So I was doing a Belgian Wit style recipe with 50% flaked adjuncts. Rather than pay for one time use rice hulls I figured I'd give my bag a shot.... It's just been sitting in the package ever since I got it a while ago.
The only change to my equipment setup was replacing the false bottom in my mashtun with the bag instead. Figured I'd still use the cooler mashtun for two reasons; 1) heat retention 2) even though I do have the volume or a full volume mash with this 5gal recipe, I've always had better efficiency with more sparge steps. So even for "small beer" 5 gallon batches where I have the space, I still break it into two drain steps with one batch sparge step. I also did not change my mill gap from the normal .035.
So off I went. Missed mash temp a couple degrees low at 148 instead of 150. Did a 90 minute mash and noticed maybe one degree of heat loss at the end. With the bag I figured there was no reason not to and let the drain to the kettle proceed as fast as it could with the mashtun ball valve completely open (I slow this down with the false bottom to prevent stuck sparge).
I also set the mashtun deadspace variable to zero and tilted the cooler to get virtually every last bit of residual liquid from the bottom, which I can't do with the false bottom.
I figured this might result in increased efficiency vs my normal process, but it didn't appear to. For normal size 5 gallon batches I plan at 75% and usually hit 75-77 for mostly-barley recipes. For this one I missed preboil gravity one point lower than planned and came it at ~73% efficiency. Does this sound like something to do with my BIAB process, or is it something to do with the 50% flaked grain bill? Could it be a result of draining at full speed? My calculated grain absorption number was about the same as always. Thanks.
The only change to my equipment setup was replacing the false bottom in my mashtun with the bag instead. Figured I'd still use the cooler mashtun for two reasons; 1) heat retention 2) even though I do have the volume or a full volume mash with this 5gal recipe, I've always had better efficiency with more sparge steps. So even for "small beer" 5 gallon batches where I have the space, I still break it into two drain steps with one batch sparge step. I also did not change my mill gap from the normal .035.
So off I went. Missed mash temp a couple degrees low at 148 instead of 150. Did a 90 minute mash and noticed maybe one degree of heat loss at the end. With the bag I figured there was no reason not to and let the drain to the kettle proceed as fast as it could with the mashtun ball valve completely open (I slow this down with the false bottom to prevent stuck sparge).
I also set the mashtun deadspace variable to zero and tilted the cooler to get virtually every last bit of residual liquid from the bottom, which I can't do with the false bottom.
I figured this might result in increased efficiency vs my normal process, but it didn't appear to. For normal size 5 gallon batches I plan at 75% and usually hit 75-77 for mostly-barley recipes. For this one I missed preboil gravity one point lower than planned and came it at ~73% efficiency. Does this sound like something to do with my BIAB process, or is it something to do with the 50% flaked grain bill? Could it be a result of draining at full speed? My calculated grain absorption number was about the same as always. Thanks.