Finally! Clear Wort Using BIAB

I love BIAB, but it tends to produce less than clear wort. Tonight I changed things up a bit, and the result was wort that was substantially more clear than I'm used to with much less trub in the pot. I usually grind pretty fine, and my grind tonight was no different. I usually grind, put the bag in the pot of water, then slowly dump in the grain. Tonight I decided to try to get rid of some of the flour that inevitably gets made when you have a fine grind. After grinding, I put my bag in a bucket and dumped my grain in it. Then I bounced/shook/hit the bag for a few minutes to let the finer grain fall out. Once I had done that, I was shocked at how much flour was sitting in the bottom of the bucket! Now, of course I could just set my grind gap a little wider, but I really like where it's at, minus just a little more flour than I want.

I wasn't sure that this was going to do anything, but this wort was the clearest I've ever had. There was virtually nothing in the wort when I transferred to the primary, and I'd say all that was left in the boil kettle was about a tablespoon or so of sediment.

Maybe all of you BIAB people figured this out a while ago, but tonight was my "well duh" night. Just a minute of shaking the bag to get rid of the dusty stuff made a monsterous difference in the wort. I'll be doing that from now on for sure. And before you say that losing all of that grain from the flour will hurt my efficiency - I was still at 83% going into the boil.

What efficiency do you normally get? What style of beer was it? Sounds interesting.

If you're numbers are correct then I would assume that a lot of that "flour" is chaff or husk. I suppose though that you must get your grind just right in order for the "flour" makeup to not contain a whole lot of "good stuff"(tm) or else you could loose some efficiency.

Sounds interesting. I may have to try this...

Pommy said:

What efficiency do you normally get? What style of beer was it? Sounds interesting.

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This was a porter. I usually get efficiencies in the high 70's or low 80's, so this was right in line with my normal. I think stamandster is probably right that alot of the "flour" is actually just fine chaff, which would explain the efficiency. I'm seriously considering just throwing my grain on top of a square screen (like window screen) after I grind it and giving it a few taps to get rid of even more of the fine junk before I put it in the mash. I think that will completely solve any issue I've ever had with transferring a ton of junk into my primary on accident (assuming I don't mess up something else of course). That step is likely uncessary since it works pretty well to just shake the bag, but it's got me curious to see if my efficiencies stay the same and if my wort clears up even more. We'll see.

This is very interesting. I have been wrestling with changing my process or not. I love the simplicity of BIAB and my one complaint is the cloudy wort. I hate having such a high loss of wort after racking the clear stuff off.

I will definitely give this a shot next go around. So glad to be suffering some insomnia right now!

I finally got around to bottling the porter last weekend. Usually I have to leave a substantial amount of beer in the primary when transferring to my bottling bucket just because of the amount of "junk" that goes into the primary from using BIAB. This batch was beautifully clean, with almost nothing but yeast in the bottom of the primary. That meant more beer in the bottling bucket and every last drop could go into a bottle without sucking up sediment.

I'm sure normal AG methods get this same result, but BIAB is pretty well know for leaving more junk than you want in your wort and bottling bucket. With this result, I'll absolutely take the extra couple of minutes to shake/hit the bag before making the mash. Maybe my previous method just sucked that bad, but this method is night and day. What a dumb aha moment, but I'll take it.

skelrad said:

I finally got around to bottling the porter last weekend. Usually I have to leave a substantial amount of beer in the primary when transferring to my bottling bucket just because of the amount of "junk" that goes into the primary from using BIAB. This batch was beautifully clean, with almost nothing but yeast in the bottom of the primary. That meant more beer in the bottling bucket and every last drop could go into a bottle without sucking up sediment.

I'm sure normal AG methods get this same result, but BIAB is pretty well know for leaving more junk than you want in your wort and bottling bucket. With this result, I'll absolutely take the extra couple of minutes to shake/hit the bag before making the mash. Maybe my previous method just sucked that bad, but this method is night and day. What a dumb aha moment, but I'll take it.

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i have to disagree with you on this whole idea. cloudy wort has nothing to do with cloudy beer. BIAB is not known for producing cloudier beer than any other method. sifting out the flour from a grain bill makes little sense since that flour contains the starches needed to produce beer in the first place. there is something in your process this time that produced a clear beer but it was definitely not shaking the flour out of your grain bag.

eastoak said:

i have to disagree with you on this whole idea. cloudy wort has nothing to do with cloudy beer. BIAB is not known for producing cloudier beer than any other method. sifting out the flour from a grain bill makes little sense since that flour contains the starches needed to produce beer in the first place. there is something in your process this time that produced a clear beer but it was definitely not shaking the flour out of your grain bag.

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The flour could very easily be providing the cloudy appearance to the beer as the vorlauf used in AG allows the small pieces of grain (flour) to be filtered out (to an extent) as well as larger chunks of grain. This flour is simply small bits of grain and boiling this will contribute proteins which contribute to chill haze. Although its by no means a scientific experiment the theory is sound to me.

I think the lack of flour in the BIAB this time allowed the grains to form a better grainbed (if you can call it that in BIAB) which meant less debris in the boil.

