain to get 5 - 5.5 at end of boil)

4. After 45-60 minute mash, sparge the grains with the 170 degree water.

5. Boil all water for 60 minutes with hops at scheduled intervals.

Voila...beer.

Am I going about this wrong?

EDIT: other than my "voila" was premature because I didn't pitch the yeast...

Click to expand...

That works for me lol, looks like you got it, like i said their are lots of ways to BIAB.

I have found that more water (4 to 5 gal) during mashing makes it easy'r to stir the grains in the bag, your milage may vary lol

Cheers

RM-MN said:

When you mash in a tun you need enough water to get all the grains wet to do the conversion but since you are depending on just gravity to extract the sugary wort you can't drain all the wort out. For that you need to have a sparge step that has sufficient water to contain the dissolved sugars.

With BIAB, if the wort won't come out on its own (it won't) you squeeze it out. Can't do that with a conventional tun, it would plug up for sure. To get most of the sugars out that requires a sparge or 2. That means you need to add more water so you start with your 1.25 to 1.5 quarts per pound so you can have a large enough quantity to do a good sparge.

The original BIAB was to put in all the water and forget about a sparge. That still works and when I have done it I can get about 80% efficiency but my turkey fryer is a little small and for a 1.060 gravity beer my turkey fryer pot is right to the rim when I get the grains mashed in. I decided that using a little less water made sense so I don't spill over but then I need a little more water to get the pre-boil. I could just pour water into the pot but why leave the sugars in the bag of grain? The yeast would like them and I like the amount of alcohol I get for a given amount of grain.

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That is basically the conclusion I have arrived at this afternoon. Turkey fryer is roughly 7.15 gallons. I bought Beersmith about an hour ago and used it to convert a planned PM to all grain. Problem being that my mash volume came out to 7.14 gallons...a little tight. I am now thinking I'll leave it about 2-3 gallons short and use that as a sparge.

Thanks RM-MN for the great explanation, I have not used a mash tun so I wasn't sure why the volumes are different, I just knew what I do that works for me, doing BIAB's, I also wish that I could explain things better when typing.

Cheers

Ridire said:

That is basically the conclusion I have arrived at this afternoon. Turkey fryer is roughly 7.15 gallons. I bought Beersmith about an hour ago and used it to convert a planned PM to all grain. Problem being that my mash volume came out to 7.14 gallons...a little tight. I am now thinking I'll leave it about 2-3 gallons short and use that as a sparge.

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Thats the great thing about BIAB, you can adjust what you need (water/sparge/no sparge), to fit your needs for that brewing day, even if your somewhere else using someone else's equipment.

I think you made a great choice getting BeerSmith, it helps me on every brew, don't forget to setup your brew pot size in BeerSmith, that is important, from what I have read.

You'll do great with BIAB.

Cheers

RM-MN, was your turkey fryer ever used as a turkey fryer? I just pulled mine out and it has some serious cooked on grease. Probably the worst thing to get in your beer, right? Not sure if I can get this cleaned to a point where I'll trust it to brew. It's soaking in dawn dish soap right now (after having been scrubbed with baking soda).

Ridire said:

RM-MN, was your turkey fryer ever used as a turkey fryer? I just pulled mine out and it has some serious cooked on grease. Probably the worst thing to get in your beer, right? Not sure if I can get this cleaned to a point where I'll trust it to brew. It's soaking in dawn dish soap right now (after having been scrubbed with baking soda).

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No, my fryer was bought just for brewing. While the grease might seem like the worst thing, the dawn dish soap might be a close second. When you get the grease off, make sure to do multiple rinses. Any soap residue will kill the head on your beer. It's bad when it happens to one of your glasses but that turkey fryer could affect the entire batch. BTDT:rockin:

Yeah, I understand the issue about dish soap but it seems the lesser of the evils here. I plan to boil a full pot of water at least a day prior to brew...if I get to a point where I'm willing to use this pot. Maybe I'll buy the 44 quart pot I originally intended to use...really wanted to save the $120 but I'm not so cheap or broke that I'll ruin my first AG over $100+/-

If you are willing to back down from that 44 qt to a 40 qt and willing to use an aluminum pot, Amazon has some that are way cheaper than that $120 and they will ship them right to your door.

Ridire said:

RM-MN, was your turkey fryer ever used as a turkey fryer? I just pulled mine out and it has some serious cooked on grease. Probably the worst thing to get in your beer, right? Not sure if I can get this cleaned to a point where I'll trust it to brew. It's soaking in dawn dish soap right now (after having been scrubbed with baking soda).

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Hello, I would try soaking it in Oxiclean, then rinse, rinse, rinse again with as hot of water you can get.

Just my 2 cents

Cheers