Sparging for BIAB

So I have decided to try a BIAB all grain brew for the first time using a fryer basket. I have done partial mash recipes using BIAB and the first one I used 170 degree water to sparge (up to pre boil volume) and the second brew I used roughly one and a half times the amount of water I mashed with to sparge, still at 170.
So I have been seeing that most BIAB guys just squeeze, strain, or drain.
It seems to me that you would have better efficiency sparging, is this false? Would your efficiency be better, worse, or stay the same if you rinsed the grains by sparging vs. just letting it drain?

I don't have a lot of experience, but I'd think rinsing/sparging would increase the efficiency slightly. How much, I'm not sure.

I do a rise sparge when using the BIAB technique, and then squeeze. I don't think they're mutually exclusive.

Whether or not the extra efficiency is worth the extra steps in doing the sparge is something that I think is up to the individual brewer.

I think dunk sparging worked pretty well with BIAB

I just did my first biab all grain. 1 gallon. I did a rinse sparge. I put the bag over the pot on a cooling grate and rinse with 160 deg F water. I don't have a hydrometer yet but the last of the water I poured over came out clear. I'll do it this way for a while if my beer turned out good

The point of BIAB is that you don't have to sparge to get great efficiency but you can get even better efficiency by a simple sparge. It doesn't even have to be hot water to gain efficiency as the grain is hot already and just pouring some cold water in will heat the water and dissolve more of the sugars that are in the bag of grain. I expect an additional 5% or more efficiency by just a small sparge with cold water.

I always sparge and I believe it does increase my efficiency. I know biab is traditionally no sparge and I have done a couple brews without sparging but it seemed logical to me that rinsing the grains would increase efficiency and it has.

RM-MN said:

The point of BIAB is that you don't have to sparge to get great efficiency but you can get even better efficiency by a simple sparge. It doesn't even have to be hot water to gain efficiency as the grain is hot already and just pouring some cold water in will heat the water and dissolve more of the sugars that are in the bag of grain. I expect an additional 5% or more efficiency by just a small sparge with cold water.

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I do a simple sparge as part of my BIAB process.

1. Lift grain bag from mash
2. place metal grate (an old oven rack) on top of mash tun/kettle
3. pour pre-determined amount of room temp water through bag
4. Squeeze the heck out of the bag by simply pressing it down against the oven grate
5. start boil

I use a spreadsheet to pre-calculate strike water temps and volumes. Part of that calculation is to factor in sparge volume. It's usually about 20% of the total volume needed, give or take. I don't heat the sparge water.

When I first started BIAB, I did all of the above, just didn't pour water over the bag. My efficiency has gone up a measurable amount since adding the sparge step.

Thanks for all the input guys. Seems like either way will work and give you good beer. I think I will take the little extra time to do a sparge, mostly because I do eventually want to move to a three tier system so I could use the practice

I did my first PM BIAB the other day. I mashed for an hour in my strike water, then moved the bag into a seperate pot with 2 gal of water to rinse. Then I combined the two pots into my brew kettle. This worked out great! I was spot on with my estimated OG.

BansheeRider said:

I did my first PM BIAB the other day. I mashed for an hour in my strike water, then moved the bag into a seperate pot with 2 gal of water to rinse. Then I combined the two pots into my brew kettle. This worked out great! I was spot on with my estimated OG.

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Sounds similar to my process. 1 hour mash, brief drain and squeeze over kettle, 15 min. dunk sparge in 2nd kettle at mash out temps while heating brew kettle, drain and squeeze over sparge kettle, combine runnings, stir and pull gravity sample.

I used to double crush at the LHBS but they forbid double crushing now I was routinely hitting 80ish% with the double crush. Get about 75ish with regular crush.

Just got a corona mill and assembled an ugly junk homer bucket mill station. So we'll see if I can get back into the 80s with my own crush.

Yeah I get all my grain pre crushed for me right now as soon as my brewery grows ill probably get a mill. Im really hoping that all grain brews will taste better. So far I have done all extract brews. ( with the exception of my partial mash speckled heifer thats currently fermenting) and they taste okay but it always feels/ tastes like there is something missing.
My first all grain BIAB is gonna be the Belgian IPA kit from northern brewer, which sounds tasty.

J187 said:

I think dunk sparging worked pretty well with BIAB

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BansheeRider said:

I did my first PM BIAB the other day. I mashed for an hour in my strike water, then moved the bag into a seperate pot with 2 gal of water to rinse. Then I combined the two pots into my brew kettle. This worked out great! I was spot on with my estimated OG.

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Yup, this is a dunk sparge. Works awesome for BIAB!

Dylan42 said:

Yeah I get all my grain pre crushed for me right now as soon as my brewery grows ill probably get a mill. Im really hoping that all grain brews will taste better. So far I have done all extract brews. ( with the exception of my partial mash speckled heifer thats currently fermenting) and they taste okay but it always feels/ tastes like there is something missing.
My first all grain BIAB is gonna be the Belgian IPA kit from northern brewer, which sounds tasty.

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I know we are all different, but if this were me, I'd want to perfect my extract brews before moving on, rather than trying a more advanced approach to fix a void somewhere. AG makes better beer, but it's not this way:

Extract makes mediocre beers and ag makes great beers.

It's more like:

Extract makes great beers, AG makes slightly greater beers with more control and is more fun for most people.

What I am saying is basically, if you aren't happy with your extract brews, you might be better served by figuring out what's missing and fixing it. Get to where you make great extract beer and then try the next step. Just my 2 cents.

Ive found I get better efficiency with a sparge than just a dunk Sparge (71% vs 65%). But that's just me.

I'm kind of annoyed at the guy who talked me into dunk sparging but that's another story. He meant well.

I'm a little torn on one of the thing that some of you are advising. I was told by a 30 year home brewer and chemist, that squeezing the grain bag releases tannin (check out wiki for some good info) from the grain hulls that make the beer taste more bitter than you may want. I would also recommend to lower your water temp to closer to 160. 10 degrees can make a huge differance.

T_rigger said:

I'm a little torn on one of the thing that some of you are advising. I was told by a 30 year home brewer and chemist, that squeezing the grain bag releases tannin (check out wiki for some good info) from the grain hulls that make the beer taste more bitter than you may want. I would also recommend to lower your water temp to closer to 160. 10 degrees can make a huge differance.

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Tannins are released with a combination of high pH (above 6.0) and high temperatures (above 170 F). If you have a good pH for mashing (5.2 to 5.6) and are at a reasonable temperature (mash out at 160 F to 165 F), squeeze away and get those sugars out!

I think that bag-squeezing/tannin thing has been well debunked. Lots of discussions here about that and not too many people are still clinging to that old idea. As noted by others, it's high pH and high temps that produce tannin extractions.

As for sparging, I've done it but haven't received enough extra efficiency to make it worth the extra work anymore. Grain crush is a bigger factor. After I hoist out the bag, I let it hang above the kettle. Then fire up the burner and let the bag drip during the 20 minutes or so while I'm bringing the wort to a boil.

+1 for dunk sparge, then squeeze the bag, worked great for me when I did BIAB.

Also I ditched the basket and went with 2 or even 3 Five gallon (on big brews) paint strainer sacks and just divided up my grain between them, use those heavy duty black office file clips to hold the sacks of grain off the bottom of the pot.

Cheers

I don't bother sparging. Squeeze the bag as much as I can, then that's it. My efficiency is great, and it's simply this way... So good enough for me! I should mention that I actually take the crushed grains from LHBS and run them through a food processor. Makes a very fine crush with lots of flour. Seems to be good, but hey, I'm just a noob, so what do I know.


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