BIAB Brewing (with pics)

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Still looking for explanations for my low mash efficiency with BIAB. I did a near full volume mash starting with 7.75 gallons water and an 18 lb grain bill (15.75 lb 2 row and the rest various specialty grains) for a Black IPA. Expected a preboil SG of 1.076 at 75% but got only 1.058 (61%). All my temps were great and held fairly steady. Had my LHBS grind the grain as fine as they could and the crush looked great with a lot of powder (more crushed than in the past). I squeezed the grain bag hard to extract the remaining liquid. I ended up adding a pound of DME during the boil (that's what I had on hand) but still missed my OG by about 0.01. I have had no better than 65% in about 8 BIAB brews. Pretty mystified how folks get 80% or greater and what I am doing wrong. That said, I have been getting very good attenuation so for most I haven't suffered too much ;-) There is nothing wrong with the final product.
 
Still looking for explanations for my low mash efficiency with BIAB. I did a near full volume mash starting with 7.75 gallons water and an 18 lb grain bill (15.75 lb 2 row and the rest various specialty grains) for a Black IPA. Expected a preboil SG of 1.076 at 75% but got only 1.058 (61%). All my temps were great and held fairly steady. Had my LHBS grind the grain as fine as they could and the crush looked great with a lot of powder (more crushed than in the past). I squeezed the grain bag hard to extract the remaining liquid. I ended up adding a pound of DME during the boil (that's what I had on hand) but still missed my OG by about 0.01. I have had no better than 65% in about 8 BIAB brews. Pretty mystified how folks get 80% or greater and what I am doing wrong. That said, I have been getting very good attenuation so for most I haven't suffered too much ;-) There is nothing wrong with the final product.


there could be any number of reasons.. grain crush, water ph... time that you mashed... water volume... amount in kettle pre-boil.. amount in kettle post boil. What I have found is that as the grain bill goes up, efficiency goes down. I feel that this is due to the mass of the grain and not getting getting all the sugars out of the grain. Now had this been a traditional mash you would rinsed those sugars in the sparge. BIAB is a great way to brew, but it does have limitations. When I brew something like a cream ale with a small grain bill, I get 85%.. tonight on an Oatmeal Stout and 11.5lbs I got 75%
 
OK mysticmead, I'll stop complaining :eek: I'll keep trying to improve it though. I have tried a batch sparge before and have one time seen a little improvement but I don't think that will every get me to 85%. Then again, probably 7 out of my 10 BIABs have been for beers with greater than 7% ABV so perhaps that is a large part of the problem.

By the way, I enjoy your blog and even posted a comment today on facebook. My first brew of the year as well.
 
A big thanks to all that have contributed to this thread.

I did my first all-grain today with this method (an Irish Red). My OG came out .001 higher than the recipe called for so I'm calling it a success! Now the hard part...waiting!
 
Did my first BIAB this weekend, an American Wheat. For that matter it was my first all grain, heh. It went well for a first time. I was within point of my OG and my efficiency was around 75%.

I did bounce around my marks and made some newbie mistakes but it was fun being a newb again, lol. Looking forward to dialing in a new process and getting it all down to a science.
 
Brewitt said:
Still looking for explanations for my low mash efficiency with BIAB. I did a near full volume mash starting with 7.75 gallons water and an 18 lb grain bill (15.75 lb 2 row and the rest various specialty grains) for a Black IPA. Expected a preboil SG of 1.076 at 75% but got only 1.058 (61%). All my temps were great and held fairly steady. Had my LHBS grind the grain as fine as they could and the crush looked great with a lot of powder (more crushed than in the past). I squeezed the grain bag hard to extract the remaining liquid. I ended up adding a pound of DME during the boil (that's what I had on hand) but still missed my OG by about 0.01. I have had no better than 65% in about 8 BIAB brews. Pretty mystified how folks get 80% or greater and what I am doing wrong. That said, I have been getting very good attenuation so for most I haven't suffered too much ;-) There is nothing wrong with the final product.

I feel like a broken record. BIAB taps out at about 1.060. It's a great system for smaller beers but anything over 1060 needs additional DME or boiling off to reach gravities over that number.
 
