First BIAB experiment; Need advice

[2drunk2]

I have an Oktoberfest party the first weekend of October, and decided to take a break from partial mash and extract brewing and try a small batch of hefeweizen using the BIAB method. I have a 5 gallon kettle. So, the plan was to make a 3 gallon batch.

Start with 4 gallons at 164 degrees.
3 pounds German Wheat
2 pounds German Pilsen
Mash for 1 hr.

The grains only dropped the temp to 158, and I figured it would continue to drop. I stirred it well, and put the lid on. I threw a hoody over it and wrapped it in a towel and walked away. An hour later, it was still 156. I stirred it again, and then drained my grains.

I did a one hour boil with hop additions...blah blah blah. Finished with 3 gallons of wort. Cooled it, and checked the gravity. That's where the problem comes in. It was 1.034. I really wanted to be around 1.045 or so.

Here's my question. Do I let it go, and just try for a better efficiency next time? Do I take advantage of the small batch size and make another 2.5 gallons with 3 pounds of German Wheat and 3 pounds of German Pilsen and see if I can get a higher gravity wort to add to the already fermenting beer. I brewed this Saturday. So, I figure I could add another 2.5 gallons and bring up the gravity average and ABV to the style standard, or I could just let it ride and brew something else this weekend.

What would you do?

 

[Hello]

My instinct says to not add new wort to what is now beer but I have no reason to say it would or would not work. I just learned that pouring a **** ton of water into fermented beer is not only okay but actually done by people.

That said, I would brew again and shoot for better efficiency. While you shoot for it though, you won't get it until you know what happened. How was your crush? Are you sure your stirred well? How did you measure your original gravity?

 

[Just-a-sip]

for my $.02 i would say either method would work.. i would just let it ride and next time focus in better efficiency. remember that with biab you can get away with things that traditional brewers cant. you can squeeze the bad and extract more grains, you can do a sort of semi sparge by holding back a gallon and pouring it through or dunking it after you hoist bag out. you can even do a much finer crush then your traditional brewer does, (this one aids in efficiency most of all) couple all these methods together and you should hit your numbers right on every time. at lest i do.

 

[dobe12]

What efficiency did you estimate when formulating your recipe? The first and easiest place to look when getting low efficiency is the crush. Hands down... it's the easiest problem to figure out and fix. After that there are LOADS of other possible issues. But start with the crush. Next time get your grain crushed better or get it double crushed. If that fixes you issue, then you're golden. Did you make sure to give it a good stir and bust up all the dough balls?

As for fixing it, that's up to you. You could add some sort of fermentable like sugar, honey, etc to get a jump in gravity and ABV, but that would thin it a bit. But on the other hand, you used 60% wheat, so body may not be an issue.

You could make another stronger batch and blend the 2.

But what I would do is boil some DME in about 1 gallon of water. Maybe just a lb of 2. Then add that to the fermentor.

 

[2drunk2]

My instinct says to not add new wort to what is now beer but I have no reason to say it would or would not work. I just learned that pouring a **** ton of water into fermented beer is not only okay but actually done by people.

That said, I would brew again and shoot for better efficiency. While you shoot for it though, you won't get it until you know what happened. How was your crush? Are you sure your stirred well? How did you measure your original gravity?

I guess "stirred well" is a relative term. It felt like I stirred it well, but I have nothing to compare it to. The LHBS crushed the grain for me. I never thought about it, but it does seem that it wasn't quite as fine as what comes in kits I've used in the past (partial mash and steeping grains).

for my $.02 i would say either method would work.. i would just let it ride and next time focus in better efficiency. remember that with biab you can get away with things that traditional brewers cant. you can squeeze the bad and extract more grains, you can do a sort of semi sparge by holding back a gallon and pouring it through or dunking it after you hoist bag out. you can even do a much finer crush then your traditional brewer does, (this one aids in efficiency most of all) couple all these methods together and you should hit your numbers right on every time. at lest i do.

I didn't realize you could squeeze the bag. I have read of people doing that, but I wasn't sure if that was just something that was up for debate or what that was about. Is there a reason that BIAB can do that, and others can't? I'm just curious. I think I will try a finer crush though. It seems to be a common theme.

What efficiency did you estimate when formulating your recipe? The first and easiest place to look when getting low efficiency is the crush. Hands down... it's the easiest problem to figure out and fix. After that there are LOADS of other possible issues. But start with the crush. Next time get your grain crushed better or get it double crushed. If that fixes you issue, then you're golden. Did you make sure to give it a good stir and bust up all the dough balls?

