New to All-Grain; Want to do BiaB

Up until now I have only done extract beer batches. I have wanted to do all grain, but was unsure if I would like all the extra time and equipment it would entail. Until I heard about the brew in a bag method.

I already only brew 2.5 gallon batches, so this method seems like it would work quite well for me.

I have already purchased my grain and other ingredients to brew an American Barleywine. Here is the recipe I came up with:

2.5 gallon batch.
8lbs Malteurop Two-Row
8oz Crystal 60L
8oz Table Sugar

.5oz Magnum 14.1AA 90 Minutes
1oz Falconers Flight 10.0AA 60 Minutes

I will be pitching on a US-05 yeast cake from a previous IPA batch that I will be bottling that same day.

I am going to use a liquor to grist ratio of 1.1 quarts of water per Pound of grain.
I am planning on mashing at 152F for 60 minutes. My strike water temperature will be 170F as per this calculator: http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

I have yet to purchase my bag material, but plan on getting this:
http://www.lowes.com/pd_126394-968-...&pl=1&currentURL=/pl__0__s?Ntt=paint+strainer
My pot is ~3.5 gallons large that I will be using for Mashing.

I do need some sort of "rack" that I can place the bag on so that it doesnt make contact with the bottom of the pot if/when I need to apply more heat.

Am I missing anything?

Thanks!

Sounds good. I'm not sure how a yeast cake from an IPA will affect the taste, but I have no experience with that so whatever. 1 thing you can do is wrap the bag tight around the bot somehow or if you can get it to stay tight over the handles it might keep it above the bottom of the pot without some sort of "rack". Deathbrewer does this in his partial mash brews and demonstrates/explains it in the thread floating around here... let me find it real fast... here it is: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/

EDIT: I actually went and looked again, he uses clips to keep the bag off the bottom.

tronester said:

I do need some sort of "rack" that I can place the bag on so that it doesnt make contact with the bottom of the pot if/when I need to apply more heat.

Click to expand...

get a vegitable strainer that fits your brew pot, this will prevent bag from melting on you when you apply heat.

Wouldn't putting a raised bottom increase your water volume, mash time and kill your efficiency?

I've always set the bag in the kettle then throw it in the oven turned off at 170

I wrapped my mash with a quilt on all sides and it held 154-150 for an hour. I mashed in a 5 gallon pail the first time that was preheated with hot tap water. True Aussie BiaB uses full volume boils with no sparge. I just got a pot large enough to boil 7 gallons so I'm going to give that a try next.

looks good... if you are adding the table sugar to boost the OG, I would replace that with corn sugar. it will boost OG and not change the flavor. or even use a little DME to boost the OG.

pvtschultz said:

I wrapped my mash with a quilt on all sides and it held 154-150 for an hour. I mashed in a 5 gallon pail the first time that was preheated with hot tap water. True Aussie BiaB uses full volume boils with no sparge. I just got a pot large enough to boil 7 gallons so I'm going to give that a try next.

Click to expand...

Do you tea bag to get loose sugar out?

Get the bag from Austin Homebrew, Large Coarse Nylon Bag [01681]
$4.99
You can reuse it alot.

FWIW...I did my first BIAB today. A 3 gallon batch of Caramel amber ale that I found a recipe for on this site. I did it using 5 gallon paint strainer bags from home depot and a 5 gallon economy ss pot. I was aiming for a mash of 150 degrees. I heated my water to 162 and mashed in. The temp settled at 151...good enough for me. I let is sit covered on the stovetop with heat off. In the course of 60 minutes I uncovered and stirred about 4 times. The final temp after 1 hour was 151. I was amazed. I didnt wrap it or anything. I hit my OG spot on. I am definitely sold on the BIAB method.. Good luck, I am sure it will go fine.

Thanks for the help, guys.

I too am in the process of doing my first batch right now.

The mash temp calculator was pretty close, but I mashed about 1 degree hotter than anticipated, 153F. I did not have to apply heat at all, I wrapped the pot with towels, and the top too. I mashed for about 80 minutes, and then squeezed the crap out of the grain bag to try and extract as much as I could. I hope I don't get excess tannins from doing that! There was still at least a bit of liquid left in the grains when I threw them out, I am going to wait till the end of the boil (in about 30 minutes, I am doing a 90 minute total boil) to grab a sample of the wort to do a refractometer reading.

Unfortunately I did not realize with my refractometer you need distilled water, I only had tap. It registered at 2 brix when calibrating, and I could not even adjust the meter to go any further down. Any suggestions on this? How important is using distilled versus tap water for the calibration? Can I just take the reading with my wort, and then subtract 2 from the brix number, or does it not work that way?

On a positive note, I bottled my extract Citra IPA while mashing this batch, and man is it good! I can't wait for it to carbonate!

no worries about tannins from squeezing the bag.... doesn't happen like that..