Still looking for explanations for my low mash efficiency with BIAB. I did a near full volume mash starting with 7.75 gallons water and an 18 lb grain bill (15.75 lb 2 row and the rest various specialty grains) for a Black IPA. Expected a preboil SG of 1.076 at 75% but got only 1.058 (61%). All my temps were great and held fairly steady. Had my LHBS grind the grain as fine as they could and the crush looked great with a lot of powder (more crushed than in the past). I squeezed the grain bag hard to extract the remaining liquid. I ended up adding a pound of DME during the boil (that's what I had on hand) but still missed my OG by about 0.01. I have had no better than 65% in about 8 BIAB brews. Pretty mystified how folks get 80% or greater and what I am doing wrong. That said, I have been getting very good attenuation so for most I haven't suffered too much ;-) There is nothing wrong with the final product.

Efficiency does tend to drop with larger grain bills. More importantly, did you do a mashout?
 
Still looking for explanations for my low mash efficiency with BIAB. I did a near full volume mash starting with 7.75 gallons water and an 18 lb grain bill (15.75 lb 2 row and the rest various specialty grains) for a Black IPA. Expected a preboil SG of 1.076 at 75% but got only 1.058 (61%). All my temps were great and held fairly steady. Had my LHBS grind the grain as fine as they could and the crush looked great with a lot of powder (more crushed than in the past). I squeezed the grain bag hard to extract the remaining liquid. I ended up adding a pound of DME during the boil (that's what I had on hand) but still missed my OG by about 0.01. I have had no better than 65% in about 8 BIAB brews. Pretty mystified how folks get 80% or greater and what I am doing wrong. That said, I have been getting very good attenuation so for most I haven't suffered too much ;-) There is nothing wrong with the final product.

When I was laid up recouping from a surgery, I had plenty of time to read as many brewing books I could get a hold of. You know, the ones that most of us get and just flip to the section that has the recipes and skip over all the chapters that cover the science side of brewing. I mean, hey are we really interested in calculating the diastatic power of a malt to determine the enzematic potential of the amylase enzymes higher modification and high soluble nitrogen ratio in a Viena Malt vs that of a Bonlander Munic Malt, or are we just trying to understand enough to not screw up our favorite home made beverage?!?

Others have touched on things like PH, Milling, Temps, Time, Mash out, and even Mash Thickness (and yes, a thinner mash does result in higher efficiency than that of a thicker mash, so if you are going with a larger grain bill and not increasing the water volume of your mash to maintain the same gal/lb or Kg/L ratio your efficiency will go down) in this thread, but based on my several weeks of reading, I found this site that is dedicated to the Science of Brewing (from a mostly German perspective, but the info translates well to other forms from a "what's happening" stand point), and in particular this article on "Understanding Efficiency" sums up in a relatively concise manner all of the information that I read from several books and appears to be consistent with what others state both on this thread and in the academic understanding of brewing:

Understanding Efficiency - German brewing and more

So if you really want to know what's causing your efficiency drop, or increase (or just not getting the target you think you should), you can do your homework since it tends not to be based on a single factor approach that most people like to dwell on.

If you understand any or most of what this article covers, you should really send some brew to the Biology/Chemistry teacher you had in your life as a "thank you" (I happened to have an awesome Chem Teacher in High School who actually used the fermenting professions as a way to provide a framework to bring relevance to some pretty deep chem problems he gave us to work out- guessing he was a brewer himself and wanted some help with an issue he was having since this would have been way before homebrewtalk.com came about).

Just looking at the information you included, 7.75 gal of water (regardless of PH) is nowhere near what is needed to get the efficiency you were shooting for. Give the enzymes some more water to work with, something like 1.75-2.5 qt/ lb for a typical thin german inspired mash- if you have the space! Since you would need to start with over 11 gallons of water for the grain bill you described. Don't forget that the grain volume needs to be included as well, which is why I tell BIAB newbies to start with a 15 gal kettle even if they only want to do 5 gal batches and still have the room needed for "big beers". As long as you still "giving a damn" about the other factors you listed (which you will because you brew), you should see your efficiency "improve" (if it doesn't get to what you expect based on an ideal grain to water ratio- which should only get you mid 70's for a %with the ratios above, then one of the other 8 factors is coming into play as well). When I get the insanely high efficiency that others report as well, it's (partially) because I am starting with a mash thickness that is close to a gallon of water/ lb of grain for a session beer like a cream ale (8-9 lb of grain with 8 gal of strike water) so the enzyms have plenty of room and resources to run amuck while you drink a beer in honor of their efforts.

