First All Grain/BIAB attempt

[ol-hazza]

Over the past weekend I made the step up to all grain brewing and was surprised at how easy it was and how pleased I was with the results (so far, the true test is how does the beer taste).

The lead up to the weekend involved a fair bit of reading forums especially regarding equipment and techniques, and what I ended up doing was a Boil in a Bag type method with a batch sparge. While I doubt I am the first to have used this method I cant remember seeing a step by step for it online.

I was making the step up from extract with steeped grains methods and the only extra equipment I needed was the Chilly Bin (cooler box/esky), for which I bought a 25L one for $30 (without a spigot). (See total gear list at the bottom of this post).

The day went far from perfectly so im writing this as somewhat of a warning to others but also to remind myself of how to improve in the future.

The first mistake I made was not clearing myself enough time to complete brew day with full attention. I off off to a late start that required me to multitask when I should have been giving it my full attention. Approximately 6 - 7 hours is required with this method and equipment.

The first step was heating 25L water for the Mash up to 77C in my big pot on the gas ring, and being a qualified chef in a previous life i had little trouble with this. While this was going on i set up my Mash bag, which involved tying a knot at one end of some muslin cloth (it comes as a tube in New Zealand, I don't know about elsewhere) which forms a sock, appox. 10cm longer than my chilly bin is high. I tied the top of this "sock" at the top of the Chilly bin to secure it with the mouth wide open and then measured out my grain and put it in.
When the water was up to 77C this when in on top of the grains which started bubbling away as the water made its way through the grain. I then gave it a good stir, topped up the water and stirred again and took the temperature (70C). The water was right to the brim, and a bit spilt as I locked the lid on. At 60 minutes I opened it up for a quick stir and checked the temp (69C) and then locked the lid on for another 30 minutes and my small pot was filled and heated to 70C.
After 90 minutes I lifted the bag out of the Chilly Bin (mash tun) and let it drip out until the wort flow had slowed. The wort was then put into the big pot and I took a gravity reading which 1.064 from memory (after cooling the wort), while the bag was returned to the Mash Tun and refilled it with hot water, stirred and the lid back on for 5 mins before again lifting the bag out, however this time I tied the bag to a hook on the ceiling and left it to drip dry into a spare container.
The wort from the sparge was 1.020 something and I got around 25L (6.5 gal) of wort for the boil.

The wort then went through the boil with hop additions and some Irish Moss and was cooled in 2 water baths split between my two pots.
I siphon my wort into the fermenter through a sieve to remove hop material and help aerate it. I added 3L of cool water to bring it up to 23L, with starting gravity of around 1.048, I calculated my brewhouse efficiency at around 65%.

I feel I should have let the wort settle some more before siphoning into the fermenter, as I ended up with and lot of the break material in my fermentor, however it has settled so hopefully doesn't affect the beer too much, but there is a think trub layer. It also doesn't help that the wort misses out on the filtering effect of lautering

So there you have it, my first all grain attempt. For those of you who read this and think that sounds like it went well I have missed out the frustrations of having the bottom pop off my hydrometer tube 5 times, almost burning the house down with the gas hose unscrewing, very nearly running out of gas and having to run up and down the stairs watching my favourite rugby team challenge for the Ranfurly Shield.... (which they lost in a close fought game).

All in all I feel the end result was pretty good, and know where I need to improve for next time. I am open to any suggestions on improving my method, and happy to answer any questions. I will also update on the all important taste test in a month or so

Happy brewing everyone.

Recipe - English Pale Ale

4kg Pale ale malt
1kg flaked maize
500g Crystal (90)
20g Roasted Barley

27g Northern Brewer 60 mins
9g Northern Brewer 15 mins
1 tsp Irish Moss

1 sachet Mangrove Jacks Craft series Burton Union M79



Gear list

30L (8 gal) Stainless pot
15L (4 gal) Aluminum pot
25L (7 gal) Chilly bin (cooler box) with lid
30L (8 gal) Plastic fermenter barrel
Muslin Cloth
Gas burner and tank (Full!!)
Thermometer and Hydrometer
Ice
Sieve
Hoses
Scales
Rope
Big Spoon

 

[hou_me]

Congratulations!

 

[RM-MN]

Congratulations on getting started in all grain brewing. It's lots of fun as you get to try all sorts of combinations that may not be available to the extract brewer.