As for fixing it, that's up to you. You could add some sort of fermentable like sugar, honey, etc to get a jump in gravity and ABV, but that would thin it a bit. But on the other hand, you used 60% wheat, so body may not be an issue.

You could make another stronger batch and blend the 2.

But what I would do is boil some DME in about 1 gallon of water. Maybe just a lb of 2. Then add that to the fermentor.

I had assumed 75% efficiency, and I shot for the middle of the style guidelines. I think I ended up just over 50%. It wasn't good...lol I don't know why I didn't think of just boiling some DME. I even told a friend of mine that next time I try this I'm going to have some DME on hand in case I need it.

I definitely want to try again, but I think that I will go for a finer crush and try squeezing the bag. We'll see what happens.

Does anybody know if people will notice a hefe with a bud light like ABV, or do you think the yeast flavors and the fact that there will be a huge variety of beer there will kind of mask my error

 

[C-Rider]

I have an Oktoberfest party the first weekend of October, and decided to take a break from partial mash and extract brewing and try a small batch of hefeweizen using the BIAB method. I have a 5 gallon kettle. So, the plan was to make a 3 gallon batch.

Start with 4 gallons at 164 degrees.
3 pounds German Wheat
2 pounds German Pilsen
Mash for 1 hr.

The grains only dropped the temp to 158, and I figured it would continue to drop. I stirred it well, and put the lid on. I threw a hoody over it and wrapped it in a towel and walked away. An hour later, it was still 156. I stirred it again, and then drained my grains.

I did a one hour boil with hop additions...blah blah blah. Finished with 3 gallons of wort. Cooled it, and checked the gravity. That's where the problem comes in. It was 1.034. I really wanted to be around 1.045 or so.

Here's my question. Do I let it go, and just try for a better efficiency next time? Do I take advantage of the small batch size and make another 2.5 gallons with 3 pounds of German Wheat and 3 pounds of German Pilsen and see if I can get a higher gravity wort to add to the already fermenting beer. I brewed this Saturday. So, I figure I could add another 2.5 gallons and bring up the gravity average and ABV to the style standard, or I could just let it ride and brew something else this weekend.

What would you do?

Don't mess with this beer. Treat it as a low alcohol beer you can drink a few bottles of and not get drunk.

Then if you do it again, and since you only have 5 lbs of grain find a collendar that will be supported by say a 5 gallon round cooler and set the bag in the collendar. Then w/a coffee cup in each had squeeze EVERY LAST DROP of wert out of the grain. That's what I do and I bet you have 1/4 to 1/3 of a gallon of wert in that grain and it's of a high SG.

 

[2drunk2]

Thanks for the tip!

 

[EthanH]

Ask the LHBS to double-crush. Most places will do this if they're not slammed.

You could also try a 90 min mash. Mash times and relation to efficiency is sometimes hotly debated in these parts, but anecdotally I can say it seems to help me.

ALSO, it sounds like you didn't mash out. Try mashing out for 10 min @ 170º and see if you bump up your numbers.

Good luck!

 

[2drunk2]

You guys rock.

 

[shetc]

With a pulley system, you can:
1) Do a mashout at 172 F for 10 minutes,
2) Then pull the bag up to drain, and then give it a good squeeze, and
3) Then lower the bag over a food grade bucket to continue dripping while you get ready to boil (add the drippings to the boil).

 

[RM-MN]

Ask the LHBS to double-crush. Most places will do this if they're not slammed.

You could also try a 90 min mash. Mash times and relation to efficiency is sometimes hotly debated in these parts, but anecdotally I can say it seems to help me.

ALSO, it sounds like you didn't mash out. Try mashing out for 10 min @ 170º and see if you bump up your numbers.

Good luck!

Mash time and quality of the crush are directly related. You don't get conversion until the starches in the grain get wet at the proper temperature. The larger the particles of grain, the longer it takes to wet through. I can get conversion in less than ten minutes but that's because I grind my grains until the particle are very small. Larger particles would need the longer time.

Mash out is only needed for fly sparging as you would otherwise be keeping the grain bed at conversion temperature for a long time. Mash out stops conversion so you don't change the intended fermentability of the beer. Doing a mash out for BIAB isn't necessary but if your grains hadn't fully converted already, that conversion would continue as you heated the mash to the higher temperature, plus your sugars are slightly more soluble at the higher temperature so you can extract them from the mash more easily. It should be a pretty small amount though.

 

[dobe12]

Maybe not necessarily a mash out, but a quick dunk sparge in a second pot or even a bucket would yield higher efficiency. A little over a year ago I started messing around with full volume mashing (BIAB) w/no sparge. I quickly noticed a significant loss in efficiency. I dropped from around 70-75% down to 60%. I've since gone back to a quick dunk sparge around 165-170F and my efficiency is back up around 75-80% (finer crush now too).