Good luck on your quest for the Efficiency Holy Grail of BIAB on a big grain bill!
 
Since you would need to start with over 11 gallons of water for the grain bill you described.

And you will have to boil to get down to your desired volume and SG, which isn't always good either since "Excessively long boils" (still trying to find out the empirical evidence to back this up, or minimally define how long is "excessive", so any insights are appreciated) or "Excessively strong boils" (at least I found this to be defined as a boil off rate of 15% of volume in an hour) is detrimental to quality. So now you know why the Pros aren't hellbent on achieving the same high efficiencies that us small batch brewers shoot for since there are other consequences in the process they would have to deal with at that scale.

Keeping with a 1 hour boil (since that seems to be the norm, I would guess nobody would call it excessive) and honoring the not greater than 15% boil off in that hour, for my particular BIAB set up with losses to kettle dead space below the valve and plate chiller loss and a goal of 6.5 gal into the fermentor so I can dump trub from the conical, harvest yeast, factor in the loss to absorption by the hops that goes in for dry hopping and still end up with 5 gal of beer in the keg, the post boil volume should be ~7.65 gal, which means a pre-boil volume of 9 gal. When you factor in the gain absorption typical for BIAB (Which is much lower than traditional AG, I seem to recall a consensus of around 1/3 qt/ lb of grain) on your 18lb grain bill it will soak up 1.5 gal of water that you will never get back no matter how much you squeeze. Which gets you to a starting strike volume of 10.5 gal (if you were using my equipment) which is within the range of 1.75-2.5 qt/ lb that the german style brewing shoots for, but still on the higher end - which is desirable when efficiency is a stated goal.

Head spinning yet?!? (you better go grab a brew)

If you really want to go with the 11 gal to start with yet keep your boil off to the cap of 15% per hour, you would have to boil for an extra 15-20 minutes (if the math in my head is in the ballpark- but that's why you put a sight glass on your kettle so you just go til you hit your mark). Is that "excessively long" and potentially detrimental- don't know since I haven't found a definition for excessively long, or what happens when you push it too long...

Give it a try (I can't since I don't have a big enough pot- yet) and let us know if we all need to run out and buy bigger pots, or if we are just stuck augmenting with extract once we play with >15 lb grain bills in a typical 44 qt pot and are stuck with sub 70% efficiency for "big BIAB beers" because we have a bunch of pissed off enzymes that don't have enough water to do their work.


(disclaimer- math done in head while at work doing other things as well, so if I made a mistake point it out so we can prevent someone from suffering from my error, but no need to be a jerk about it- this is why you use brewing software to figure this stuff out)
 
I feel like a broken record. BIAB taps out at about 1.060. It's a great system for smaller beers but anything over 1060 needs additional DME or boiling off to reach gravities over that number.

I'm not an efficiency chaser by any means but my last brew was a 1.066 6 gallon BIAB that I wound up with 1.069 on. I didn't do anything special other than a double crush which I don't usually do. It was more of a screw up with the mill on the first pass that required a second crush.

I'd tell you that if you had a 1,000 gallon kettle and a strong enough bag, mixer and crane you could probably do a massively large BIAB and get good efficiency. I don't see the logic in defining 1.060 as a cutoff point for BIAB.
 
I'm not an efficiency chaser by any means but my last brew was a 1.066 6 gallon BIAB that I wound up with 1.069 on. I didn't do anything special other than a double crush which I don't usually do. It was more of a screw up with the mill on the first pass that required a second crush.

I'd tell you that if you had a 1,000 gallon kettle and a strong enough bag, mixer and crane you could probably do a massively large BIAB and get good efficiency. I don't see the logic in defining 1.060 as a cutoff point for BIAB.

there's no cutoff point for BIAB.. but as the grain bill increases, efficiency tends to suffer without sparging of some sort.. even a dunk sparge helps on big grain bills.
 
