First BIAB oatmeal brown ale

3 gallon kit from northern brewer, about 9 lbs of grain. I heated 2.5 gallons of water to 164, place all my grains in it, it was at 4.5 gals so added another .5 gallons. Temp was at 153. For 75 mins what the procedure said. After it was done, I drain it and add 150F Water to get 4.2 gallons. Did 90 min boil, hop addition. Finished with 3 gallons. Places in carboy. Got 1074!!! Should be 1066. Added some water but still around 1070. Thoughts ??

Good enough for the girls I hang with.

Extraction efficency is based on mash temperature, water/grist ratio, PH, minerals in water etc etc.
Also for high temperatures (150's ish), gravity is highly influenced by the wort temperature. At low temperatures (50-70F) temperature doesnt effect gravity as significantly.
What temperature are you measuring your gravity at? your hydrometer should say what temp it is calibrated for. (mine says 60F)

Otherwise, It looks like your efficiency is better than what northern brewer projected which is fine. Just means more free buzz units!

I agree, just better efficiency! Those recipes are always calibrated for about 70% eff. but I always get around/above 80% with BIAB. If the projected was 1.066 and you got 1.074 with the proper 3Gal volume, that's just about spot on for 80% as well!

If you start assembling the ingredients for recipes yourself or if you start making your own or altering recipes, knowing your efficiency is pretty important in my opinion. Keeping track of these numbers is a good thing to do. I enter in recipes from places like HBT and the Northern Brewer website into the BeerSmith software and can quite easily scale it to my efficiency %

Thanks that is great. Thought I messed up and added some extra water like 4 cups. I did squeeze the bag a bit from multiple sites heard that ok. I know just not to sparge with water over 170 in which you get tannins?

What efficiency are you aiming for? 100% is probably not possible. What is considered good?

Almost all recipes are calibrated for 70%, which I think is probably considered average. Some people get 60% and buy more grains, some get 80% and buy less. Really what I did was aim for simplicity in my process, did a couple of recipes and found out I got 80 and was happy. haven't really read about anyone getting over 85 though... 90 and up pretty much gets a universal reaction of "you measured something wrong" haha.

I squeeze my bag pretty well and no sign of bad flavors yet. I don't go crazy though, I just twist the bag until the grains are in a solid mass and push on it with my spoon. I do it twice, one lightly when the main mash is done, pretty much just to get enough liquid out to not spill all over the place when I go to sparge. I do a batch sparge by putting the hot water in one of my buckets and then dropping in the grain bag, sticking my spoon in the bag, and giving it a good stir, then wring it out a bit harder after 10min.


Did you taste it? My first all-grain was a BIAB oatmeal stout and I was pretty happy with myself haha. I had done an extract oatmeal stout and the all-grain knocked its socks off flavor wise.

It was tasty. But I mean it was sugar. I guess it had a little grainy/husk taste maybe that is normal and will go away when it settles. But I dunno what I'm tasting for. Or what tastes go away and which won't. I really like the 5 gallon pot and this technique for biab 3 gallon style. I hate mixing 2.5 wort gallons and 2.5 "sterile" water to get 5 gallons and make sure the temp and og is good. Finally made a coil. It doesn't look pretty but it go to pitching temps in 15 mins.

You might consider "no chill", just as an option next time. You can further streamline the process. I am on my second batch of BIAB. Loving it.