Do you squeeze the bag -BIAB

dantheman13 said:

The discussion is really good. The guys over there are very friendly and more than willing to offer you advice. There is no void of detailed information. In fact, the post that I gave me the idea on how to squeeze my bag was quite in depth, along with efficiency numbers and gravity readings that compared before and after the squeezing.

It isn't as active over there as it is on HBT, but there is a lot less... bickering.

Oh, another thing the Aussies like to do is get a pulley system to lift their bag. I haven't read up on how that system really works and the methods they use, but these guys are really hardcore about their BIAB techniques!

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nice.. im on my way over.

dantheman13 said:

Oh, another thing the Aussies like to do is get a pulley system to lift their bag. I haven't read up on how that system really works and the methods they use, but these guys are really hardcore about their BIAB techniques!

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I use a pulley over a chin up bar, the built in ratchet keeps the bag suspended. Used it once so far and was impressed at how easy it was. $25 for the pulley & rope combo and the chin up bar. A pair of silicone oven gloves for the hot squeeze. I wound up with more wort than I expected using this method.

My procedure goes something like this.

Lift garage door that has pulley attached to it. Back up SWMBO's Enduro bike and hoist my basket up to about 1" over the wort surface. Tie off to bike.Turn on burner. Smoke a cig. Place an upside down metal pot lid in there that is fairly tight fitting and place 2x20lb weights on top of it, wait till no more drips (15~)

My first one I just squeezed the bag down with my hands, didn't bother me too much but my life involves lots of hot glue on my fingers so yea.....

Don't big commercial breweries use something called a "mash press"? I have a buddy that brews at Left Hand out of Longmount, CO and he said they use a "mash press." I'm an extract brewer so I don't know sh** about mashing but it sounds like the same idea, no? If I'm out of line, I'll just head back to the extract forum with all the kids and adult half-wits

When I do it I use a colander over my 5 gal pot. I made 3gal Centennial Blond for my sister this weekend and I squeezed and pressed it. I want all the sweet wort I can get

Bigloveystyle said:

Don't big commercial breweries use something called a "mash press"? I have a buddy that brews at Left Hand out of Longmount, CO and he said they use a "mash press." I'm an extract brewer so I don't know sh** about mashing but it sounds like the same idea, no? If I'm out of line, I'll just head back to the extract forum with all the kids and adult half-wits

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I don't know about pro breweries, but it makes sense to me if some of them do that. Its the high temperatures that produce tannins, not the squeezing. If you keep your mash temps good, then there won't be any tannins to squeeze out!

It would be more correct to say that high temperatures EXTRACT tannins. The tannins already exist in the hulls. Looking at it in this way suggests that there ARE tannins and squeezing the hulls may very well release them, no?

I'm not suggesting that squeezing releases the tannins. I squeeze the crap out of my bag.

As for the basis of this worry:
The instructions that come with some kits instruct the brewer NOT to squeeze the specialty grain steeping bag and warn of tannin extraction.

In John Palmer's How To Brew we find this analysis of flow geometry inside a mash tun during sparge: http://www.howtobrew.com/appendices/appendixD-2.html
I am unsure if the suggestion of excess tannin extraction is based on simple over rinsing or if temperatures would be concentrated to tannin extraction levels in certain spots.

Here in How to Brew reference is made to the idea that tannin extraction is a function of soak time regardless if temperatures are kept down: http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter13-2.html

Elsewhere in Palmer's How to Brew we find a recommendation to squeeze a steeping bag but not to compress it to drain it dry: http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter13-3.html

I take all this to mean that tannins can be extracted through means that are not strictly reliant on excess temperatures and that vigorously squeezing the bag or over rinsing the grains can contribute to excess tannin extraction. However, I have yet to experience bad results from moderate squeezing of my bag.

Revvy said:

Yes you squeeze. In fact read this, and watch the basic brewing video I linked in this post. The thread is a discussion of the myth that squeezing the grain bag in extract w/ grains extracts tannins, but I reference the fact that in biab we do squeeze. In fact James at Basic Brewing is squeezing in the video.

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Revvy, are you supposed to not squeeze the bag in extract brewing? I have let mine simply drain while holding it, but I feel like there's still tons of usable water in there every time...

