1st AG ever...but it was BIAB though

I've only done 2 coopers kits, one all extract non kit brew and my buddy and I decided to try BIAB.

Here's what we did thanks to much info on this site. We were going for a hoffbrau dunkel with this.

Grains/Hops:
5.5lbs Pilsner malt
3lbs Munich malt
.25lbs Chocolate malt
.25lbs Crystal 120

1oz. Tetnang 45min
.5oz. Tetnang 15min

We started with 4gallons with strike of 165F, put in grains dropped to around 154ish. Let it go for 70minutes, only dropped to 151F. Hit the heat up to 170F. Brought out the 2.5gallons in another pot for a 170F sparge for 15 minutes. We squeezed every last drop we could out of the grain bag and added the sparge water to the rest.
We had one boil over because I'm an idiot, but other than that things went extremely well.
After boil we put the entire 30 quart kettle into a rubbermaid tub full of ice water. Added a half of large bag of ice after about 15 minutes to the tub and had the temp of the wort down to 75 degrees in less than 35 minutes which I was pretty happy with especially without having an official cooling system of any kind.

Ended up with just under 4.5gal in the fermenter and an OG of 1.046 Both were a smidge lower than I had hoped, but I'll need to have the grain double milled next time I think...and I might do an additional rinse of the grain after the sparge with a gallon of 180F water.

I don't know about efficiencies or much else about the calculations, but I'm pretty happy with how the process went.

Any suggestions for next time? Thanks

dilbone - sounds like a fine brewing day. I plan on trying BIAB one of these days. You're post makes it appear effortless.

Thanks!

I think it was pretty effortless, but maybe too effortless. I just punched my numbers into hopville.com's beer calculus and to get the volumes and OG that I got it's telling me my efficiency was only at 63%...

I didn't stir the grain a whole lot...I know it was all soaked really well, but I only stirred the grain periodically. Are you supposed to really get in there and work it around after the 70 min. mash once you put the flame back on to get to 170F mash out???

I'm still a noob, so any help is appreciated.

I don't stir my grain a lot and average about 78% with BIAB. I'd suspect your pH or other issues with that gravity, or maybe you just had a load of doughballs that didn't get worked out.

Stirring and getting the whole grain bed to 170 will thin the sugars and help in extraction.
I wouldn't worry about the raise to 180. BIAB will typically give you an efficiency in the 65% range.
Bull

bullinachinashop said:

Stirring and getting the whole grain bed to 170 will thin the sugars and help in extraction.
I wouldn't worry about the raise to 180. BIAB will typically give you an efficiency in the 65% range.
Bull

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It's nothing unusual to have efficiencies over 75% with BIAB, I dunno where people are getting the idea that it's low efficiency.
www.biabrewer.info over 80% is also quite common.

EoinMag said:

It's nothing unusual to have efficiencies over 75% with BIAB, I dunno where people are getting the idea that it's low efficiency.
www.biabrewer.info over 80% is also quite common.

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I wasn't saying that you can't get better efficiencies rather that is more common (especially for a new brewer) to get less efficiency than other methods.

Friday I got 87% from a fly sparge but that doesn't represent the averages.


Bull

Hey - its sounds like you think BIAB is inferior in some way - it isn't - I get at least 70% efficiency and sometimes a lot more. Its a great way to brew IMHO.

simco999 said:

Hey - its sounds like you think BIAB is inferior in some way - it isn't - I get at least 70% efficiency and sometimes a lot more. Its a great way to brew IMHO.

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Agreed. I just switched from the batch/sparge cooler method to a BIAB using a keggle. To me it makes my brewday so much easier and I have less stuff to worry about/clean. I've done 2 batches so far this way and each time I hit mid 70s for my efficiency. The nice thing with BIAB is that you can go with a finer crush, since you don't have to worry about stuck sparges. I also do a mashout at the end to help boost the efficiency a bit.

thanks guys,

I think double milling and more thorough stirring will probably be able to get me into the 70's percentage wise...I hope.

I still might do the additional gallon of rinse water since I was a little more than a gallon short on my volume anyway...I can always boil off more if I need to.

Well, we had a few issues as this brew fermented.

My buddy had his fridge set right at about 53degrees for a few days before we brewed. We put it in there and he checked it about 24hours in and we had airlock activity. Then he checked it a week later and said it was "warm" in there, fridge had shut off somehow...

so he took it out and just sat it on the floor in his basement with a wet towel around it for the remainder of the 2.5weeks.

We just bottled this brew the other day. after 3.5 weeks in the fermenter and the FG was 1.024...WHAT???
We had also discovered through all this that the thermometer we were using reads about 3 degrees low, so mashing at 157-158 may have produced to many unfermentable sugars right? Now the second AG batch we did was only a couple degrees cooler and we ended at 1.016-1.015 FG...not sure if a couple degrees would make that big of a difference on this batch or not. Maybe it was the temps in the fridge; however, it was safelager s-23 and it said it was good from 51-74 degrees. We even pitched 2 packs since we thought we'd be fermenting in the low 50's. I'm kind of at a loss on this one.

It did taste really good though, a little sweet obviously, but none the less it tasted a lot like a hoffbrau dunkel.
My buddy has since ordered an external thermostat for the fridge and we'll be checking our thermo against a calibrated digital one to see exactly where we stand.

First AG and first Lager, so there were bound to be mistakes I suppose.

What are you using for your grain bag? I've read that the 5 gallon paint strainer bags are too small.

Whatdidjadu?

my wife made a bag for me out of voile. cheap and works great!

Mysticmead said:

my wife made a bag for me out of voile. cheap and works great!

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I have a similar bag. The voile has a finer weave, and is stronger than the paint strainers. They drain really clean, but don't clog up. I've found that with BIAB you can really grind the grains fine — almost flour if you wish, and still not get stuck mashes/sparges\.

I like to add the grain to the heated mash water slowly and stir aggressively to make sure all the grain gets wet. I also stir the mash about every 15 minutes for 30 seconds or so. I mash in a 6-gallon plastic bucket with spigot. I've found that by putting a cheap plastic colander with angled sides in the bottom of the bucket (Dollar General with the handles lopped off for fit) will keep the bag away from the outlet to spigot and makes for really fast runoffs. Also saves some lifting and holding of the grain bag. After sparge, be sure and tip the bucket to get the last rich juice into the wort.

One other thing I picked up from a thread somewhere. Divide your sparge water in to 2 equal parts and do 2, 10 minute or so sparges at the temperature you usually use. I think I get a about a 5%-7% efficiency bump when I started doing this. I'm always happy to get and efficiency of around 70-75%, and that's what usually happens with BIAB for me.