First BIAB brew

[kevcen53]

I have worked with kits now the past few times, and after taking a brewing course and reading a book or two, I have decided to design a recipe and take on a BIAB approach. I have a few questions:

1) Any modifications that should be made to an AG recipe to a BIAB recipe? (like more grain, water, etc.)

2) I just purchased a keggle, and realized I can no longer effectively cool my brew in an ice bath. I can obviously purchase or build an immersion cooler, but have begun to realize the immense waste of water involved in doing so. Is there another alternative that any of you would recommend? I live in Ohio, so water isn't an issue, but I'd prefer not to use 50gal of water to cool my beer.

3) Any other suggestions with brewing with a keggle vs. brewing with a pot? I would have preferred to stay with a pot, but the price was too low for me to turn it down (I am in between jobs, and prefer to conserve money anyway I can, having said that, I still have some money to spend

Thank you in advance!

 

[beyernk]

Unsure about the first question but for the second one, you can fill your sink with the old ice water bath, but get some hose and a small water pump and just recirculate the water through the immersion cooler and back into the ice bath.

 

[RM-MN]

BIAB is just another way to brew all grain. You have the same options available as those who brew in a mash tun. You can use the 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain if you wish or you can go to the full preboil + grain absorption amount (also called no sparge).

I mill my own grains with a Corona style mill and with BIAB I can use the finest milled grain since I'm not depending on the grain husks to make the filter as the bag does that filtering for me. With the grain milled fine and dumping all the wort, trub and all, into my fermenter I get a higher efficiency that has to be accounted for. You may not find this so don't make any changes to the all grain recipe for the first batch and if the OG is higher than expected you can add water (thus making a bigger batch of beer) or accept the higher alcohol for this batch and make adjustments for the next.

I don't have an immersion chiller so to reduce the water usage, I explored "no chill brewing". I dump the wort into the plastic fermenter bucket while it is still boiling hot and let it cool there with the lid on and an airlock with just enough Starsan solution to make a lock but not enough that it can be sucked back into the fermenter. It can take anywhere from 4 hours (cold windy day sitting on my deck) to 30 hours (in a room with 62 degrees ambient temperature) to get to pitching temp. Then I pop the lid open, add dry yeast (because dry yeast doesn't require aeration) in and put the lid back on. If I were using liquid yeast I would have to aerate the wort before pitching.

 

[unionrdr]

I do PB/PM BIAB myself. The same water to grist ratios still apply here. But I found that with my Barley Mill grain crusher set at the factory .039", the crush is fine to get OG's a little higher than listed. Then I started dunk sparging. I heat 1.5 gallons of water-for a 4-5lb mash of 2G of water-to 170F & dunk the bag in it for 10 minutes or so. Stirring it to get more goodies out of the grains. My OG's went way up! Against a 1.046OG for a particular recipe, I got a 1.060OG! Works really well & doesn't dry the beer out.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

+1 on RM-MN. BIAB is just another form of AG brewing. No need to change anything. I have done BIAB with a) all the water in the mash at once, b) some water in mash and reserve some for mashout and c) standard 1.25-1.5 qt/lb mash water with some water reserved for mashout and some reserved for thru-the-bag sparge. Obviously, a) is the easiest but I get the best efficiency and consistency with c). With c) I use my old 5 gal BK for my mashout and sparge water.

Also +1 for beyernk. I use an ice bath in my sink and recirculate the water through the IC using a small boat bilge pump (~$20). I have to initially syphon off some of the sink water and refresh the ice but I get from boiling to pitching temp in about 15-20 min. That said, RM-MN has a good point. A lot of brewers are going to no chill. Saves on buying/building an IC, saves on making/buying ice and saves on effort. I have not heard of any ill effects from no chill.

 

[madscientist451]

Kevcen, since you are in Ohio, you will soon have chilly evenings.
Just brew at night or later in the day. Either get a lid for the keggle or
get the wort into a bucket and put a lid on. In the morning, should be pretty well chilled. Also, the trub will have settled out and you can carefully siphon into your fermenter. You can also freeze 2 liter soda bottles of water and put them in the hot wort to speed things up. I put my brew pot in an old washtub full of cold water and add the frozen 2 liter bottles to that. I have to dump the water once when it warms up, I probably use 3-6 gallons of water to chill.
I don't have an imersion chiller but I only do small batches like 4 gallons.
In the growing season, I dump as much of my waste brew water as I can on my garden, so its not really wasted.

 

[kevcen53]

Wow, so much knowledge. I appreciate the detailed answers! I have read up a little on the no chill method, but am a bit weary on plastic leeching. I suppose if I get a High Quality bucket that is rated for high temps, that will work? Also for the no chill, if I were to use a bucket for cooling (the 'cube', right?). Would I still follow the same process of squeezing it to remove O2, and everything? Because that airlock method that RM-MN described would be much easier. I don't ever really plan on storing wort, I prefer to have it fermented ASAP

The dunk sparge would be similar to a regular sparge, right? You would do it post-boil and combine the resulting liquid with the wort?

Also, should you squeeze the grain bag after boil? I've heard some of the fats and unwanted materials will come out, is there truth in that?

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

Also have a look at biabrewer.info

 

[RM-MN]

Wow, so much knowledge. I appreciate the detailed answers! I have read up a little on the no chill method, but am a bit weary on plastic leeching. I suppose if I get a High Quality bucket that is rated for high temps, that will work? Also for the no chill, if I were to use a bucket for cooling (the 'cube', right?). Would I still follow the same process of squeezing it to remove O2, and everything? Because that airlock method that RM-MN described would be much easier. I don't ever really plan on storing wort, I prefer to have it fermented ASAP

The dunk sparge would be similar to a regular sparge, right? You would do it post-boil and combine the resulting liquid with the wort?

Also, should you squeeze the grain bag after boil? I've heard some of the fats and unwanted materials will come out, is there truth in that?

The HDPE fermenting buckets are rated for 250F and you can't get your wort over 212 so they work fine. Since you are not storing wort for weeks or months, you don't need to use a cube. The idea of squeezing out all the air is to prevent spoilage due to the yeasts and bacteria in the air.

Sparging is the brewers term for rinsing the sugars out of the mash that got left behind when the mash tun is drained. Much simpler to just use a single word, sparge. How you do the sparge is up to you. Some people do fine with no sparge at all. I find that my brewhouse efficiency goes up about 5% with only a small sparge done with cold water.

Squeeze the bag as hard as you can to get as much wort out as you can. The only fat that comes out seems to settle around my waist. Just kidding, there will be no fat or unwanted materials unless you count the fine flour but that will settle out in the bottom of the fermenter.

 

[unionrdr]

With biab, the dunk sparge is just that. you heat the sparge water & drain the grain bag in the kettle you mashed in. then dunk the bag in the kettle of sparge water (I do 170F) 7 stir it to get more out of the grains. Very even sparging method. My OG's went way up doing it.