Darklordenron said:

Revvy, are you supposed to not squeeze the bag in extract brewing? I have let mine simply drain while holding it, but I feel like there's still tons of usable water in there every time...

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See that's the point of the idiotic oversimplification of the "don't squeeze the bag" crap. It's illogical that if it's ok to squeeze for one, that you wouldn't squeeze for the other. Despite what's been repeated over and over. Just like boiling grains- we boil our grains if we're doing a decoction mash...

Go ahead and squeeze regardless of whether or not it's extract or biab.

Read this.

This ought to settle some questions. Consider this:

A commercial brewery has a hundreds of pounds of grain in a mash tun.
At the end of lauter, there is significant pressure on the bottom part of the grain bed.
This pressure is probably equal or greater than the pressure exerted from a person standing on a home-brewer's 10-gallon mash.
In other words, in a commercial brewery, half of the mash is getting squeezed, HARD. So it must be okay.

hollywoodbrew said:

This ought to settle some questions. Consider this:

A commercial brewery has a hundreds of pounds of grain in a mash tun.
At the end of lauter, there is significant pressure on the bottom part of the grain bed.
This pressure is probably equal or greater than the pressure exerted from a person standing on a home-brewer's 10-gallon mash.
In other words, in a commercial brewery, half of the mash is getting squeezed, HARD. So it must be okay.

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great point .. I am getting 7 to 10 more points squeezing, and my beer, to me anyway, taste just the same as when i didnt squeeze .. chheers ... good read here

Resurrecting a dead post! Yes... squeeze squeeze squeeze the bag! And I'm not sure why I'm reading that a lot of people are sparging in a BIAB session. If you're sparging.. you're not BIABing.

The BIAB method takes the mash tun, HLT, and boil vessel and combines them into one pot. To better illustrate.... here's my BIAB method that I've done with 4 beers... and all of them have turned out fantastic!

I have two 5gal stainless steel pots. Both are filled with 3.5 gal of water. Then I insert the bag (I use nylon paint straining bags; one for each pot.. they're cheap, they're strong, and they're reusable!) I split my grain bill between the two pots, mash, then at the end of the mash, I'll let them drain for a bit, then put them in a colander and set them above fermenting buckets (cleaned and sanitized beforehand, of course.) At this point, while I'm waiting for my wort to boil, it gives time for the bags of grain to drain more, as well as to cool down enough so I can squeeze the hell outta them. Once I've collected as much left over wort from the grain, I set the grain bags outside, and dump the collected wort into my pots. Viola... full volume mash, full volume boil... no muss, no fuss! I don't have to wait for the sparge, it makes my brew day go that much faster, I've never had problems hitting either pre-boil gravities or post-boil gravities.... it is so simple and effective!

fergy89406 said:

Resurrecting a dead post! Yes... squeeze squeeze squeeze the bag! And I'm not sure why I'm reading that a lot of people are sparging in a BIAB session. If you're sparging.. you're not BIABing.

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there are many different ways to achieve the same goal. would you say that someone that mashed in a cooler mashtun but didn't sparge wasn't really mashing with a 3 vessel setup? No of course not. Just like if someone has a 7.5 gallon kettle and wants to do a BIAB 5 gallon batch, there won't be room to fit all the water and grain. they dunk in a separate pot (dunk sparging) to rinse the grains and add that to the kettle. it's still BIAB since they used a bag. I could point out that you aren't doing a "real" BIAB since you don't use a single pot so it wasn't a true full volume. However, you still mashed in a bag so it's a BIAB.

In the end, no matter how you get there we all end up at the same place and that's with beer in the glass and a smile on our face. So I say, stop nit picking how someone gets there, rejoice that they turned grain into beer...

I BIAB using a 5 gallon coleman cooler. I only have a 3 gallon kettle and though I'm only doing 1.75 gal batches I'm pushing the limits of the kettle w/water and over 4 lbs of grain. The cooler also is much easier to maintain my mash temp w/out messing w/towels, sleeping bags or whatever people use to insulate their kettles.

I squeeze the life out of the bag by twisting the upper portion of the bag into a single column and then wrap it around the handle of a metal spoon. I then twist the bag and the spoon squeezes the bag smaller and smaller and tighter getting the last drops out of the mash.