LakewoodHomeBrew
Well-Known Member
My first attempts into All-Grain, Brew-In-A-Bag brewing were filled with failure, correction, and improvement - with much learning between two different brews.
My first brew, an Octoberfest-style Ale kicked off Saturday evening. I gathered up my grains (for both the Octoberfest beer and the Scottish Ale I would brew on Sunday...more on this later), and headed over to Rozi's (LHBS) to use the grain mill they have on premise...free of charge. I did a test on the grinder with a handfull of grains and wasn't too thrilled with the output - not much of a crush. I asked the store owner if we could adjust the setting, to which he replied: "Nope. It's set for what you need." I didn't particularly care for this answer, but I didn't want to pay the extra $$ to buy the hand-crank corona grain mill that was on the shelf, so I decided I'd just roll with it. Got the grains home, and did some manual crushing of my own using a rolling pin - it helped very little. So I said screw it - let's roll.
I loaded my grains up in three separate grain bags and mashed in with a 2:1 water(qt):grain(lb) ratio. This meant that I would be rinsing my grains (since it's BIAB, I can't really call it sparging) with the remaining water needed to get to boil volume. I had decent temp control - not the best I've done, but certainly not the worst, and most everything went to plan: mashed @ 152 for 65 minuts. At the end of the day, I took a gravity reading: 1.034. Target was 1.050. That's a whopping 46% efficiency. Ouch. Now I had to rack my brain to figure out how to fix this before my 2nd brew of the weekend, which was scheduled for the next morning.
The bright side to this is that I'm going to pitch some harvested Pacman yeast (from a brew my buddy did) into this batch. I had very little yeast to start with and the 700mL starter I made up on Saturday is still going gang-busters this morning. I'll probably pitch tonight or tomorrow morning into the Octoberfest, which should give the yeast some very easy work to build up the colony. I imagine I'll be harvesting it by next weekend.
Sunday morning, my second AG BIAB: A Scottish Ale. I decided that the crappy grain crush was one of the primary contributors to poor efficiency. So I went back to the LHBS, purchased the corona grain mill and re-crushed the grain to my liking. I'm already happy with the purchase - although I over-paid. I then decided that three constrained grain bags were limiting how much surface area of the grain was in contact with the water, so I swung by Sherwin Williams and picked up a 5 gal. nylon paint strainer bag and lined my pot with it. I also decided that I could fit more water in my kettle than I had been using, so I mashed in with as close to the full volume as possible (the mash water was at the brim). This was a small batch, 2.5 gal, so I mashed in with 3 gal, leaving a half gallon that would need to be added before the start of the boil. Kicked off the mash, things went mostly well - I did a crappy job @ temp control for the first half hour or so, but after that all was smooth: mashed @ 150-156 for the first half hour, before settling in @ 153 for the remainder (75 min total mash time). At Mash out, I let the bag drain and then squeezed the crud out of it. I then placed it in the half gallon "sparge water" to soak for 15 min, after which I squeezed and let the bag drip again before adding the second batch of water to the boil kettle.
This brew, I decided I'd take a reading of the pre-boil gravity. Although it took half an hour to cool the reading down, it was still useful. Pre-boil: 1.049. That was a 68% efficiency. WooHoo! Not as high as I'd like, but I'll take a 20 point increase any day. Continued with the brew without any major event, and @ the end of the day, I was still sitting @ 68% efficiency.
Now that I feel I am on the right track, I think I only need to make minor tweeks to my process for improvements. First - I think my grain crush was still a bit on the coarse side - but now that I have my own mill, I can easily adjust this. Secondly - I need to steady out my temperature control, but that will be easier the more I do this. I had been pretty good on previous brews, but I think I was just being overly excited being my first attempt at AG. Third - I need to settle on a Mash-Out method that works for me. I think the batch sparging was more effective than the rinsing I had done previously, but I am sure there is room for improvement here. Lastly - I think I jumped into AG way before I was ready. There are plenty of concepts to understand before I think I'll feel comfortable. While "trial by fire" is sometimes the best way to learn, I don't particularly want to drink too many "mistakes," unless they're delicious mistakes....then it might not be so bad!
