BIAB Brewing (with pics)

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The Denny's Rye Smile that I brewed has a nice deep brown/amber color to it depending on how the light hits it. Your statement about the color got me curious so I poured a sample just now (for scientific and research purposes only!) and here's a couple of photos.

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The Denny's Rye Smile that I brewed has a nice deep brown/amber color to it depending on how the light hits it. Your statement about the color got me curious so I poured a sample just now (for scientific and research purposes only!) and here's a couple of photos.

Once again...

Testament that BiaB produces cloudy beers! ;)

John
 
So...explain to me the Denny's Rye. What can I expect (flavor, hop profile, ect.)? I know it is a popular brew but that is about all I know.

Johnh
 
So...explain to me the Denny's Rye. What can I expect (flavor, hop profile, ect.)? I know it is a popular brew but that is about all I know.

Johnh

This was my first time brewing this recipe and it turned out well. It is going on 3-months now since brew day and I'm starting to like it more and more in spite of the fact that I am not a huge fan of rye beers.

It pours a deep copper/amber color with good carbonation. Definitely a hop-forward IPA, not too bitter but strong citrus/floral aroma and flavor. The rye malt adds a unique, spicy, earthy character to the beer. It has a nice balance between the hops and the sweetness of the malts and the spiciness of the rye. My batch has a slight alcohol note on the finish but it's not overwhelming.

I used Wyeast 1450 for this batch and I'll probably continue to use this yeast for future batches of this brew.

This recipe will be a regular in our house because my wife and so many others love it. Highly recommended.
 
Well, Keggle's done and has been initiated. Ended up with both the Brewmometer and the spigot. All turned out nicely. Even inscribed tickmarks for each gallon inside. The initiating brew was an Old Rasputing RIS clone. Went quite well using brew in a bag. Missed my OG by 0.005 (not bad). Still ending up with about 70% efficiency as opposed to the near 80% that many report. This big beer required 9 gallons of water and 21 lb of grain to end up at 5.5 gallons into the fermenter.

So here's my assessment of the keggle. Given the grain bill for this thing the big volume of the keggle was great. I ended up around 11 gal mark with plenty of room to spare. I made a lid out of one an old pot with a glass inset in the lid, works great. I had a little harder time holding my temperature than in a big pot, probably because my towel wrap doesn't work as well with this big thing. My temp was between 150 and 154 the whole time but that took several short bursts of heating to keep it there. The Brewmometer was fantastic and didn't pose any problems either in terms of getting in the way of the chiller or in poking the bag. You just need to avoid banging it with your spoon if your stirring. The keggle sits great on my turkey fryer burner and heating is rapid, 10 min to 175 from 154 and another 10 to boiling. Boiled for 1:45 to get down to 6 gallons. Cooling using recirculating ice water in my chiller worked great from boil to 90 in 20 min. Only problem I had was that I had used a stainless scouring pad over my siphon tube on the spigot and it had to be removed because of excessive trub clogging it. I have to get a finer bag but I'm still not sure that is going to solve it. My siphon tube is set to leave about half a liter in the keggle. Once the scour was removed with my spoon, all went well. Love not having to siphon and not having to hold a thermometer!
 
Anyone ever fasten a coffee filter over the end? Like loosely so it makes a kind of bag? I guess sanitize it in the boiling wort?
 
Anyone ever fasten a coffee filter over the end? Like loosely so it makes a kind of bag? I guess sanitize it in the boiling wort?

Not sure. Sounds like it might be pretty fine and pretty persnickety (sp?). I was really surprised that the trub didn't just go right through the stainless scour pad. It is pretty course but instead it clogged. I'm thinking a strainer of some sort on the exit end might work but probably cant be too fine.
 
Howdy,

I'm collecting the equipment I need to go from extract to BIAB. A couple of people have asked the question, but I don't think it's been answered: is a false bottom really necessary?

Thanks
 
I think most people just use false bottoms to keep the bag off of the bottom of their pot if they happen to be putting it over a direct flame. If your vessel is insulated in a way that allows you to hit your mash temperature and then shut off the heat - you probably don't need one.
 
Must be staying away for those "dirty" girls! :)


LOL.

Great idea on the cake rack. Beats spending $90 on a "real" false bottom.