Some suggestions for your next brew. There are 2 key elements to getting good efficiency in all grain. First and most important is the milling of the grain. With BIAB you can use grains that are milled to nearly flour which lets them wet to the center to get conversion of the starches to sugars and to leach the sugars back out. Second is to have the grains in a bag that lets the water circulate freely. Your muslin bag may have constricted the grains too much. Instead use "Swiss voile" curtain material or a nylon paint strainer bag. A possible third element is in the topping up the fermenter. It is best to sparge to the correct volume instead of using just water to top up as you gain sugars from sparging.

When you have your grains milled fine you don't need to wait 90 minutes for conversion either. 10 minutes will find all the conversion complete, 20 to ensure that it did happen. That's all that is really needed. Most of the longer mash time is for poorly milled grains that need time to wet through.

Filtering out the hops and break material is unnecessary. People who have tried filtering and then not filtering say that they can't taste any difference in the finished beer. Siphon or pour it all into the fermenter. When the yeast are done, the hops and break material settle to the bottom in a compact layer covered by the dormant yeast. Carefully siphon above that to your bottling bucket or keg so you leave it behind.

You don't have to keep checking on the rugby match. The team will win or lose without your watching. Just kidding about that.

With a few changes and a bit of practice your brew day can be shortened to 4 hours or less with BIAB. By not chilling the wort and just dumping it into a fermenter bucket while still hot, I can brew a batch in just over 2 hours but it is a little less hectic to allow 3 or more.

 

[KeninMN]

I also recently completed my first all grain batch (Cream Ale.) I agree that conversion will happen way before 90 minutes, and that filtering trub is not necessary. But there are two schools of thoughts to using a finer crush as a means to achieve better efficiency. I don't own a grain mill, so I went with the standard crush using the mill at my LHBS and simply added an additional pound of base malt to my grain bill. I logged a brew house efficiency of 76% and overshot my recipe's published OG by 9 gravity points. And the extra pound of grain cost me a whopping $1.29 USD. Here is a good resource:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=CrushEval

If you overshoot your OG it's acceptable to add top-off water to the fermentor. You can also ferment the higher gravity beer and dilute it at bottling. That is what I plan to do with my cream ale. Here is a great resource:

https://byo.com/stories/item/237-blending-for-volume-techniques

 

[RM-MN]

I also recently completed my first all grain batch (Cream Ale.) I agree that conversion will happen way before 90 minutes, and that filtering trub is not necessary. But there are two schools of thoughts to using a finer crush as a means to achieve better efficiency. I don't own a grain mill, so I went with the standard crush using the mill at my LHBS and simply added an additional pound of base malt to my grain bill. I logged a brew house efficiency of 76% and overshot my recipe's published OG by 9 gravity points. And the extra pound of grain cost me a whopping $1.29 USD. Here is a good resource:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=CrushEval

If you overshoot your OG it's acceptable to add top-off water to the fermentor. You can also ferment the higher gravity beer and dilute it at bottling. That is what I plan to do with my cream ale. Here is a great resource:

https://byo.com/stories/item/237-blending-for-volume-techniques

If you overshoot your OG, it's also acceptable to just let it ferment out and bottle it. You just have to be careful with how many of those bottles you drink in one session because they can have a significant amount more alcohol than you expect.

 

[ol-hazza]

Cheers for the advice guys.
I buy my ingredients from an OHBS, so will see if I can get them to mill it a bit finer for me, and look into upgrading the bag.
As far as topping up the fermenter goes I now have a better idea of my evaporation rates so can do a bigger sparge to accomodate. On this matter though I had a think about why I make 23L batches when most recipes call for 19L (5gal) and its because that is the size of the first coopers extract brew I made. sometimes its good to have a think about why we set the targets we did in the first place (conveniently they do work well in a 30l fermenter).

I also forgot to add the big improvement to my kettle that I made before starting, and that was marking off some volumes on the inside before I started, it made life much easier.
Also the trub layer has compacted some more, and is down to around half an inch, so is looking much better.

And as for the rugby, I think its about time there was a TV in my brewhouse

 

[ol-hazza]

Hit 87% for my second attempt. Am using washed yeast for the first time and am a bir nervous as i forgot to get a back up yeast. Hopefully it works or i will be using a sachet from a kit thats beensitting in the garage for a month

 

[ol-hazza]

So for the old taste test....
Initially the beer had a very grainy flavour, like sucking on some malt. But this has dropped out and it nor resembles beer that hasn't been hopped very well.
Unfortunately the mouthfeel isn't great and it doest hold its head. I'm putting that down to my mash temperature being too high.

But its drinkable so I'm putting it in the win basket but will refrain from entering it in any competitions.