Sparge question BIAB

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Bookem15

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So now that we have determined that we can squeeze the crap out of the bag, can you short about 1 gallon of the water and use it to pour over the grains after squeezing them and the squeeze them again? I would think that would help efficiency numbers. The other thing that I have to ask is with BIAB why would you not just grind the crap out of the grains to just short of flour since you would not have to worry about the husks staying intact?

Thanks for any and all replies.
 
I have had bad luck with trying to sparge BIAB and I think it's because of channeling - the water just runs over the ball of grain, and doesn't saturate and rinse properly.
Dunk sparging works pretty well because it gets all the grain wet with the water and can help with extraction numbers.
As for your level of crush, there are guys who grind their own and darn near turn it to dust.
I'm pretty happy getting around 75% with my LHBS crush, anything better and I would have to start adjusting all my recipes.
Finally, this is just my opinion, but I think it would be even more critical to keep the mash well stirred when using a very fine crush because the grains would tend to compact much more, and extraction could potentially suffer. Keep it well stirred, hit your temps, and you'll get some impressive efficiency numbers.
 
I've got three BIAB's under my belt now and I can say that sparging with a gallon or two of water doesn't make any noticeable differences. This may be due to the large ball of grain that the water is pouring on. As Wolfman said most of the water probably just goes around the outside of the ball and not much gets through the middle. It definitely feels strange not rinsing/sparging the grains like most all grain brewers do but I've been hitting ~75% pre-boil efficiancies and that's pretty good in my book. Grain is cheap and gaining a few points through sparging, dunking in hot water, or other techniques may not be worth the time. Full volume mashing/BIAB will give good efficiancies with very minimal effort. That's the beauty of it. As far as grain size goes, crush it as fine as you want without making flour and your efficiencies will definitely improve. I have my LHBS double grind for me but in the future I'll be grinding my own. Most commercial breweries crush very fine and get efficiencies in the 95% range.
 
I am a big believer in the dunk sparge for BIAB, particularly after my last brew. I usually hit ~77% with a single dunk sparge, so using this I designed my last brew with that number. At 77% I should have hit 1.059, but I got lazy and did full volume/no sparge. I got 1.051. I haven't crunched the numbers, but it was a sizable drop in eff. w/o the sparge. And to clarify, when I sparge, it's a dunk, not a rinsing shower.
 
I rinse sparge my BIAB with good results. My last 2 with sparge hit 85% efficiency. I am entirely a stovetop brewer, using a 3G kettle to mash my grain (around a 1.25 ratio qt/lbs, sometimes lower, always making sure the grain is completely covered, usually around 1.5 to 2g water). I use my 6.5g kettle to prepare the sparge water (170F, around 4g, depends on recipe).

I drain and squeeze the bag, collecting the wort in a temporary bucket, placing the bag back into the now emptied 3g kettle and rinsing it, 1 cup at a time with the sparge water. Rinse, drain, collect, repeat until I have all the wort collected. Put that in my big 6.5g kettle and boil as usual. The whole sparge process takes about 20 minutes and seems to be working well for me.
 
Bmud, can you explain in more detail your dunk sparge method? How much water are you using, what's the temp, etc. Losing 8 points is a big drop considering you're only dunking the grain bag once in I'm assuming a gallon of 170 degree water. I could be wrong though.

Bradinator, sounds like you're doing a modified BIAB method where you don't use full volume amounts. I can definitely see how you'd pick up points/sugar by sparging with lower water to grain ratio mashes. Most BIAB brewers do full volume mashes so when the grain bag is pulled out and squeezed/drained there isn't nearly the amount of sugar in the grain as you've got.

On my next brew I'm going to take a gravity reading before and after a sparge to see how many points I gain. I'll pour a gallon of 170 degree water through the bag first and then do a dunk in 170 degree water and see what results I get. If anyone else is interested in this experiment it would help everyone out with some concrete evidence. My gut feeling is that if a good 10 min mashout is done with constant stirring and then the grain bag is drained and squeezed there shouldn't be any more than a point maybe two gained with a dunk/sparge. Someone prove me wrong, please! I'd be happy to dunk sparge or pour water through my grain bag again if I can pick up more than 2-3 points.
 
