BIAB FWH- What's the process?

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jamesnsw

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I do Brew in a bag, and am wondering how people do First Wort Hops? Would it work to just throw the hops in the kettle as you bring it to a boil? It sounds like that would do the same thing, right?
 
You could add them during the mash (outside the bag, so they stay in the kettle when the grains are removed). That would be an interesting way to combine the first wort hopping and mash hopping techniques.
 
The idea with FWH is that the hops steep in warm, high gravity wort, (the first runnings). The two keys here are that the wort is not boiling, (since you haven't even sparged yet), AND that the wort is very high gravity, (as the first runnings are much higher gravity than the runnings from sparges) If you are BIABing with a sparge step, (half the water in there for your mash in BIAB, then pour water over the bag to "sparge"), then I'd toss the hops into the wort with about 10 minutes to go in the mash, and you'd get about the same effect.

If you are BIABing with the full volume of water, (which is, I believe, how most do it), and no sparge step, then you really don't have any "high gravity" runnings. In this case, it would be more of a mash hopping, as toman8r states, than a FWH...but of course the hops would stay in there until the boil, so you'd not be wasting them as many say you do with mash hopping, (I'm undecided on this matter)...
 
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