I'm not looking for comments or feedback - although they are certainly welcome - I'm just posting this as a way for me to track what I've done, and openly think through my problems, as well as share some things that I learned.
My first brew, an Octoberfest-style Ale kicked off Saturday evening. I gathered up my grains (for both the Octoberfest beer and the Scottish Ale I would brew on Sunday...more on this later), and headed over to Rozi's (LHBS) to use the grain mill they have on premise...free of charge. I did a test on the grinder with a handfull of grains and wasn't too thrilled with the output - not much of a crush. I asked the store owner if we could adjust the setting, to which he replied: "Nope. It's set for what you need." I didn't particularly care for this answer, but I didn't want to pay the extra $$ to buy the hand-crank corona grain mill that was on the shelf, so I decided I'd just roll with it. Got the grains home, and did some manual crushing of my own using a rolling pin - it helped very little. So I said screw it - let's roll.
I loaded my grains up in three separate grain bags and mashed in with a 2:1 water(qt):grain(lb) ratio. This meant that I would be rinsing my grains (since it's BIAB, I can't really call it sparging) with the remaining water needed to get to boil volume. I had decent temp control - not the best I've done, but certainly not the worst, and most everything went to plan: mashed @ 152 for 65 minuts. At the end of the day, I took a gravity reading: 1.034. Target was 1.050. That's a whopping 46% efficiency. Ouch. Now I had to rack my brain to figure out how to fix this before my 2nd brew of the weekend, which was scheduled for the next morning.
The bright side to this is that I'm going to pitch some harvested Pacman yeast (from a brew my buddy did) into this batch. I had very little yeast to start with and the 700mL starter I made up on Saturday is still going gang-busters this morning. I'll probably pitch tonight or tomorrow morning into the Octoberfest, which should give the yeast some very easy work to build up the colony. I imagine I'll be harvesting it by next weekend.
Sunday morning, my second AG BIAB: A Scottish Ale. I decided that the crappy grain crush was one of the primary contributors to poor efficiency. So I went back to the LHBS, purchased the corona grain mill and re-crushed the grain to my liking. I'm already happy with the purchase - although I over-paid. I then decided that three constrained grain bags were limiting how much surface area of the grain was in contact with the water, so I swung by Sherwin Williams and picked up a 5 gal. nylon paint strainer bag and lined my pot with it. I also decided that I could fit more water in my kettle than I had been using, so I mashed in with as close to the full volume as possible (the mash water was at the brim). This was a small batch, 2.5 gal, so I mashed in with 3 gal, leaving a half gallon that would need to be added before the start of the boil. Kicked off the mash, things went mostly well - I did a crappy job @ temp control for the first half hour or so, but after that all was smooth: mashed @ 150-156 for the first half hour, before settling in @ 153 for the remainder (75 min total mash time). At Mash out, I let the bag drain and then squeezed the crud out of it. I then placed it in the half gallon "sparge water" to soak for 15 min, after which I squeezed and let the bag drip again before adding the second batch of water to the boil kettle.
This brew, I decided I'd take a reading of the pre-boil gravity. Although it took half an hour to cool the reading down, it was still useful. Pre-boil: 1.049. That was a 68% efficiency. WooHoo! Not as high as I'd like, but I'll take a 20 point increase any day. Continued with the brew without any major event, and @ the end of the day, I was still sitting @ 68% efficiency.
Now that I feel I am on the right track, I think I only need to make minor tweeks to my process for improvements. First - I think my grain crush was still a bit on the coarse side - but now that I have my own mill, I can easily adjust this. Secondly - I need to steady out my temperature control, but that will be easier the more I do this. I had been pretty good on previous brews, but I think I was just being overly excited being my first attempt at AG. Third - I need to settle on a Mash-Out method that works for me. I think the batch sparging was more effective than the rinsing I had done previously, but I am sure there is room for improvement here. Lastly - I think I jumped into AG way before I was ready. There are plenty of concepts to understand before I think I'll feel comfortable. While "trial by fire" is sometimes the best way to learn, I don't particularly want to drink too many "mistakes," unless they're delicious mistakes....then it might not be so bad!
I'm not looking for comments or feedback - although they are certainly welcome - I'm just posting this as a way for me to track what I've done, and openly think through my problems, as well as share some things that I learned.