Another way to reduce flour is to condition your malt before grinding. Spritz about 2% water by weight into your malt with a good spray bottle and let it sit for about 5 mins before running it through the mill.

What kind of bag do you use?

I find my wort is pretty damn clear provided I get a nice clean cold break from chilling, and leave the trub in the kettle. I BIAB with a double-walled swiss-voile bag and double grind on the tighest setting.

Pommy said:

The flour could very easily be providing the cloudy appearance to the beer as the vorlauf used in AG allows the small pieces of grain (flour) to be filtered out (to an extent) as well as larger chunks of grain. This flour is simply small bits of grain and boiling this will contribute proteins which contribute to chill haze. Although its by no means a scientific experiment the theory is sound to me.

I think the lack of flour in the BIAB this time allowed the grains to form a better grainbed (if you can call it that in BIAB) which meant less debris in the boil.

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a good hot break and cold break will take care of the chill haze causing proteins in the beer regardless of what bits of grain are in the boil. i rarely (never) have wort that is free of bits of grain and i always have clear beer. after a brew tv episode where they talked about not doing a vorlauf i experimented with that and still had clear beer.

I guess I should clarify. This isn't about getting a clear beer as a final product. To me it's about making it easier to transfer just the good stuff from the boil to the primary, and subsequently to the bottling bucket. I have to leave less in the bottom of each bucket because there's less junk in there. So I just get more beer doing this. I get clear beer regardless.

Doing this doesn't make or break anything. It's not a big deal to do or not to do. I just thought it made the process much easier by not having to worry about getting a ton of trub, that's all.

I've thought about trying this, but I have always worried about losing efficiency. I assumed the fine white stuff was an important part of the grain bill. I use a walmart Viole fabric which is pretty fine, but I still have cloudy wort. I get the clouds to clump and settle to some during the cold break, but there are still clouds throughout the kettle and a couple inches of cloudy wort at the bottom. The wort on top is crystal clear, but unless I just resign myself to having that cloudy stuff in my fermenter, I would be leaving a gallon or more of beer in the kettle. I've done that before for crystal clear wort but it turns a 5 gallon batch into 4.

BetterSense said:

I've thought about trying this, but I have always worried about losing efficiency. I assumed the fine white stuff was an important part of the grain bill. I use a walmart Viole fabric which is pretty fine, but I still have cloudy wort. I get the clouds to clump and settle to some during the cold break, but there are still clouds throughout the kettle and a couple inches of cloudy wort at the bottom. The wort on top is crystal clear, but unless I just resign myself to having that cloudy stuff in my fermenter, I would be leaving a gallon or more of beer in the kettle. I've done that before for crystal clear wort but it turns a 5 gallon batch into 4.

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all of the trub compacts to the bottom of the fermenter and once it's out of solution it won't affect your beer in a negative way. the top layer is always yeast so anything you stir up while bottling will be yeast. another solution is to rework your water volumes so that leaving a gallon in the kettle still leaves 5 gallons in the fermenter but that seems like a long way around.

skelrad said:

I finally got around to bottling the porter last weekend. Usually I have to leave a substantial amount of beer in the primary when transferring to my bottling bucket just because of the amount of "junk" that goes into the primary from using BIAB. This batch was beautifully clean, with almost nothing but yeast in the bottom of the primary. That meant more beer in the bottling bucket and every last drop could go into a bottle without sucking up sediment.

I'm sure normal AG methods get this same result, but BIAB is pretty well know for leaving more junk than you want in your wort and bottling bucket. With this result, I'll absolutely take the extra couple of minutes to shake/hit the bag before making the mash. Maybe my previous method just sucked that bad, but this method is night and day. What a dumb aha moment, but I'll take it.

Click to expand...

skelrad said:

I guess I should clarify. This isn't about getting a clear beer as a final product. To me it's about making it easier to transfer just the good stuff from the boil to the primary, and subsequently to the bottling bucket. I have to leave less in the bottom of each bucket because there's less junk in there. So I just get more beer doing this. I get clear beer regardless.

Doing this doesn't make or break anything. It's not a big deal to do or not to do. I just thought it made the process much easier by not having to worry about getting a ton of trub, that's all.

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I'm happy you found something that works for you, but... to me this "BIAB produces much cloudier wort" claim is pretty much irrelevant. The wort clears just fine after fermentation (Whirfloc helps a lot too) and I don't mind leaving a bit of beer in the fermentor to avoid trub when packaging. Careful racking and leaving a small amount of finished beer behind to avoid trub is a common practice that is not isolated to BIAB. The notion of getting "every last drop" after fermentation is more of a personal thing rather than a true limitation of BIAB.

Maybe instead of trying to get every last drop from the fermentor you can simply increase your final batch size by .25 or .50 gallon so you get the volume you need vs. worrying about getting every drop possible.

I always shake. Seems to make much clearer wort.

Wolf, I read this thread after you revived it. Interesting, but I think I'll just keep putting it all in.

GNBrews said:

Another way to reduce flour is to condition your malt before grinding. Spritz about 2% water by weight into your malt with a good spray bottle and let it sit for about 5 mins before running it through the mill.

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This is what I do and it makes a difference, less flour with a tighter crush. I've also noticed better draining when I pull my basket.