This ^^^

I hate it when I see folks repeating mis-conceptions as "facts". (eg: this mythical 1.060 limit for BIAB)
 
Just looking at the information you included, 7.75 gal of water (regardless of PH) is nowhere near what is needed to get the efficiency you were shooting for. Give the enzymes some more water to work with, something like 1.75-2.5 qt/ lb for a typical thin german inspired mash- if you have the space! Since you would need to start with over 11 gallons of water for the grain bill you described. Don't forget that the grain volume needs to be included as well, which is why I tell BIAB newbies to start with a 15 gal kettle even if they only want to do 5 gal batches and still have the room needed for "big beers". As long as you still "giving a damn" about the other factors you listed (which you will because you brew), you should see your efficiency "improve" (if it doesn't get to what you expect based on an ideal grain to water ratio- which should only get you mid 70's for a %with the ratios above, then one of the other 8 factors is coming into play as well). When I get the insanely high efficiency that others report as well, it's (partially) because I am starting with a mash thickness that is close to a gallon of water/ lb of grain for a session beer like a cream ale (8-9 lb of grain with 8 gal of strike water) so the enzyms have plenty of room and resources to run amuck while you drink a beer in honor of their efforts.

Good luck on your quest for the Efficiency Holy Grail of BIAB on a big grain bill!

Dobo,

I happen to have a PhD in biochemistry so I'm doing ok on that end ;) I also understand that there are lots of compenents to efficiency. I'm not really interested in reinventing this wheel (plenty to do without this one ;)) so I am trying to be pretty meticulous about following the well established BIAB procedures. I have read a fair amount on technique and efficiency. Having pretty much achieved what I think is the right procedure, I have not gotten where I want to be. That's the basis for my query. I'm happy to go further but I'm not sure where the optimal places to look are.

Re: 11 gallons. That is the top of the range, I am at the bottom. I can increase that since I am using a keggle. I added about a gallon after the mash out since I was low and I did a 75 min boil. I could certainly add more since I'm using a keggle and on big stouts and black imperial IPAs like this one 90 min boils are often recommended. I will look to doing that on the next one. I will have to go back and look at my notes to see how I have done when I had bigger water/grain ratios.
 
Still looking for explanations for my low mash efficiency with BIAB. I did a near full volume mash starting with 7.75 gallons water and an 18 lb grain bill (15.75 lb 2 row and the rest various specialty grains) for a Black IPA. Expected a preboil SG of 1.076 at 75% but got only 1.058 (61%). All my temps were great and held fairly steady. Had my LHBS grind the grain as fine as they could and the crush looked great with a lot of powder (more crushed than in the past). I squeezed the grain bag hard to extract the remaining liquid. I ended up adding a pound of DME during the boil (that's what I had on hand) but still missed my OG by about 0.01. I have had no better than 65% in about 8 BIAB brews. Pretty mystified how folks get 80% or greater and what I am doing wrong. That said, I have been getting very good attenuation so for most I haven't suffered too much ;-) There is nothing wrong with the final product.



So now that I took you on a stroll down "theoretical lane" you should be able to see that there are things that you can do to improve your efficiency, but I would argue that it's less about what efficiency you achieved, and more about "what efficiency you expect to achieve". This is the true factor that you actually want to be consistent as you are formulating recipes and want to have it where you get the numbers you "expect" and not what you dream about (also lets you avoid having to add extract in order to correct your gravity just because your expectations are off in the first place).

Simple fact is that your expected efficiency changes as well based on the size of your grain bill and sparge technique (Grist Weight vs Sparge technique in some circles).

Remember that article I linked to on efficiency located here:

Understanding Efficiency - German brewing and more


At the bottom of the page in the section "related materials" he links to a presentation (he offers to us as a PDF) he gave at NHC 2010 which can be downloaded directly here:

http://braukaiser.com/download/Troester_NHC_2010_Efficiency.pdf

scroll to page 19 and you will see the chart on "Batch sparging and grist weight" which gives you "expected efficiencies" for batches of different grain bill sizes and number of sparges for a theoretical batch with a 6.5 gal preboil volume.

