Obligatory first AG experience-BIAB

Here are my notes:
Started at 9:15
put 7" (7 gallons) of water in pot
Put wok grate in bottom attached to a chain to lift it out later
Put grain bag in, attached with binder clips
Put two thermometers in (floating and dial)
Brought up to 154F
Dropped grains in at 10:00
Mash had dropped to 150F(-2F) so added heat.
10:05 mash was at 154F (+2F)
Noted dial thermometer is off by 4F+
10:10 152F
10:20 150F added heat
10:25 152F heat off
10:45 150F added heat
10:53 156F
11:15 150F
11:20 148F flame on
11:30 grains removed flame on high
put hopsock in

6.25 inches=6.25 gallons. 95%=5.93 gallons (lost 1.07 gallons to grain)
Added in water from bucket under bag, forgot to adjust water volume
Took sample, put in refrigerator for gravity reading later

11:48 rolling boil started
11:48 hops added to hopsock
12:58 Irish moss and immersion chiller added to the wort
1:08 flame off, water turned on to immersion chiller, hop sock wrung and hung over boilpot
Forgot to time wort chill, but it was quick.
Brought pot into house, began whirlpool
Forgot to check time, siphoned into cleaned and sanitized fermenter
Autosiphon aerator did not work used standard autosiphon
Needed just over 1/2 gallon to bring to 5 gallons
Gravity reading=1.054
Gravity reading out of mash=1.048@80F+.002 correction=1.050.

I believe that I have 69% efficiency? I used Brewmasterswarehous.com recipe formulator and fiddled around until I got the gravity to match what I got. Is that correct?

OG 1.038 1.054 1.054 OK
FG 1.008 1.013 1.014 Out of Range
IBUs 15.0 28.0 27.6 OK
SRM 3.0 6.0 4.9 OK
ABV % 3.8 5.5 5.2 OK
Overall Brew Status Out of Range

With the IBUs off I'll add "Strong" to the title
<b>
Willam's Notty Strong Blonde Ambition</b>
10 pounds 2-row
1 pound Carapils
152F for the 90 Minutes BIAB mash
Hops:
2 oz Willamette for 90 min
1 tsp Irish Moss for 10 min


My setup. Turkey fryer base. 60qt Aluminum pot.

The bag in the pot.

The water heating up to 154F.

You can see the wok grate at the bottom. I don't think it is needed.

My grain from Morebeer. 10# of 2-row.

Morebeer milled it for me, I'll be making a pasta mill soon.

A pound of carapils.

My mash.

My mash covered up.

Colander in the bottom of a bucket to receive the drain water from the grain bag.

DIY hop sock bracket.

Closeup of the hop sock bracket.

Hop sock (4 gallon paint strainer bag.

Mashing out, ready to take out the bag.

Lifting the bag. Not very heavy. Will the bag hold? (I sewed it myself on a 1941 Singer sewing machine)

Out come the grains.

A few twists of the bag to drain out the wort.

Takes a couple minutes to drain out.

See? Light enough to one arm lift it.

Just about drained out.

The wort is a bit cloudier than I am used to.

The grains in a bucket, draining over the colander.

The wok grate came out easy attached to the chain.

What drained out of the bag.

Willamette hops, 20z.

Hop sock ready to go.

Final 10 minutes of the boil, the immersion chiller is sanitized.

The hop residue left in the hop sack.

Just whirlpooled.

Covered while the whirlpool settles down.

<b>Final Thoughts</b>
Pretty easy.
Didn't take much more time than my normal extract operations.
The temp fluctuations were a bit of a pain. It was windy and cold out so warmer temperatures should make it easier. I wonder if holding a very low flame under it would work better.
I don't think the wok grate did much, I'll skip it next time.
What was my brew house efficiency? I hit my final estimated gravity for 69% efficiency...after adding ~1/2 gallon of water to the wort, looks like I did pretty good.
I noticed a bit more water in the grains when I dumped them. I think a little more care in the draining will get me that 1/2 gallon back.

I'll be doing this again.

Very nice. This will likely be my first AG procedure, too. Do you do any kind of vorlauf with the grains, or just pull them out? I'm assuming you also have to batch sparge, yeah?

Thanks,

-Joe

Nope, nothing fancy at all. At 90 Minutes I just pulled the bag out, let it drip for a few minutes, twisted it some, then plopped it into the bucket. After a few minutes, I gave the bag a squeeze against the colander and then dumped out what I got into the boil. No need to rinse, the mash is very thin, that's 7 gallons with 11# of grain.

What will the bouncing up and down in temperature during the mash do to the final product?

Bottling Day for my BIAB
OG=1.054
FG=1.011
Strong Blonde

Nice straw color, barely yellow at all.

Holy crap that tastes great as is! Can't wait to get it in bottles and conditioned!

Appearance:
Slight haze, could be chill haze or BIAB, not detracting but haze still. 1/2 finger head, nice slow stream of bubbles coming up inside the glass. Looks like a few more days will help the carb. The foamy head cathedrals on the side of the glass slightly, the pillow stays intact as you raise and lower the glass.

Smell:
Yeasty, bready, earthy.

Taste:
Light, low bitterness, low sweetness, very pleasing taste.

Mouthfeel:
Thin, watery, light carbonation tickles the tongue.

Drinkability:
This one is a refreshing drinker. This would be great on a hot night. At 5.6% these could probably sneak up on you easily. I can't believe I brewed this one. It tastes like something you would buy at the liquor store. YES!

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Scott Schluter | Scribd

That looks awesome.

If you are direct-firing your mash tun to keep the temperature in the right range, that wok grate in the bottom was probably keeping your grain sack from melting/burning on the bottom of the pot. If it's not much trouble, you may want to keep using it for future brews (unless you've already tried successfully without it).

Also, looks great. I'm going to be trying my first AG sometime in the near future. Almost done constructing a mash tun out of a cooler.

Looks awesome!

What kind of efficiency did you get?

Edit: Oops just went back and noticed you posted it. Is 69% accurate? If so that's pretty awesome considering you aren't really sparging at all. Also, since the first "runnings" are usually the highest quality wort, you can probably make some damn fine beer this way. I might have to give it a try sometime just to say that I did.