Observations & Questions from First BIAB Session

Hey all.

Excited to be making the move to all grain, and decided to keep things simple for my first few tries. So Brew In A Bag seemed like the way to go for me.

Brewed Northern Brewer's Cream Ale:
- 7 lbs. Rahr 2-Row Pale
- 0.75 lbs. Gambrinus Honey Malt
- 0.25 lbs. Belgian Biscuit malt
- 1 oz Cluster (60-min)
- Wyeast #1056 American Ale

Target OG is 1.040

This was my first crack at figuring out starting water volume to account for grain absorption AND boil off. As well as getting the right strike water temp and holding the mash temp.

Started with ~7.2 gallons with the hopes of ending with 5.5 in Primary. Target mash temp was 150, so I brought the water to 158. Crushed the grain pretty fine and after adding to the water and stirring in the temp only dropped to 155. Thought it would drop more than that. (I'm mashing in the bag in a 10 gallon Boilermaker.)

Had to add some heat at 30 minutes to keep temp close to 150.

After draining the bag I had 6.6 gallons in the pot.

Post boil, cool and into the primary (5 gallons), OG read 1.050. Higher than expected.

Using this calculator (http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/), I achieved 84.6% efficiency? Possible? Seems higher than what I've read from other BIAB brewers.

As always, interested in your thoughts, suggestions, and comments about what I may have done right, wrong, or could do better next time.

Thanks!

I have had efficiency up to mid 80s. It is possible with the grin crushed just right. There are programs that will help calculate your strike temp. I use Beersmith and have an app on my phone and I hit my strike perfect each time.

Here's the Strike Temp Calculator I used. No idea how good/accurate it is...

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

It's definitely possible that your efficiency was in the mid 80s. A lot of that number depends on the grain crush, and BIAB can handle a finer crush. I've gotten anywhere between 65 and 82% efficiency with BIAB.

If you have an android phone, check out Brewzor. It is a handy brewing app with tons of calculators. Also, Beersmith rocks.

Did you top off at all, or was 5 gallons the real deal? If you topped off and didn't mix thoroughly, you could have an inaccurate gravity reading. If you want it to be a lighter beer, you might add half a gallon to the fermenter to reach the 5.5 you were shooting for, which would get you a bit more beer closer to the gravity you wanted. You could use a dilution calculator to find the new OG.

The rackers site is usually pretty good with strike temps for me. Maybe your grain temp or mash thickness was off.

Didn't top off. 5 gallons was what was left after the full volume boil. Like the idea of adding water to dilute. This beer is supposed to be on the lighter side.

Another all grain question for folks out there - especially BIAB brewers.

Here's a picture from my session yesterday. And this was taken well into the 60 minute boil. The sight glass showed a weird non-mixing of water and wort...


Can't recall if I noticed the same in my first try. And when looking into the kettle it looked like everything was mixing nicely. Is this just a sight glass quirk? Maybe because the liquid outside of the kettle in the glass is cooler and not boiling?