Since true BIAB is technically a "no sparge" technique when done as intended, look at the blue line for "no sparge" and you will see that for your grain bill of 18 lbs, lo and behold there is an expected efficiency of somewhere right around 65% (my best guess since the chart isn't detailed enough to plot 18lbs exactly). Since this chart is for 6.5 gal preboil volume the reason your efficiency is still a little low (you stated 62%) compared to this chart goes back to the "you didn't have enough water to start with" observation I started with, since the 1.5 gal absorption of your 18 lbs of grain would required you to start with 8 gal of water to use this model and you only started with 7.25.

The really cool thing about this chart is that it does a better job of clarifying what people mean when they say that BIAB is a little less efficient than traditional AG and so you might have to throw in a few more lbs of base malt to get the numbers you want compared to traditional AG (yet you hear about these insane feats of 98% efficiency). See the gap that is pretty consistant between the blue and red lines, that is what they are talking about, not conversion efficiency per se, but the gap of roughly 8% in lauter efficiency between a no sparge and even a single sparge approach. This is the reason that I minimally rinse my grains no mater what, since it closes that gap quite a bit as a way to compensate, or you either need to increase your water volume in the mash to spike your conversion efficiency or compensate with a few more lbs of grain in order to close that gap to hit desired numbers (this is most often likely done with extract by people who thought their efficiency was way low instead of compensating in the numbers up front).

So let's just assume that you have been doing similar sized grain bills for the 8 BIAB brews that you have done so far in which you stated that you haven't had an efficiency better than 65%, I would argue that your efficiency is pretty damn good compared to what should be expected for the batch given the grain bill, and what you really need to do instead of grinding your grain finer or even adjusting the PH of your water is to go into what ever brewing software you are using and adjust the expected efficiency to be in line with what you should expect based on the chart provided so you can tweak all your other numbers to get in line with the style you are shooting for.

If you were expecting 75% because that's what the kit instructions said you should get, you will have to throw the notion of those numbers as correct out the window since most AG kits or LHBS employees assume a traditional 3 vesel approach to AG brewing with typically 2 sparges unless stated in the instructions (if you go back to that same chart, you will see that for 18 lbs of grist, a two sparge method will come in at about 75% which would be consistent with what you were expecting if that's what they told you to expect).

At least now I hope you understand a little better why you're getting 65% which is in no way shape or form "bad", just not what you were told or thought to expect.



If you need an efficiency ego boost, try a simple session beer like a cream ale. Grind the hell out of 7 lb of 2 row pale, 3/4 lb of Honey malt, 1/4 lb of Biscuit (use sparingly since it has a distinct flavor that gets overbearing so if you tweak don't change this unless you really like the tast of cornflakes). With 8-8.5 gal of water, mash in at 135 let it raise to 155 and sit for an hour, mash out at 175 for at least 10 minutes (rinse the grains a bit if you need more volume to start your boil). Boil for an hour with 1 oz Cluster and ferment with American Ale 1056 and you only need about a week in secondary to mellow the honey and corn flavors together.

This would be the brew I make for my brew groupies as it is fast and easy (also very cheap to make), and you should easily score some efficiencies in the high 90s which will you feel like a BIAB efficiency pro as you start to understand the in some cases 65% is really damn good!

:mug:
 
Dobo,

I happen to have a PhD in biochemistry so I'm doing ok on that end ;) I also understand that there are lots of compenents to efficiency. I'm not really interested in reinventing this wheel (plenty to do without this one ;)) so I am trying to be pretty meticulous about following the well established BIAB procedures. I have read a fair amount on technique and efficiency. Having pretty much achieved what I think is the right procedure, I have not gotten where I want to be. That's the basis for my query. I'm happy to go further but I'm not sure where the optimal places to look are.

Re: 11 gallons. That is the top of the range, I am at the bottom. I can increase that since I am using a keggle. I added about a gallon after the mash out since I was low and I did a 75 min boil. I could certainly add more since I'm using a keggle and on big stouts and black imperial IPAs like this one 90 min boils are often recommended. I will look to doing that on the next one. I will have to go back and look at my notes to see how I have done when I had bigger water/grain ratios.


Perfect, I applaud the fact that your PhD field really compliments this hobby and unlike others who ask for an explanation of what's going wrong with their brew and expect you to dumb it down and treat the science of it as some black magic voodoo that doesn't matter, you at least "get it".

You at least have the potential to increase your volume with the Keggle, and the 90 minute boil fits nicely into the senario. Can't wait to hear back on your results, and hopefully you see the improvement that should happen.
 
