First AG -BIAB- comments suggestions

Well yesterday I decided to take the plunge. Got myself the following: supposedly a 3 gallon batch- but really- 3.2 - but my outcome ended up being 3.5

4 pale
1/2 acid
1/2 dark cry
1/2 roasted barley
1/2 choco malt

3/4 williamette
1 styrian golding

Called for 155 strike- mash at 150 - 2 gallons water for 70minutes.

It then said sparge to collect 3.2 gallons (go figure, guestimation FTW)

I did a 75 minute boil because I had collected too much water IMO

60 on the williamette
15 on the golding

I have a SG of 1.042 - wort was not super sweet- its a stout- but sweet enough to know I have fermentables.


I did the 2 gallon mash in a 5 g pot- drained grains

I then wanted to run 170 degree sparge water through the bag- did as much as I could- till my stove was full of spilled wort- no worries- plenty of fluid left-

tea bagged, and dropped the remaining wort bag into the mash out / sparge pot for 10 minutes.

Added both worts into pot- got my boil- and 75 minutes etc.

Pitched at 70- and it looked mighty fine.

Swamped that puppy- and will play the waiting game. Besides spilling wort- and since I never really did a dual pot- mash in / mash out- sparge deal. Im not even sure what to call what I did - on the stove - other than calling it beer.

Did I overdo it with the sparge pot? Did I increase efficiency by doing so- and if I did- how can I tell? I ran this through beersmith- and well, I plugged everything in- it all checks out- but what it doesn't say is did I do a good job or not. How the heck can one tell? How do I know if I got good efficiency?

Can someone talk me off the ledge

1. Congrats on your first all-grain batch.

2. Relax. You'll have beer when all is said and done. And that's what's important.

3. The only way you'll know if you did a good job or not is if the beer you end up with is enjoyable to drink. Nothing else really matters at this stage. Only time will tell.

4. Efficiency. Well, judging from your process description, sounds like you were doing a fair amount of guestimating on volumes. Without more accurate measurements, efficiency is going to be hard to determine. Is the 1.042 the expected OG for the recipe or is that what you measured with your hydrometer? If the former, did you take any gravity readings? If you have accurate volumes and gravity readings, both pre- and post-boil, plugging them into BeerSmith will tell you your efficiency. With BIAB, 80% is generally the area you should be aiming for, though repeatability is a more worthwhile goal than efficiency.

Even with accurate numbers for volume and gravity, it will likely take you a few batches to come up with the correct constants for boiloff and grain absorption to enter into BS for your setup so that you get fairly predictable results from batch to batch.

Well, I do a full volume BIAB because of the simplicity and no need of sparging. I'd say that you I'd fine!

Only way to really know your efficiency is to take a hydrometer reading after the boil when you are down to your batch volume.

Ive got 85-89% efficiency the past 3 batches I've done and that was with a full volume BIAB. IMO, sparging and all that fancy jazz isn't necessary for what I do. That's my two cents.

I'm lost how this is a stout at 1.042 SG?!?

Congrats on taking the plunge, though!

tre9er said:

I'm lost how this is a stout at 1.042 SG?!?

Congrats on taking the plunge, though!

Click to expand...

Its an Irish Stout- just figured I would add that


I have some pre-boil numbers at home- from the looks of things- I did 2 gallons mash- which ended up looking closer to 1 Gallon when all was said and done- adding the sparge water from the colander / strainer through the bag, tea bagging and dumping rest of sparge water into main pot- gave me about 4 gallons - dropped 1/2 - giving me full 3 1/2 gallons of wort.


Are my gravity numbers way off? Here is something I plugged online here-

Gravity at 100% Efficiency:
1.065 - max
Gravity at 75% Efficiency:
1.049
Brew House Efficiency:
77.29%
Points / Pound / Gallon (ppg):
26.7

mikemet said:

Its an Irish Stout- just figured I would add that


I have some pre-boil numbers at home- from the looks of things- I did 2 gallons mash- which ended up looking closer to 1 Gallon when all was said and done- adding the sparge water from the colander / strainer through the bag, tea bagging and dumping rest of sparge water into main pot- gave me about 4 gallons - dropped 1/2 - giving me full 3 1/2 gallons of wort.


Are my gravity numbers way off? Here is something I plugged online here-

Gravity at 100% Efficiency:
1.065 - max
Gravity at 75% Efficiency:
1.049
Brew House Efficiency:
77.29%
Points / Pound / Gallon (ppg):
26.7

Click to expand...

No, if that's your recipe, I'm just used to stouts having a higher gravity than that. Of course, a lot of homebrewers seem to only make high-gravity beers, so that's probably skewed my perception. Carry-on!