I use to steep grains in a bag for my extract brews (a long time ago) but I never squeezed the bag. Now that I do all grain brewing I am tempted to try BIAB but wonder if squeezing the grain bag would release tannin into the wort. I thought I had read somewhere that would be a problem.

Did I believe in some false myth?

Trip
 
I'm going to brew my first BIAB batch tonight (previous 4 batches were extract). I think I'm good on the mash part of things. Still hearing lots of options for the sparge and wondering whats best.

1) No sparge, just make the water to grist ratio higher and lose some efficiency. Less time and complexity obviously.
2) Elevate the bag and pour the 1-2 gallons of sparge water through it. Sounds like some people see only minor additional sugar extraction with this. Bradinator, did you ever check the gravities with and without this method?
3) Dunk sparge. Seems pretty easy and I could see some additional benefit from this. Do you heat this up to mash out temps (170), or is this held at the same temp as the mash (~ 150 F)?

Guess I'm leaning towards option 3 for tonight. I have another 3G kettle that would work well for that. I'm a BIAB newb, but am kinda excited to try something new.
 
crush the heck out of that grain..I still have husks mostly intact but I crush fairly fine and a lot of flour. I get 80% with no sparge full volume BIAB. others swear by dunk sparging, and others rinse... it all comes down to what YOU want to do.
 
Pouring through a ball of grain will never touch every spec of grain so it will leave sugars behind. The dunk sparge at least saturates everything. Just taking the bag of grain and dipping it into that one gallon of sparge in whatever vessel you heated it in would more efficiently pull sugars out.
 
That is what I was thinking is to take the bag out of steamer basket and dunk it in 170f water and and it into wort. This thread is turning out to be very informative.

Thanks everyone let's keep the info going
 
I'm with Mystic: full volume, no sparge, 10 minute mashout, squeeze hell out of the bag. 80-83% efficiency every time.
 
TripHop, I haven't experienced any harshness from tannins in my BIAB beers and many others have said that it's a myth. If your sparge water is too hot say 185+ that could leech some tannins.
There's no doubt that sparging by pouring or dunking with 170 degree water will pull more sugars out of the grain. The question is how much more and would it be worth the extra effort. If anyone has noticed more than 1-2 points in extraction efficiency from sparging with a full volume BIAB I'd be interested in hearing about it.
I'm not planning a brew until after payday on the 1st so I'll post back with what differences I see. I'd be willing to bet a pint that there won't be more than 1-2 points at the most. If you have the time and want to sparge go for it but if most of the experienced BIAB'ers on this forum are getting 75-85% extraction rates without sparging I can't see much of an improvement over those numbers. If we could we'd be making the fly sparge guys look real bad! Wait, we already are. Just kidding...kind of. ;)
 
Ive seen no difference when poorig sparge water over the grain bag. I just do a normal mashout and i dont squeeze the bag too much. I average 74% efficiency, this number drops a ton if I skip mashout or dont stir during the 90 minute mash.
 
After reading through this I may try an all-squeeze, no sparge batch next time. It would save some time and if the efficiency change is only a few points its worthwhile (I am striving for the 3hr All-grain brew day).
 
Update on my first BIAB brew last night (first with any mashing actually)...Mashed @ 151 for 60 minutes at a 2.0 qt/lb ratio. Took a gravity reading and hit only about 61%.

Dunk sparged in 1.5 gallons of water @ 170 for 10 minutes, added sparge water to mash tun and squeezed as much as I could. I let it drip for another 10 minutes or so and took another gravity reading. I hit 68% final, so an additional 7 percentage points.

I'm not unhappy with this, given it's my first attempt. And it only added 90 minutes to my brew day over an extract brew. But obviously some room for efficiency improvement as I'd love to be in the mid 70's. I don't have a crusher, just tried to use a rolling pin to crush the grains further than my brewshop gave me. That's on my "to buy" list. Also could be my thermometer isn't dead on, or there was something slightly off in my water chemistry. Welcome other ideas or thoughts.
 
solbes said:
Update on my first BIAB brew last night (first with any mashing actually)...Mashed @ 151 for 60 minutes at a 2.0 qt/lb ratio. Took a gravity reading and hit only about 61%.