Some people place the grain sack in a colander and just pour some warm/hot water over the sack to rinse some extra sugars out of it. I like to dunk the grain sack in a second pot, give it a good stir, and teabag it a few times. (Insert jokes here).

 

[2drunk2]

I'm definitely taking notes.

 

[2drunk2]

I want to thank everyone for the feedback, and the help. Here is my plan of action going forward.

1) Leave the current batch alone, and see how it turns out.

2) To make sure that I have something to present at the Oktoberfest homebrew party, I'm going to brew a second hefe using extract. Since the first batch was a low gravity 3 gallon batch of the same style, I think I can safely put the new batch on the yeast cake of the current batch. That should save me about $7 and making a starter.

3) Now that the hefe brews are out of the way, I'll make my next recipe a partial mash in an attempt to test out my new mashing strategies. I figure that if I get low effiency on the grains in a partial mash, I'll have some extract on hand to salvage the OG and ABV. Maybe I'll shoot for something on the high end, and if I mess it up I'll land in the middle. First, I'll ask the LHBS to crush the grain finer or crush it twice. Then, I'll get myself a colander and give a bag a big ole squeeze. I'll save the sparging techniques until after I see how this works. If I pull out small sample before adding the extract, I can go back after it has had a chance to cool and see how my efficiency came out.

4) If I'm still not happy with my efficiency, I'll try a sparge and or mash out on the next one.

Sound good?

 

[2drunk2]

UPDATE:

I'm not optimistic at all about this original brew. It has very little flavor, other than sulfur from the yeast. It looks like a light lemonade. I'm still going to ride it out, but it smells bad and doesn't taste like anything.

The second brew is coming along nicely. It smells like a hefeweizen. I can't wait to open the fermenter and see what it looks like. I do plan to move it to a secondary this weekend, mostly because I want to see it. I know that's not a good reason, but I can't resist. Also, I've noticed from the first batch that this yeast really can produce some sulfur odors. I'm hoping that just by moving it to the secondary I might knock some of that sulfur out, even though I don't really smell it on this one.

I almost think that the first brew was so small by volume and OG, that it may have caused the yeast to produce more sulfur. It certainly didn't produce any clove or banana flavors. It just made sulfur bombs.

 

[FuriousE]

What yeast did you use? Last Heffe I made I used Wyeast 3068 and fermented at 62 degrees. Smelled very strongly of sulfur. I let it go in primary for 2 weeks and kegged and it tasted great!

 

[2drunk2]

Wlp380

 

[2drunk2]

I don't know if anybody is still following this, but I thought I'd keep it updated. If nothing else, I can come back and read it years from now and laugh at myself

The first 3 gallon all grain batch that had terrible efficiency, and smelled like rotten eggs, is thin and the only flavor is that of sulfur. It reminds of the smell back in the 80's when someone would get a perm. It is absolutely awful.

Since the first batch only had a gravity of 1.034, and was only 3 gallons it did make for a good yeast starter for another batch. It didn't seem infected, I just think the fermentation was too weak to blow off the sulfur from the WLP380 yeast.

I pitched a 5.5 gallon extract batch of hefeweizen directly on to the yeast cake. I used a blow off tube, and the fermentation was something to behold. It was absolutely magnificent. It wasn't doing much when I went to bed that night, but by the next day it was non-stop action. I had to change the sanitizer in the blow off twice because it was full of gunk.

It finally calmed down, and I was able to put an airlock on it the following day. I was able to keep the temp down around the mid-60's with a swamp cooler. The smells weren't like sulfur this time, but more like a mixture of fruit and spice.

It's been in the primary for only 5 days now, but the action subsided about 48 hours ago. I checked, and the gravity has gone from 1.046 to 1.010. The sample I took had a sneaky, yet pronounced clove flavor to it. The banana was there in the background. There seemed to be almost a hint of some sort of tropical fruit. That could be from the hops. I'm not sure.

Either way, I have a good hefe to present at the Oktoberfest party. I'll probably never exactly duplicate it, and wouldn't want to if I have to go through this again. Either way, I think I'm going to have a beer to be proud of.

I'm going to leave it in the primary for another week, and then bottle it up. I don't think that the entire batch will be available on October 4th, but I'll make sure to save a case of it for the party.

As for the all grain biab experiment, I will try a partial mash IPA or APA next weekend. Until I get my process down, I want to keep some extract in the mix to mask my mistakes