Perfect, I applaud the fact that your PhD field really compliments this hobby and unlike others who ask for an explanation of what's going wrong with their brew and expect you to dumb it down and treat the science of it as some black magic voodoo that doesn't matter, you at least "get it".

Yeah, and its even worse....My research is on Saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewing yeast)! :mug:

As I said in response to Mysticmead, "OK, I'll stop complaining" :)
 
Brewitt said:
Yeah, and its even worse....My research is on Saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewing yeast)! :mug:

As I said in response to Mysticmead, "OK, I'll stop complaining" :)

Oh, you are a gluten for punishment... At least now we know who on the thread to direct our yeast questions at, since I AM convinced that most of those complex things that yeast do besides make alcohol in the process are some sort of black magic voodoo... But that's a different thread.
 
Oh, you are a gluten for punishment... At least now we know who on the thread to direct our yeast questions at, since I AM convinced that most of those complex things that yeast do besides make alcohol in the process are some sort of black magic voodoo... But that's a different thread.

Oh, don't get excited. There are plenty of folks who know more than me about yeast metabolism and fermentation on this forum. Your unlikely to get much out of me on metabolic byproducts and their chemistry. Not my areas of expertise. But I'm learning a thing or two.
 
OK, I spent some time tonight reading through the braukaiser.com website regarding brewhouse efficiency and conversion efficiency. I also went back through all of my numbers and I came up with a conversion efficiency of just over 80% and a brewhouse efficiency of about 65%, a little better than I had previously reported. That is just about where the graph puts me for my weight of grain and no sparge. However, that graph is for 6.5 gallons preboil and I was at about 7.3 gallons so I think I should have done a bit better. Nevertheless, I am feeling encouraged.

In addition, I went through the information on the determinants of an efficient mash and I am now going to check a couple of things and change a couple of things.

1. When I had my voile bag made I gave the wrong dimensions and it doesn't fill the keggle. I am getting a bigger bag so my kettle is completely filled. This should give more water access to my grain during the mash.

2. I am going to do 90 min boils on bigger beers to allow more mash volume.

3. I am going to try a 160-165 degree rest on my way to my mashout temperature.

4. I am going to recalibrate my brewmometer (which seems like it may read a few degrees high giving me lower mash temperatures (but not below that required for efficient conversion).

5. I am going to determine the pH of my input filtered water and my mash (something I haven't done but I know I have quite alkaline tap water).

This should be a good start on getting to higher efficiencies. However, if that does not happen, at least I will know what to expect and use the appropriate amount of grain to get where I want to go.

Thanks for your input. I'll keep you posted. Probably be a few weeks to the next batch.
 
Well, I'm getting a start on this.
1. The new voile bags are in production.
4 Will do the thermometer calibration tomorrow.
5. The pH of my filtered water is 7.5 and I have compared a full analysis of the water from the water company to the John Palmer recommendations and find that I have a very neutral water in terms of ales and dark beers (probably a bit hard for pilsners) and my calculated Mash pH is a bit above the high end of the recommended range based upon the grain bills I have been using. Probably need to check and adjust down a bit. Maybe a combination of CaCl2, CaSO4, and either acidulated malt or lactic acid. What else do people use?

The rest awaits my next brewing. Probably do a Pale or an IPA to gauge my progress.
 
Seeing as somehow I can't post in the classifieds, if anyone knows for or has a sanke keg they are selling please message me! The only place I can find one is in Toronto and it's $90 for the keg and $100 to ship. I need a keggle to continue my brewing. I'm stuck, lol
 
For the baskets, whats biggest pot the 5 gallon paint strainer bag will fit? Looking to step up to 10 to 15 gallon pot
 
For the baskets, whats biggest pot the 5 gallon paint strainer bag will fit? Looking to step up to 10 to 15 gallon pot

I have a 62qt Bayou Classic SS pot. I use Trimaco SuperTuff elastic-top strainers item #11523. There are 2 in the pack for about $5. They will just barely stretch over the top of the basket.

I just noticed in their product catalog that item #11523 is considered the regular mesh and item #11516 is a fine mesh.
 
