BIAB with AG Kit Instructions and Beer Smith

Ok, I’m gearing up for my second brew. I’ve decided to try out BIAB with an AG kit.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-TheNumber8.pdf

Now that I’m actually trying to plan my brew day out, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed and I’m wondering if BIAB was the right decision. :smack:

I started trying to stick the recipe into Beer Smith and I honestly don’t know what to enter to get the appropriate water ratio, or strike temperature. Does it look like the pdf above lists all the kit ingredients? Can I just enter all of that into Beer Smith?

Also do I still need to follow the instructions for the boil additions & times, or should I make adjustments for BIAB? I know that this batch is likely going to end up a little off, but I’m worried that I’m going to completely ruin it.

Getting the proper volumes of water is going to take a few brews to get to know your equipment. Use the equipment wizard to get you a baseline and record your volumes every step of the way so you can keep it updated. Once you are on about your 5th batch, you should have a good idea on the amount of water you need.
Here is a calculator to help get your boil off rate: http://sigginet.info/brewing/tools/equipment-profile-helper/

To make it easy, I would just get your strike water to about 159F-163 (above the 149F), add the grain, then go flame on while stirring to get to the 149F mark and cover/flame-out. Wrap the pot in blankets to help keep it at temp. I just stick my thermometer in my grain to get the temp when I plug it in.
After the hour is done and you drain the BIAB, boiling the wort is just like any other brew day. Follow the recipe additions.

BS2 has biab full, light, medium or pilsner step mash listed. Pick one of those, then go to your equipment as stated & work out the numbers you get. It took me a while to do a few batches to get BS2 close or on what boil off, etc I get. Not really any way around that. Otherwise, when you type in the recipe & you go to add hop additions for example, you add in the little box whether it's in the boil or dry hop. How long for dry hop, or at how many minutes it's added. In addition, I did my usual process in regard to brewing the recipe till I got Beersmith closer to what I actually do. Used it mostly to work out recipes. It takes a while to set everything up as you go, but is remarkably accurate when you do.

On second thought, heat your water to about 154-155F then add grain. That should put you close to the 149F mark. You want to try and not heat as much as you have to so you don't scorch the bag.

Probably looking at around 9 gallons of water to start.

These might help you set us BeerSmith for BIAB:

http://brulosophy.com/2014/08/04/beersmith-tutorial-equipment-profile-setup/
http://brulosophy.com/2014/08/11/beersmith-tutorial-biab-mash-profile-setup/

That's about the temp range I start with when stirring the grains in my nylon bag. I stretch the bag over the lip of the kettle. Heating the water with the bag in there has been fine so far for me. Wrapped up in a winter coat, blanket, whatever can still go from, say 153F down to 149F or so over the one hour mash in my experience. So op should be fine.

Crumb93 said:

Ok, I’m gearing up for my second brew. I’ve decided to try out BIAB with an AG kit.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-TheNumber8.pdf

Now that I’m actually trying to plan my brew day out, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed and I’m wondering if BIAB was the right decision. :smack:

I started trying to stick the recipe into Beer Smith and I honestly don’t know what to enter to get the appropriate water ratio, or strike temperature. Does it look like the pdf above lists all the kit ingredients? Can I just enter all of that into Beer Smith?

Also do I still need to follow the instructions for the boil additions & times, or should I make adjustments for BIAB? I know that this batch is likely going to end up a little off, but I’m worried that I’m going to completely ruin it.

Click to expand...

Strike water calc is actually pretty simple even if you did have calculator...but you do so use it. You only need a couple parameters to get volume and temp:

Weight of grain
Approximate temperature of grain
Volume of beer you want int he fermentor

All the other parameters kind of take car of themselves unless you plan to sparge your BIAB. The exception is if your brew pot cannot hold 11.5# of grain plus the requisite water (that recipe does not have the volume but I am guessing 3 gallon?) So let's say it is a 3 gal batch...you probably nee a boil volume of about 3.7 gallons...that means you need about 4.8 gallons of water at about 159f to hit 149 f.

All you are doing is adding a specified volume of water to counteract grain absorbtion at about .1 gallon/#. So that is 1.15 gallons. Then you need boil off which is about 10% so .3 gallons. You loose some to cold break and hops so add another .2 gallons. If you want 3 gallons in the bottles you loose another .1-.2 gallons in the ferementor.

1.15+.3+.2+.2+3=4.85 gallons.
Make sense?

Yes it does! Things are starting to come together. I actually found a calculator online too. This is what I’m getting; it looks pretty reasonable.