Dunk sparged in 1.5 gallons of water @ 170 for 10 minutes, added sparge water to mash tun and squeezed as much as I could. I let it drip for another 10 minutes or so and took another gravity reading. I hit 68% final, so an additional 7 percentage points.

I'm not unhappy with this, given it's my first attempt. And it only added 90 minutes to my brew day over an extract brew. But obviously some room for efficiency improvement as I'd love to be in the mid 70's. I don't have a crusher, just tried to use a rolling pin to crush the grains further than my brewshop gave me. That's on my "to buy" list. Also could be my thermometer isn't dead on, or there was something slightly off in my water chemistry. Welcome other ideas or thoughts.
Click to expand...


have the LHBS double crush the grain... mash for 90 minutes and make sure you squeeze that grain bag for every drop of wort. Also make sure you are taking exact measurements of volumes. being off by .5 gallons can through off your efficiency calculations. other than that.. congrats on your first of many AG beers
 
Thanks for the tips. I've got another brew buddy with all of the toys, so I'll have him send the grain I have for my next 3 batches through the mill. That's my main issue I'm guessing.

Since our work group is heading out to Lake Minnetonka for fun today, I had some extra time on my hands. Did a 2 point calibration on my thermometer. Ice water read 31.5 and boiling water read 204.5 F.

Guess I was really mashing at around 157 when I thought I was around 151 F. Might not be a bad idea to check the accuracy of your thermometers!
 
A good crush is much more important than sparging with BIAB in my opinion. The crush will be the difference between 60's and 80's on efficiency. Dunk sparging, though, works very well, and can be the difference between 80's and 90's. But, it does take more time and effort. I still do it, mostly out of habit and primarily for larger beers, where efficiency is more likely to suffer, and which push my setup to its limits (I only have 8 gallon and 5 gallon kettles). I also dunk sparge at mashout temps to help loosen the sugards. From my experience, dunk sparging will generally get you ~ 3-8% additional extraction (the higher the OG of the beer, the more you will get from dunking). This, however, may be equipment/technique dependent (e.g. bag porosity/permeability, how much you squeeze the bag, etc).

FWIW, if you are worried about getting too much husk breakage and getting tannin extraction from crushing fine, search around for "Malt Conditioning". This is VERY easy to do, and works great if you have your own mill. You can really pulverize the grain while leaving the husks almost entirely intact. It also seems to help in preventing dough balls when you start your mash (though this is entirely based on my empirical observations with my own mash).
 
solbes said:
Guess I was really mashing at around 157 when I thought I was around 151 F. Might not be a bad idea to check the accuracy of your thermometers!
Click to expand...

And your hydrometer! I realized after my second BIAB batch that my hydrometer was off about +.004. So my efficiency, while still awesome, was not as awesome as I first supposed.

Now after correcting for temperature, I have to subtract .004 from my hydro reading. THEN, when calculating efficiency, I also have to correct for volume expansion. The volume of your wort is expanded by 3% at mashout temps, and by 4% at near-boiling. Failing to account for that expansion will fool you into thinking you got a couple more ppg than you really did.
 
By the way, this thread is awesome! I have been dunk sparging, and wondering whether any other approach might get a better yield for me. It *seems* like I might already have the optimum procedure in place, but I'm excited to take gravity readings on my 1st and 2nd "runnings" to see exactly how many points that dunk sparge is adding.

Here's a question for the full volume, no spargers: in a very thin mash, say 3 quarts/lb, isn't beta amylase activity significantly reduced, even at a good compromise temperature? Doesn't that result in a dextrinous wort? And if so, are you happy with that result when brewing a variety of styles? If not, what do you do to compensate? Mash long?

I've been thinking about mash thickness a lot lately, so any insight you have would be appreciated.
 
