new to biab brewing

hello,

great forum.......cashed in on the cereal killer mentioned in the equipment topic line to replace my old corona.

my questions are regarding grain......can a biab brewer mash adjunct grains with base malt? will oat flakes pose a drainage problem?
does the 1.25 qts @ LB of grain hold true for biab?
dave miller in his book suggest 1.33 @ lb for normal mashing?

can a biab brewer use a 5 gallon AG recipe and just adjust 10% for less efficency?

thanx for any help offer
GD

First off true BIAB is full volume mashing so you put however much water you need for your boil in with the grains. There are some hybrid techniques that sparge but still you use a lot of water so more like 2 qts/lb
From what I have read a lot of people who are doing BIAB are getting fairly high efficiency. 70-85%. Me personally no sparge I am getting 75-78%. So no need to adjust unless you are consistently getting low efficiency, which means you need to do a few batches to learn what your getting.

You can throw in all your grains with all of your water with no issues. I have done flaked barley and oats. since it is all in the bag there is no sparge step to get stuck.

I would recommend the "Simple BIAB" calculator to help you figure out your water and mash in temps. this is a nice tool. It even helps you determine the number of inches of water to add to your pot to get the right number of gallons.

Also, I usually just add an extra half pound of base malt to make up for efficiency issues. Since you have a mill you may not need to do that since you can really crush your grains as fine as you want to.

Flaked grains are sticky, use rice-hulls. Trust me.

thanx for both replys and good info.

i had a corona mill and felt that a better mill maybe needed for the larger grain bills so i jumped in on the frenzy purchase on the cereal killer from AIHB that i saw in the equipment section...hope i didn't make a mistake since the corona is almost new.

where do i find the BIAB calculator?

i have planned on upgrading to a fifteen gallon kettle,( i read that a ten gallon pot may be tight for space on high gravity recipes) and need to aquire a few other items before geeting into the BIAB.

i saw that williams brewing sells a low pressure burner and the blichman is also a low pressure 60K BTU burner. will a low pressure burner met my need to boil my wort volume down to 5 gallons.

excuse my ignorance but i have always used an electric stove until now and have no experience with the propane burner realm. i'm just concerned about propane consumption on the more popular high pressure burners.

thanx for everyone's advice

GD51

http://www.simplebiabcalculator.com/

I believe this is the one he was referring to.

It calculated too high for me on the mash in volume. Just measure after you pull your grain to determine
your absorption rate. Other than that, a handy tool for sure.

It's my understanding that you don't want to mill the adjuncts.

I am using a the 44qt Bayou classic, with the basket and a simple pulley. Haven't brewed anything over #13 grain wise,
but that was no problem.
I use the Blichmann burner, and it's been great so far. Propane tanks are lasting for 4-5 batches.

Cheers

thanks for the reply and advice.
yes, i have read that the blichmann burner is note worthy about it's furgal propane use. and really if a cheaper burner is gonna gobble propane than a blichmann will repay the additional cost after a fews month of brewing.
BTW i just discovered a good tutorial about BIAB at love2brew
http://www.love2brew.com/Articles.asp?ID=387

thanxcheers

GD51

With BIAB you want to crush your grains very fine since you don't have to worry about sticking. You want to mash them all together so that the enzymes in the pale malt can extract all the potential sugars from the grains that don't have the ability to convert by themselves. When I do a 5 gallon batch I start with about 6 gallons of water in my pot, bring it up to strike temperature while I grind my grains (corona mill, hand cranked). I stir madly while adding the grains so I don't get dough balls and then cover the pot, wrap it in a bath towel and forget it for an hour. When I pull the bag out I squeeze all the wort out that I can, then add water to the bag and squeeze it again to get more sugars out and hit my intended volume.

i have used the BIAB calculator with hypothetical recpies to learn.

the calculator mentions mash out water....? i figured this was part of the total water for BIAB.
so the mash water amount is added to the mash out amount and that will give the brewer the total amount of water needed for the BIAB. correct?


brewday:
mash water

mashout water

strike temp

pre-boil

post-boil

transferred

GD51

Close, but there are 2 ways to mash out. Both are done after you have completed the mash. Mash out is meant to improve your brew-house efficiency by making the wort and grain more fluid to improve extraction. The simplest way is to account for all your water when you mash and then turn the propane burner back on to bring the wort up to 170F for 10 minutes, after 60 of mashing. The other way, i guess, is to add more hot water to your wort in order to bring it up to 170F, and your pre-boil volume.

Brewday:
Strike water
Dough in
Mash for 60
Mash out to 170F

Proceed...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/biab-brewing-pics-233289/

This is the clearest explanation of BIAB I've ever seen.

With the BIAB calculator, just tell it that you are not mashing out to get the total strike water in gallons, then just fire up the burner.

thanx,

i'll run some hypothetical numbers thru the calculator to tweek .

GD51

Although, Denny and I believe Kai have shown that the temp of your sparge water/doing a mashout has very little effect on efficiency. Some sparge with warm or even cold water.

The true purpose of a mash-out is to stop conversion by denaturing all enzymes and thus lock in the sugar profile (dryness vs. mouthfeel). Of course, if you batch sparge the grain isn't sitting in the tun long enough to really convert much more while you sparge. Commercial breweries that fly sparge over several hours tend to mash-out, though.