My first all grain BIAB, everything went wrong

ok im going to try and make this short. i brewed my first all grain batch on sunday. it was a two hearted ale clone, 13lb of grain. i used sparge pal on my iphone to calculate how much water to use. 4.1 gal mash and 4.8 gal spage. i heated my water to 167 and mixed in my grain very good, stirring alot and checked the temp and thought it was 155. i covered and lt sit for 30 min, and checked temp again, it read 158. so i belive my first temp reading was wrong.i stired some more and got the temp to about 156 and let it sit for the remainder of the hour. i heated my sparege water to 180 and drained the bag and place it in and stirred it, probly not was good as i should of. let sit for 10 min and drained and combined. i started the boil with 6.8 gallons, 1.048 @ 80*. i added the hops per the recipe, 1oz centennial @60, 1 @15, 1 @ 5. at about 3min left a ran out of propane and did not do the last 1 min hop addition. cooled and added yeast starter as normal. og was 1.052@80*

so my question is should i dry hop .5 oz like the recipe calls for or not at all and what can i do to improve my efficenty?

Thanks for the help, i have been reading the forum for over 6 months and you all have answered alot of questions for me. thanks

Yes dry hop it! You can probably add the 1 min addition to the dry hopping, it should make up for leaving it out pretty well. It should turn out fine, probably pretty hoppy compared to the OG. If its too bitter, let it age some months.

I have used the BIAB method for all grain several times now. I'm not sure exactly why your efficiency wasn't as high as it could have been. One possibility is that your mash temp was just a little bit high and so all your starches didn't convert to sugars but rather to dextrins that will add to the body of your beer, but not the OG. Now as to why the temp remained so high, I have no idea. With 13 pounds of grain, I would think 167 would easily get knocked down to 150-152. How confident are you in the accuracy of your thermometer? And you said you stirred while adding the grains... I've found lately that this helps my efficiency. Oh, one more thing I do--- after sparging, I let the bag with all the grains sit in another empty pot for about 20 minutes. A good amount of sugary wort drains out. I add this to the wort as it gets to boiling.

Keep at it. I'm sure your beer will still turn out great. I've been getting about 75% efficiency with all grain BIAB (although always with 10-12 pounds of grain) so it is possible to get high efficiency.

And I agree with bsdx about the dry hopping. Do it! Half an ounce or an ounce of Centennial will give you a great whiff of hops when you put your face in your beer. Good luck!

You got, what, 60-65% efficiency for BIAB? Not bad. To make it better, use a "real" all grain setup, (hlt, mlt, etc.).

For mashing, wait TEN MINUTES after mixing before you measure your mash temp, things take time to equilibrate...that's why your temps were weird.

For dry hopping, YES. It adds SO MUCH to IPAs....hit it with all you got.

You got, what, 60-65% efficiency for BIAB? Not bad. To make it better, use a "real" all grain setup, (hlt, mlt, etc.).

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I've just gotta disagree with that. A more traditional all grain setup might be more suitable for big beers with lots of grain... but I have easily gotten over 70% using BIAB every time. Usually right around 75%.

BmillaTheBrewzilla said:

I've just gotta disagree with that. A more traditional all grain setup might be more suitable for big beers with lots of grain... but I have easily gotten over 70% using BIAB every time. Usually right around 75%.

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Sorry, you're right, I should have been more clear.

Both high and low efficiencies can be hit with any system. With BIAB, it seems like there are more variables, (and less understood variables), whereas a more "traditional" system might be better understood.

What I should have said was, "I don't have enough experience with BIAB, so for me to advise further, we'd have to switch to talking about MLT based systems".

Did you boil it down to 5 gallons? Because if you only boiled for 1 hour total you would most likely only boil off like 1 gallon, leaving you with about 5.8 gallons in the fermenter and an apparent efficiency about 86% of your actual efficiency.

Also, I wouldn't sweat missing your mash temp by a couple degrees. I doubt you would notice the difference in the final product.

My first BIAB had a powerful 32% efficiency. I think you did great for a first time. I agree with the crush idea. Get a fantastic crush, that will help a lot. All I can add.

Thanks for the help. the crush was Brewmaster wharehouse, should i ask for doubl crush next time? i did not boil down to 5 gallons, i put 5.5 in the fermenter and had about .5 left in the kettle.

Sounds like you had .8 gal/hr boiloff. Your eff was prolly fine seeing as how you had 6 gal of wort. Adjust your recipe for six gal next time or boil longer, and you will be fine.

yes on the dryhop.

I hit high 80%'s with BIAB. I stirred well during mash and t baged the sparge until i felt the color quit changing. took just a few minutes.

How did it turn out??? Updates