Advice for First BIAB All Grain

I'm going to attempt my first All Grain BIAB within the next few weeks. I'll be brewing Northern Brewer's Dead Ringer IPA, which includes 12# of grain.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-DeadRingerIPA.pdf

Can you please critique my process?

I'm going to do a split boil. My equipment is as follows:

-10 Gallon Cooler (soon to be picked up)
-2 Home Depot 5 gallon paint strainer bags
-5 Gallon Pot
-4 Gallon Pot
-6.5 Gallon Bucket (ale pail)
-6 Gallon Carboy
-Immersion Copper Wort Chiller 25' (soon to be picked up)

My plan is to split the grain into 6# in each bag and mash for 60 minutes in the 10 Gallon cooler with 1.25q per pound of grain. I may preheat the cooler with 185 degree water then when it drops to around 166 degrees I'll add the grain.

Next dump the first runnings into the ale pail, and sparge with 170 degree water to bring up to +/- 6.5 gallons of total wort in the Ale Pail.

Then split that wort evently into the 4 and 5 gallon pots and half all the hop additions to each pot.

Cool each with the wort chiller down to +/-70 degrees then combine the wort in the 6 gallon carboy, aerate, then pitch the yeast.

Anything I may have missed or additional advice?

No advice or critique here. But as a newb, I have questions. I am curious as to why you are doing 2 separate boils. What are the benefits of this way VS doing a 4.5 gal boil and topping off into the fermenter?

The volume of water required to get extraction efficiency is the reason for the two boils.

Regarding your process, what is the plan for closing the 6# bags of grain or do you plan to place them side by side and keep them open? I'd add the water to cooler first to preheat and let it drop to your strike temp, and then add grains to help hit mash temp. You will need to stir grains in bags to prevent balls of dry grain which is why is asked about closing or opening them.

Also, coming from someone who just went all-grain, invest in a good thermometer with probe. I'd recommend a thermocoupler. It was my first purchase after my first AG batch.

djevans3 said:

Regarding your process, what is the plan for closing the 6# bags of grain or do you plan to place them side by side and keep them open?

Also, coming from someone who just went all-grain, invest in a good thermometer with probe. I'd recommend a thermocoupler. It was my first purchase after my first AG batch.

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Thanks. My plan for the 6# bags is to stir each well then tie off the top ends for each. The reason for splitting the grain bill to 2 bags is so its easier to lift them out and I believe the max grain for a 5 gallon home depot bag is 10#.

I'll take a look for a good thermometer. Right now I plan to use my clip thermometer that attaches to my boil pot.

Using 2 kettles on a weak, indoor range also allows the lesser amount of water in each kettle to be brought to a fast, full rolling boil.

For the mash, I tie the bags with sanitized, thick rubberbands. Works like a charm. The OP may want to consider rinsing the paint strainer bags and adding the kettle hops to them to minimize trub. Just be sure to wrap the ends of the bags around your kettle handle away from the flame. No need for the rubber bands at this stage.

I suggest creating an ice bath in the sink for the smaller kettle and use the wort chiller for the larger kettle.

I assume you're using the bottling bucket for the primary and carboy for the secondary? Get yourself 2 more oz. dryhops. Good luck!

What I'm about to suggest is a matter if debate and I'm certain others will differ.

That being said, I'd suggest a higher water to grain ratio. I find that 1.5 works really well and improved my mash efficiency.

If your cooler the taller round water cooler, you should have no problems holding your grain bill and that much liquid.

+1 on preheat the tun before adding grain. I followed Yooper's advice and heat strike water to 175*, add to tun, and place the lid on. I stir occasionally to get down to strike temperature and then add grain. My tun holds temp great with this process modification. It takes 15-20 minutes to drop to correct strike temperature.

Cheers

This is actually a really good idea... I wish I would have thought about this before I got my 10 gallon pot. Could have saved a couple bucks.

But I think your process looks good. You'll get a better idea of efficiency once you get a couple batches in. I've also heard that doing full volume BIAB works great too and provides great efficiency. Just throwing that out there.

I thought the point of BIAB is to do it all in one pot and be done with it?

I put 7 gallons of water in my pot and heat to 6 degrees above my strike temp, put all the grain in the bag (ive put over 10 lbs in a home depot paint strained), stir like mad for about 5 minutes, check temp and adjust if needed, wrap in a blanket and let it sit for 60 minutes with a stir every 20 minutes or so while checking temp and adjusting,then removing grain and starting the boil. Makes it very easy and relatively mess free. I've been getting 70-75% efficiency with that, though my first one was in the low 60's.