Here's a tougher question:

I've read about using a finer grind on the grain to improve efficiciency since a stuck sparge is not an issue with BIAB. My question is, if I were to assume that there is more shell dust produced my a finer grind, does having more insoluble fiber suspended in the liquid give a false high SG given that it will eventually precipitate into the trub.

Remember: If you're part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. :)
 
Good question....I have no idea if that will affect gravity. 1) I am not a chemist or an engineer. 2) I use a refractometer to measure gravity.

I tend to subscribe to the explanation provided by somebody here: "The density of the water in the pond is not affected by the number of fish swimming, logs floating, and weeds growing in said pond. Makes sense to me!
 
Good question....I have no idea if that will affect gravity. 1) I am not a chemist or an engineer. 2) I use a refractometer to measure gravity.

I tend to subscribe to the explanation provided by somebody here: "The density of the water in the pond is not affected by the number of fish swimming, logs floating, and weeds growing in said pond. Makes sense to me!

That is certainly a tough question to answer. My gut reaction is that if the insoluble fiber is in solution, then the gravity would be affected. I'll try to explain using the above example, but I'll probably do it poorly. :drunk:

Let's say you want to know the density of pond water, including all things floating in it (fish, logs, weeds, etc.). Your sample when you put (a really large) hydrometer into it would have to include enough water to have an adequate amount of fish, logs, and weeds. Because the fish and logs and such displace a different volume of water than...water, they affect the gravity. Basically, because they are a different density than water, the "gravity" of the solution is not going to equal 1.000.

So to come back to beer, if the fish are dissolved sugars, the logs are the insoluble fibers and the weeds are the hop particulates. All of these particles will change the density of the hydrometer sample, because they are not the same density of the water. So the particles change the specific gravity. The only other comment I can make is a refractometer and a hydrometer should read the same SG because (I assume that) light refracts off the fiber particulates the same as it refracts off the sugars, or at least the refraction is close enough that you couldn't discern a difference without a computer and/or laser.
 
Good answer. That's what I think, too. What I wonder is how to set my new Barley Crusher to provide maximum brewhouse efficiency without generating falsely elevated readings. This might need a thread of its own.
 
I think it all depends on whether the matter is soluble or insoluble. If it's dissolved (sugar molecules), then it affects gravity. If it's insoluble trub that has precipitated, I don't believe it will affect gravity reading at all. Just my two pennies.

I wouldn't jump to changing your barley crusher settings. Why not setup a simple experiment next time you brew? Grab a sample in a normal fashion (will eventually precipitate trub at bottom). At the same time squirt a larger volume into a second vessel. Allow the trub to separate while the 2 samples cool. Making sure the sample temps are identical, very carefully grab a sample from the 2nd vessel so that no trub or insoluble particles are picked up. Measure that sample and compare. I would bet you get identical results.
 
Good point on insoluble vs. soluble material.

Another interesting point on this is that the fiber is a starch. The amylase rest (151F-160F) would also break down some, if not all, of the soluble fibers in the conversion of starch to sugar. So it's possible that we have more trub through the process, but that the final gravity readings are not skewed by fiberous material (like the post above said). If that is the situation, then you'd only have the long and short chain sugars to the SG reading you're taking. As with a normal AG process, the long chain wouldn't break down but would provide body (mouth-feel) and some sweetness to the beer and the short chain sugars would get broken down by the yeast.
 
Might be a dumb question but...I bought the AHS Fat Tire clone all-grain kit to try my hand at BIAB (and this will be my first all-grain too). Will using the grain bill that came with the kit work well with BIAB or would I need to up the grains a little?
 
Might be a dumb question but...I bought the AHS Fat Tire clone all-grain kit to try my hand at BIAB (and this will be my first all-grain too). Will using the grain bill that came with the kit work well with BIAB or would I need to up the grains a little?

If you are just starting out with BIAB I would suggest increasing the base malt by a pound or two. After a few batches you shouldn't need the extra grain once you get your equipment and process well dialed in.
 
Thanks for all of the answers.

It's my understanding that efficiency is measured before the boil when the insoluble particles are still in suspension. If I were to design an experiment I would keep two post-mashout samples. One sample would be measured immediately and one would be kept at temperature until the insoluble particles precipitated the measure SG and compare. To be sure, this should be done with a variety of recipes, crushes and conditions.
 
Might be a dumb question but...I bought the AHS Fat Tire clone all-grain kit to try my hand at BIAB (and this will be my first all-grain too). Will using the grain bill that came with the kit work well with BIAB or would I need to up the grains a little?