Total Water Needed
8.16 Gallons
Strike Water Temp
149 Fahrenheit
Total Mash Volume
9.08 Gallons
PreBoil Wort
7.65 Gallons
PostBoil Wort
5.25 Gallons
Into Fermenter
5.00 Gallons

This is with a Grain and Mash temp at 149 degrees.

As far as the rest is concerned, I’m just bringing the wort to a boil and as soon as it starts boiling I should add my Tradition hops and let that boil for 60 minutes? And then 30 minutes after adding the Tradition hops I’ll throw the Hersbrucker and so on?

I apologize I really appreciate everyone’s input, I just feel like I got myself in over my head here.

Crumb93 said:

As far as the rest is concerned, I’m just bringing the wort to a boil and as soon as it starts boiling I should add my Tradition hops and let that boil for 60 minutes? And then 30 minutes after adding the Tradition hops I’ll throw the Hersbrucker and so on?

Click to expand...

Yessir

Just remember that with full volume BIAB mashing, the larger volume of strike water has less of a thermal drop when adding the grain. Find a good BIAB mash calculator online as Beersmith was never really good a hitting the right temps when I used it.

I've been mashing for years in a 5 gallon cooler. The problem I have is I never have more than 3 gallons of water in the cooler and usually about 5 lbs of grain or less. I wind up loosing about 10 degrees over the hour. Think I may get some of that insulation I see people wrapping around their boil kettles and mash in it so I can keep a steady temp.

Yeah, I've had the same problem. I always wrapped my BK/MT (biab) in my quilted hunting coat with pot holders under the bottom of the kettle on the inside/back of the coat. It would actually go up one degree during the hour mash. Now, if I start at, say 153F, it goes down to 147/149F. Doing everything the same, I now seem to need more insulation? This is with 4-6lbs+ of grains in the right amount of water too?

Crumb93 said:

Yes it does! Things are starting to come together. I actually found a calculator online too. This is what I’m getting; it looks pretty reasonable.

Total Water Needed
8.16 Gallons
Strike Water Temp
149 Fahrenheit

This is with a Grain and Mash temp at 149 degrees.

Click to expand...

This doesn't look right to me, if you are going to mash @ 149 your strike water will need to be XX degrees higher depending on your actual grain temp and your system variables. The system variables get figured out over the course of several brew sessions and will continue to be refined as you brew more. But you have to start somewhere

What calculator did you use?

MerlinWerks said:

This doesn't look right to me, if you are going to mash @ 149 your strike water will need to be XX degrees higher depending on your actual grain temp and your system variables. The system variables get figured out over the course of several brew sessions and will continue to be refined as you brew more. But you have to start somewhere

What calculator did you use?

Click to expand...

So I'm using this calculator here:

http://biabcalculator.com/

I'm getting this now.

Total Water Needed 8.16 Gallons
Strike Water Temp 159 Fahrenheit
Total Mash Volume 9.08 Gallons
PreBoil Wort 7.65 Gallons
PostBoil Wort 5.25 Gallons
Into Fermenter 5.00 Gallons

I plugged my grain bill in at 11.5lbs, grain temperature at 0 (which I assume is off), batch size at 5 gallons, mash temp at 149 (at the suggestion of Ski12568), and my kettle size is 15 gallons.

I'm still confused on where the mash temp came from though. Are we just pulling that number from the Sacch Rest temperature from the recipe?

Crumb93 said:

I'm still confused on where the mash temp came from though. Are we just pulling that number from the Sacch Rest temperature from the recipe?

Click to expand...

Yes, that appears to be the recommended mash temp for the single infusion step option from the recipe. With BIAB you can skip the mash-out.

The grain temp is simply the temperature of your dry grain before you mash in. I'm reasonably certain it should be more than zero under normal circumstances

I got the 149F sac rest from the recipe for a single infusion mash

Crumb93 said:

grain temperature at 0 (which I assume is off

Click to expand...

Your assumption is correct. You currently get a strike temp of 159 because the grain temp is set to 0. If you set the grain temp to what temperature the grain actually is, say 62, your strike temperature will probably be around 154. As you add grain to the mash water you alter the temperature of the mash water. If your grain is cold, you will drop the temperature of the mash water more than if you had added warmer grain. Think of it like adding ice cubes to a glass of water. One small ice cube wont drop the temperature of a large glass of water very much, but add a whole bunch of ice cubes and the temperature of that same water will drop much more.

I really appreciate everyone's help with this.