NB Dead Ringer All Grain using BIAB

[MTate37]

I could use a little advice from any BIABers out there. I just got the Northern Brewer Dead Ringer all grain kit and will be brewing tomorrow with the BIAB method. The basics of the recipe are as follows:

11lbs 2-row
1lb caramel 40
.75 oz centennial (60 min)
1 oz centennial (20 min)
2 oz centennial (5 min)
1 oz centennial (dryhop)

5 gallon batch; OG = 1.064

Using the calculator on BIABrewer.info I came up with a starting volume of 29.74 liters, or about 7.85 gallons. How does this sound?

I put the recipe in Beersmith and it gave me a volume bigger than my pot can handle, but the strike (157) and mash (152) temps were in line with the NB instruction sheet, so I'm thinking I'll stick with those numbers.

Beersmith also gave a mash time of 75 minutes. Does this sound good?

I was hoping to come up with a pre-boil gravity, but with the starting volume being so far off in Beersmith I don't know that I trust it.

My pot is 17.25" high by 13.5" in diameter if that helps. My boil off is about 1 gallon per hour.

Does it sound like I'm on the right track? Would anyone change anything with the volume, temps our time?

Thanks!

 

[RM-MN]

Lets work this problem backward. You want to end up with about 5 1/4 gallons into the fermenter so you bottle a full 2 cases of beer. You also know that you boil off about a gallon in the hour it takes to get the hops to isomerize for bittering so you need 6 1/4 gallons into the boil pot. Give yourself a little leeway on that and plan for 6 1/2 gallons, you can boil off a little more or just get a little more beer to bottle. You also know that you can't get all the wort out of the grain even if you squeeze really hard but there won't be much left. With that in mind, start with 6 1/2 gallons of water because you can pseudo sparge to get a little more into the boiling pot if you are short.

Now about the grains. How well did they get crushed? Conversion doesn't take much time but getting the grains wet to the center of the pieces and the sugars leached back out can. With my Corona style mill I grind my grains very well and show signs of conversion in ~15 minutes. Your crush will probably not be so fine so plan on a longer mash to compensate, say for the full hour (60 minutes, not 75). As you gain experience you may want to shorten that time but an hour is a good place to start.

Since I advised on less water to start with, you need to recalculate the strike temperature. For my mash temp to be 154, I start with a strike temp of about 161 but my grains are at 72 degrees when I stir them in. Your grains may be different temperature. I've been using this calculator for my strike temp and it gets me my mash temp perfectly. http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/infusion.html