Solbes, On my second full volume mash/BIAB my brew buddy didn't have the LHBS double grind the grain and we saw a huge drop in efficiencies. He also did a short mashout which didn't help either. A finer crush will make a big difference but I also noticed that your last mash only had 2 quarts of water per pound of grain. This may also contribute to a lower efficiency. I shoot for 5.25 gallon batches so i start with around 7.5-7.75 gallons of water and typically use 10 lbs. of grain. So that's roughly 3 quarts of water per lb. of grain or a 33% increase in water over what you're using. The extra water will allow a higher absorption of sugars during the mashout and might help you out if you can increase your water to grain ratio. I could be totally wrong but it sure sounds good.

Cyclonite, A 3-8% efficiency increase is freaking huge! What kind of water to grain ratio do you have for your mash? Can you explain your dunk mashing technique a little bit more also. If I can increase my efficiency by 3-8% by doing a 5-10 min. dunk sparge in 170 degree water I'll be adding that to my brew routine.

Edit: After thinking about the increase in efficiency with dunk sparging I made some calculations with a common 1.050 OG beer. Basically and 3-8% increase in efficiency would equal a 1.5 point to 4 point increase in OG (1.050 x 1.03 = 1.051.5). I would guess that a 1.5 to 2 point gain would be on the high end for a normal gravity beer. We need some hard data to back this up.

TonyOlympia, If you could take some hydro readings before and after your sparge on the next batch that would be cool. I'll do the same and hope a few other full volume mashers could help out with this team effort. I have also read that thin mashes may lead to a more dextrinous beer because of the reduction in beta amylase but I think that with our modern highly modified base malts there's less of an issue with this.
 
tonyolympia said:
By the way, this thread is awesome! I have been dunk sparging, and wondering whether any other approach might get a better yield for me. It *seems* like I might already have the optimum procedure in place, but I'm excited to take gravity readings on my 1st and 2nd "runnings" to see exactly how many points that dunk sparge is adding.

Here's a question for the full volume, no spargers: in a very thin mash, say 3 quarts/lb, isn't beta amylase activity significantly reduced, even at a good compromise temperature? Doesn't that result in a dextrinous wort? And if so, are you happy with that result when brewing a variety of styles? If not, what do you do to compensate? Mash long?

I've been thinking about mash thickness a lot lately, so any insight you have would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

I've done Hefe, stout, bitter, porters, kolsch, saison, IPA, Belgians, etc with BIAB/no sparge and have not noticed any issues related to mash thickness. I mash for 90 minutes and do a 10 minute mashout. (Of course I tend not to worry about stuff too much and just make beer.)

From the BN forums in an article by a BIAB'er from Oz:

"I can and have gone into lengthy discussions about L:G ratios. Mainly, people seem to be concerned about Beta Amalayse enzymes becoming denatured too quickly at such a high L:G ratio; and leaving you with an overly dextrinous wort. Then again, others say that a thin mash leads to increased fermentability, and therefore BIAB worts will be overly dry. In a way, they are both right. Both these things are a concern. BUT, in practise, they seem to balance themselves out; and worts well within the normal range are produced. Even at the L:G ratios involved with BIAB, still by far the biggest influence on wort fermentability is temperature. To be on the safe side I mash 0.5 to 1 degree C lower in temp than I normally would, and haven't had problems yet."

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4650
 
thughes said:
I've done Hefe, stout, bitter, porters, kolsch, saison, IPA, Belgians, etc with BIAB/no sparge and have not noticed any issues related to mash thickness. I mash for 90 minutes and do a 10 minute mashout. (Of course I tend not to worry about stuff too much and just make beer.)
Click to expand...

Thanks, thughes. I may make the leap into no-sparge BIAB just to see the results. My next beer is a mild with only a 4lb grain bill (for a 3.5 gallon batch), so that might not be the one to try. But I'm doing an APA real soon, and I'll give it a whirl then.
 
I'm confused how a dunk sparge in 1 gallon of water touches all the grain, especailly with 10+ lbs of grain. No matter what vessel you use, the 1 gallon of water isn't going to be enough to cover the grain...or is it?
 