If I were you, I would not bother picking up the cooler. Just do two traditional BIAB brews w/ the 4 and 5 gallon pots, combine finished worts and ferment. Am I missing something?

You could stagger the two batches like 20 - 30 minutes to make it more manageable.

OK edit, better Idea. Mash all 12 pounds BIAB in the 5 gallon pot. Put it in a warm oven to maintain heat. Dunk sparge in the 4 gallon and the pail to generate the required runnings. Split between your two kettles and boil. Keep it simple

Don't forget in your water calculations to deduct for grain absorption in the first runnings, and also verify your pot is big enough to hold water plus grains displacement.

Agree with Wilser above. If you have the fundage, a 10 gallon stainless or aluminum pot will do beautiful BIAB brewing for 5 gallons. Either of your 4 or 5 would work really well as a dunk sparge vessel.

Coolers are great for modifying to be mash tuns, but I see no reason to use them for BIAB. One of the beauties of BIAB is less cleanup (and reduced equipment costs). If you're worried about thermal loss of a kettle for mashing you can : A) wrap kettle in reflectix twice or B) use turkey fryer basket to suspend bag off kettle bottom, allowing you to add heat from range or propane burner. A rope and pulley works AWESOME to allow you to suspend said basket and grain, while you squeeze out most of the wort.

For this one I would do 2 seperate mashes in your 4 and 5 gallon pot. 12 lbs of grain will not fit in a 5 gallon pot with a high enough water to grist ratio (it barely fits in my 7 gallon pot). You want to be 1.5 quarts water/lb of grain minimum and some go up to 2 for increased efficiency.

Yep...basicly you will just be doing a 2.5 gallon BIAB batch...but just do two of them, so what could be a problem we ask...cheers

And IMO there is no need to split everything to a micron b/w the pots...only making beer not watches.

djevans3 said:

The volume of water required to get extraction efficiency is the reason for the two boils.

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Hurr Durr... had to walk myself through that twice before it made sense. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

wilserbrewer said:

And IMO there is no need to split everything to a micron b/w the pots...only making beer not watches.

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LOL

wilserbrewer said:

If I were you, I would not bother picking up the cooler. Just do two traditional BIAB brews w/ the 4 and 5 gallon pots, combine finished worts and ferment. Am I missing something?

You could stagger the two batches like 20 - 30 minutes to make it more manageable.

OK edit, better Idea. Mash all 12 pounds BIAB in the 5 gallon pot. Put it in a warm oven to maintain heat. Dunk sparge in the 4 gallon and the pail to generate the required runnings. Split between your two kettles and boil. Keep it simple

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Thanks to all for all the replies, any additional are welcome.

The above is defintely an option. According to http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml the mash will take 4.71 gallons of space so it would be really tight in my 5 gallon pot but it sound do-able. As far as the "dunk sparge" goes, I'm not sure how I would get that to work in the 4 gallon pot. Would I use the same sparge water to dunk each 6# bag in that case, i.e. dunk one bag, then dunk the other in the same sparge water?

I forgot to mention that I also have a 2 gallon igloo water cooler from my partial mash brews. The most I've fit in that cooler is 5# of grain and it was tight.

I think you are making this way more difficult than need be...

Option 1 is two BIAB "no sparge" full volume mashes in the 4 and 5 gallon pots...really just two simultaneous 2.5 gal. batches.

Option 2 is mash all 12 lbs in one bag in the 5 gallon pot...say at 1 qt/lb is only 4 gallons total so it will fit. Then dunk sparge that single bag in your 4 gallon or ale pail, repeat dunk or sprinkle sparge as needed to produce enough runnings. divide runnings b/w pots and proceed.

Think of sparging as rinsing/washing the grain to get the sweet sugars. You will want to stir well during a dunk sparge....not like making tea.

I've been doing BIAB for a number of batches now. I only do 2.5 gallon batches. I fill a 5.5 gallon pot with 4 gallons of water and heat to about 165. I put in my paint strainer bag and fill it with my grain. My recipes usually call for 6 - 8 pounds of grain. I then mash for 60 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes. My first batch was 68% efficiency. I then bought a corona mill and ground the grain finer. Every batch since then has been 80% efficiency, and they all have tasted great.
You could do the same thing I did, but just double all of your ingredients and end up making a 5 gallon batch.