I use AHS kits all the time. Last time I had them double crush the grains and I hit my numbers spot on, so if they haven't shipped yet, I'd see if they can crush twice.

Thanks for all of the answers.

It's my understanding that efficiency is measured before the boil when the insoluble particles are still in suspension. If I were to design an experiment I would keep two post-mashout samples. One sample would be measured immediately and one would be kept at temperature until the insoluble particles precipitated the measure SG and compare. To be sure, this should be done with a variety of recipes, crushes and conditions.

Good idea. Probably need to start a new thread on this one though.
 
I'd have a little bit of extract on hand to make up any shortfall you may have. To be honest there's no real reason for it, efficiency on my first attempt was 78%.
 
Might be a dumb question but...I bought the AHS Fat Tire clone all-grain kit to try my hand at BIAB (and this will be my first all-grain too). Will using the grain bill that came with the kit work well with BIAB or would I need to up the grains a little?

I have done several AHS BIAB and they all come out great. I dont up the amount of grain at all. You will be fine.
 
I brewed up some 1.040 starter wort to can yesterday and whipped out the ol' turkey fryer for my first attempt at BIAB. It worked rather nicely since my system is setup for 15 gallon batches and I only wanted 4 gallons for canning.

I used my pizza screen to set my fryer basket on for draining and it worked like a champ. I normally use it on my 20 gallon Blingman to keep leaves and bees from falling into the wort during the 90 minute boil.

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I think I will do this again for starter wort or a 5 gallon experiment batch. It beats hauling out all the equipment just for 5 gallons.
 
Wait, you brew wort from all-grain, and can it for future use?

Yep, canned up some quarts of All Grain starter wort. It's a little bit of work up front, but the benefits will come later when I can grab a bottle pitch a vial of yeast without cooking anything.

Then there's the savings of not buying DME. I have about $1.50 worth of grain used to make 14 quart jars of sterile, ready to mix 1.040 wort. The BIAB method made it much easier and quicker to get my wort ready.
 
Yep, canned up some quarts of All Grain starter wort. It's a little bit of work up front, but the benefits will come later when I can grab a bottle pitch a vial of yeast without cooking anything.

Then there's the savings of not buying DME. I have about $1.50 worth of grain used to make 14 quart jars of sterile, ready to mix 1.040 wort. The BIAB method made it much easier and quicker to get my wort ready.

Can you please pass on the nohow to make starter wort @1040 for canning. You said you have 1.50$ in grain - is that 2 row base malt?? If I wanted 4 quarts of starter wort thats a 2 gallon boil and how much grain??? dummy it down for me please-please-please.
 
Yep, canned up some quarts of All Grain starter wort. It's a little bit of work up front, but the benefits will come later when I can grab a bottle pitch a vial of yeast without cooking anything.

Then there's the savings of not buying DME. I have about $1.50 worth of grain used to make 14 quart jars of sterile, ready to mix 1.040 wort. The BIAB method made it much easier and quicker to get my wort ready.

Weird...I was just going to start a thread about this. I really want to know how to do this. It seems so much easier to brew a big batch of 1.040 wort and can for future starters.

To make 14 quarts, did you start of with 4 gallons of water and 5 lbs of 2-row?

What is your process for jarring? I think I read somewhere that it was best to use a pressure cooker to get the jarred wort to over 250* to sterilize everything. Can this be done without a pressure cooker?
 
Weird...I was just going to start a thread about this. I really want to know how to do this. It seems so much easier to brew a big batch of 1.040 wort and can for future starters.

To make 14 quarts, did you start of with 4 gallons of water and 5 lbs of 2-row?

What is your process for jarring? I think I read somewhere that it was best to use a pressure cooker to get the jarred wort to over 250* to sterilize everything. Can this be done without a pressure cooker?

The BIAB method worked great for this. I was kind of winging it. Just over 5 lbs of grain and 5 gallons of water.

Having a refractometer came in handy. I kept boiling till it hit 1.040. I will probably bump my grain bill next time.
 
EdWort or h22lude............please start this thread and call it something like
making canned starter wort, or canned starter wort for the future or something like that. This seems like a pretty cool addition to the knowledge that a brewer can use. I'm getting grain this wkend to try this, no room for another beer brew so as fufill my need to brew -- this will do nicely. I hope its as easy as you made it sound, thanks in advance.
 
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