BurntOrngeLonghorn84 said:
I'm confused how a dunk sparge in 1 gallon of water touches all the grain, especailly with 10+ lbs of grain. No matter what vessel you use, the 1 gallon of water isn't going to be enough to cover the grain...or is it?
Click to expand...

That's one of the things I've considered, which is why I don't bother with sparging. Heating the additional sparge water, having the extra pot to clean, etc.....just wasted time on brew day. YMMV.
 
BurntOrngeLonghorn84 said:
I'm confused how a dunk sparge in 1 gallon of water touches all the grain, especailly with 10+ lbs of grain. No matter what vessel you use, the 1 gallon of water isn't going to be enough to cover the grain...or is it?
Click to expand...

Well, I don't dunk sparge in only one gallon of water. I mash in about 1.5 qts/lb, and then I dunk sparge to make up the rest of my boil volume. For a 3.5 gallon batch, I start out with 4.25 gallons, and about 2.75 gallons of that is the dunk sparge water. My typical grain bill is 6 lbs, and 2.75 gallons of water covers that nicely.

To be honest, I'm not terribly happy with my beer, but I don't think it has to do with lautering or mash/lauter efficiency. I think my problem is with enzymatic activity, so I'm studying that.

Changing the mash thickness could help, but the FIRST thing I plan to try is to hit the right mash temp and length for the sugar profile I'm seeking (which by itself has been no problem), and then do a good mashout (something I've skipped up to now). For the last few batches I've experimented with first wort hopping in my first "runnings," and that has involved lowering the temperature to 140-150 F for 30 minutes before starting my boil. I now realize that beta amylase was probably going crazy during those 30 minutes, resulting in a thinner mouthfeel and dryer finish than I'd like. I think that a 10 minute mashout and sticking with boil hop additions (rather than FWH) could address that.
 
Easy does it Triainsafe, this all ties together quite nicely with full volume and BIAB mashing. I'm new to all grain and BIAB but have learned very quickly that there's a lot more to brewing than I realized and it's not rocket science. Understanding some basics on enzymes, L:G ratios, and proper mashouts is helpful to a lot of brewers. But the bottom line is having fun and making good beer may be the most important and I hope everyone out there is able to make a batch that they're happy with. Being consistent and learning to improve the brews is a whole other story.
 
I like your philosophy, rivercat.

All this entry-level brew science haunts me...I can't stop thinking about it! Probably because I only get to brew once a month, and I spend the rest of the month listening to Kai Troester on Basic Brewing podcasts.
 
I didn't mean to be critical in any manner. Sorry if it came across that way. That's the problem with surfing from my mobile app and not wanting to type a bunch from my phone.

As a guy who started BIAB a few months ago, I was actually interested in the finer points. Just unsure if it all fit.
 
I have been looking at all grain kits from Midwest and northern brewer and it brings me to one question. Is it better to just jump in and purchase bulk grains and then purchase lesser used grains and hops as you go or just buy the kits? I have a goy that says 40 dollars for 50 lb bag of American 2 row and 15 dollars for crystal 40,60 and other specialty grains in 10 lb bags. Good deal?
 
Agreed, buying in bulk will save you a bunch in the long run. Here, bulk costs me $1.00 - $1.25 for base grains as opposed to $1.50 - $2.00 buying per pound. So ~ $5/batch on average. My other big savings is from washing yeast.

Back on topic, yes, 3-8% extra from dunking is what I've noticed. This isn't huge, once you translate into actual gravity points, but is something. Most may not care for the extra effort, but it happens to work out well for me due to my kettle sizes. I'll emphasize again though, crush makes all the difference in the world, particularly with BIAB. The best advice I can give to a BIABer is to purchase your own mill. This, and to a lesser extent, dunking, got me from low-mid 70's to low-mid 90's (still get upper 80's for large beers). You'll probably pay for your mill in grain savings over the course of a year or two, depending on how much you brew. And, you'll probably want it when you start buying in bulk anyway.
 

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