Hey guys, I have a question. I know that with this process, there is a high liquid to malt ratio but I was wondering if anyone had mashed at the appropriate temperatures and then added water as you were raising the temperature to mash out (170).

I don't think this would be much trouble, but does anyone think that this might help prevent the denaturing of the beta amylase enzymes.

Any input?

Edit: Nevermind, I just read out of John Palmer's book that the higher water to grist ratio dilutes the concentration of enzymes, which slows conversion and could lead to denaturing, but also can lead to a more fermentable mash because the enzymes are not inhibited by such a high concentration of sugars.

Assuming this...would it make sense to mash at a higher temp to make it more dextrinous and less attenuable to counteract the diluted mash? (New question lol)
 
How big should my keggle opening be for this?

I cut a hole in my keg yesterday and it's about 11inches dia. Should I leave it or try to make it as large as possible?

I'm about to start Biab.
 
How big should my keggle opening be for this?

I cut a hole in my keg yesterday and it's about 11inches dia. Should I leave it or try to make it as large as possible?

I'm about to start Biab.

When I cut mine I used the rim as a guide and rested the angle grinder against it. The important thing to remember is the opening needs to be big enough to pull a bag of hot grain out of. Also make sure you smooth the opening REAL good so it doesn't cut the bag. a flap wheel on the angle grinder does a good job and its quick too
 
Thanks for the guide. I used this method for my first brew and hit 77% efficiency. I did not do a large batch and I had a hard time keeping my mash temp. All in all I think it was a good first brew day. I did ed wort's haus pale ale. And it is bubbling away right now.
 
oldskooldawgz said:
Thanks for the guide. I used this method for my first brew and hit 77% efficiency. I did not do a large batch and I had a hard time keeping my mash temp. All in all I think it was a good first brew day. I did ed wort's haus pale ale. And it is bubbling away right now.

Good to hear. I'm going to do a batch of that as soon as I receive my grain mill. It will be my first Biab as well.
 
Good to hear. I'm going to do a batch of that as soon as I receive my grain mill. It will be my first Biab as well.
I have a really good home brew shop in my town who mills grain for free and keeps really good prices. I also only did a half of a batch which makes life easier and allows for stove top
 
If you have a turkey fryer with an electric element, can you leave that on at 152 F or shut off and cover?
 
If you have a turkey fryer with an electric element, can you leave that on at 152 F or shut off and cover?

if it's an accurate 152 it could be let on... of course having something recirculating the sweet wort while mashing would help ensure that the temps remain stable and even. OR... just get to your desired temp, wrap it up and walk away for 60-90 minutes.. it'll still make beer (it's what I do and it makes damn good beer)
 
Does anyone have a successful BIAB English Barleywine recipe they can share? I'm limited to my 11g boil kettle, but would still like to brew one up as my friend (often my 'brewing assistant') is a huge BW fan. I'd like to stick with 5 - 5.5 gallons of finished product, as that is what my glass carboy is prepared for (6g secondary).

I've seen some recipes for 5 - 5.5g english barleywines but they all seem to require 20+ lbs of grain. My limited experience with BIAB (3 successful batches so far) seem to point out that I can handle a grain bill up to 18-19lbs with the necessary strike volume.

If my options, given my kettle size restriction, are limited to a partial grain recipe or dunk sparging, I'd like to stick with AG for now (I'm stubborn!). Could I mash a little thicker and then rinse the grains by pouring 180 degree water through the grainbag once it's been drained into the kettle? I do have a 5.5 gallon kettle that has been dormant since I switched to BIAB. I'd love to put her to work!

Any help is appreciated. Recipes, technique for larger grain bills and 11g kettles, etc. Thanks in advance everyone! Hopefully others benefit from my lengthy plea for help!
 
As far as the bag goes, anyone else here just use the voille curtain straight out of the packaging? I've done 2 biabs now and it works for me. Just clip up the loose edges, make sure the bottom of the curtain doesn't hit the bottom of the pot during heating, and you're good to go. Easy.
 
I'd say max out your grain bill at 18 lbs and then add malt extract to reach your target OG. I read a chapter in "Designing Great Beers" and a majority of the Barleywine finalists included some malt extract in their brew to reach their target OG. Let us know what you decide to do, the recipe and how it turns out. Cheers!
 
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