ag brewing with bag

so a bit of background--
i've recently switched to the grain brewing for cost and budget reasons, and have been playing around with some techniques on the last few runs--
first run the malt was very finely ground and my more compulsive side simply threw all of the grist into the boiling pot straight. of course it was much too fine for a strainer and ended up with about half a carboy of sediment. ha!
so now i've been throwing all the grist into a fine strainer bag and hanging it into the water for the full hour and shlopping it around-- like a big teabag-- this seemed to me like it was going real well but--
after throwing it in the carboy for the first fermentation had a whole lot of nothing. there was also no activity in that first attempt with all the sediment- i was wondering if this was because of the hulls and junk left in it.. and actually the top of the super-sedimented beer i used in the other teabag-style, so i'm wondering if it didn't start because it had contact with the sediment..
but hey, if any of yall got a word on the teabag method, on reasons for stalled or no fermentation on grain brewing it would kinda save me, and as these are my first brews in my new location i've been unable to relax and have a homebrew and think it over correctly and calmly. ha!
thanks much now, good brewin

Alrighty then....... my impresssion from your post is that you need to do some reading and understanding of the brewing process and how the conversion from starch to sugar occurs during the mashing process. Have you read the online version of How To Brew? I am sorry if this is a misinterpretation but you are not supposed to boil grain.
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

What temperature did you hold this "teabag" at for the hour?

The "Tea bag" method that I use is bungee cord two blankets around my bottling bucket, insert a jumbo grain bag, put the grain in and strike water and stir til the temp is right. Put a cover on it, and a pillow with some weights to insulate the top and wait. It holds temps well then just sparge as usual. This way you can vourlaf and keep the grains and husks out of your brew pot.

This might not be a direct answer to your question but it might be a good way to go and you dont need to buy anymore equipment. I do this for partial mashes since my brew pot is not large enough for 6-7 gallon boils.

I can't imagine mashing a 5gallon grainbill in a bag.

need specifics about the water temperature used for mashing and sparging, and your grain bill.

You did what?

Strong recommend the 'how to brew' reading already suggested, before you waste anymore money.

malkore said:

I can't imagine mashing a 5gallon grainbill in a bag.

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Well, you need a pretty big bag, but it is possible. For the OP - there are instructions on how to do it at www.aussiehomebrewer.com , and I made an excellent batch of Edwort's Haus Pale that way. (Not sure if a direct link to the thread will work - http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11694&hl= but if not, searching for "BIAB" or "brew in a bag" should do it). I'd suggest you have a read of them. Brewing in a bag is an amazingly cheap way to go AG that a lot of people have had success with, but you still need to follow the process carefully. Throwing grains in a pot and boiling them isn't going to get it done; as other folks have mentioned, you need to hold the grain at a moderately high temperature to extract fermentable sugars FIRST, then remove the grains, and only then boil the resulting wort. There are more comprehensive instructions on the link above. Good luck!

sorry, didn't mean to imply that it wasn't a feasible process. I did one partial mash in a 5 gallon cooler, and was hooked on the process (simple batch sparge, SS braid, reasonable efficiency).
so its just a departure from my normal brewing process to think about pulling it off with 'just a bag'. I'm sure people would watch my brewing process and think 'wtf?'

all roads lead to beer!

malkore said:

all roads lead to beer!

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+1! Some roads just take weird detours that involve lifting 13 lbs of grain out of a brew kettle using a bag made out of a net curtain. Sure, it may involve dripping hot wort all over your floor and/or clothes, but no-one said brewing had to be easy!

A mash tun is the next thing on my shopping list

I don't know, brew in a bag has been a fairly easy and particularly clean way to get a batch of all grain done for me. It sounds like the person who started this thread may be confusing the ideas of steeping grains and mashing them. It took me a while and a lot of reading before I could do/understand the AG process, and it wasn't until I finally understood it did I think that brew in a bag would work.

As for mashing a 5 gal recipe in a 5 gal cooler, it's really no problem. Yes you're filling it up pretty full with grains (I use an average of about 10 lbs with mine, but I could go up to 12) and the risk of stuck sparges is there, but with constant stirring and manuvering the bag up and down, you can get a decent sparge going.

Like I said on the other post about this, the last time I did this with my brown ale, I hit an amazing 80% efficiency, which isn't all that great seeing as how I made the recipe around a 65%, but oh well. More alcohol isn't always a bad thing!

At some point I'm going to take pics of my macguyver brew setup. It really is just plug and play, no modifications required. Stay tuned.

mike

MLynchLtd said:

At some point I'm going to take pics of my macguyver brew setup. It really is just plug and play, no modifications required. Stay tuned.

mike

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Excellent! Nice to know there are other bag-brewers on here. Can I ask how you lift the grain bag out? That's the only part of the process that I find difficult. I've seen pics of some Australians who have ceiling winches, but as I brew in my kitchen I'm limited to using string and brute force

whew well yeah it does indeed lokk like i mixed up a few things.
as my previous beermaking has consisted of dumping malt extract and extra sugar and all the rest into a pot and plainly cooking it with no regard for temperature, actual time, cleanliness, etc, in my transfer to all grain brewing i went with the same method.
it was to my apparently false understanding that the sugars in the malted grains were gotten out through intense boiling, as long as the grains were cracked. i then would grind out about ten or so pounds of grain, put them in a fine mesh bag and boil the bag at a rolling boil for a good hour or so, then dumping the leftover water in the carboy, then putting the strainer bag into the funnel and then fill up the rest of the carboy, flushing out the bag with the rest of the water.
so hm hm looks like no dice, eh? steeping and mashing, eh? ho hum.
thanks everyone quite a bit, if you got a second and can give layman's terms to steeping and mashing you would probably save me quite a bit of hair.

ol noodler said:

whew well yeah it does indeed lokk like i mixed up a few things.
as my previous beermaking has consisted of dumping malt extract and extra sugar and all the rest into a pot and plainly cooking it with no regard for temperature, actual time, cleanliness, etc, in my transfer to all grain brewing i went with the same method.
it was to my apparently false understanding that the sugars in the malted grains were gotten out through intense boiling, as long as the grains were cracked. i then would grind out about ten or so pounds of grain, put them in a fine mesh bag and boil the bag at a rolling boil for a good hour or so, then dumping the leftover water in the carboy, then putting the strainer bag into the funnel and then fill up the rest of the carboy, flushing out the bag with the rest of the water.
so hm hm looks like no dice, eh? steeping and mashing, eh? ho hum.
thanks everyone quite a bit, if you got a second and can give layman's terms to steeping and mashing you would probably save me quite a bit of hair.

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Steeping is basically making tea with the Grain to get the properties of the adjuncts into the brew and extracting some sugars, while the DME/LME replaces the base malt (most of the Sugars)

Mashing is holding the crushed grains at temperatures that allow the enzymes to activate and break down the sugars in the malt to fermentable forms thus extracting the sugars, sparging you are rinsing all the sugars out and getting the desired flavors and properties from the adjuncts (your tea if you will) (If you evaporate it down you get LME if you take all the moisture out you are left with DME)

Partial Mashing is just that a combination of a small mash with DME/LME added.

It is more complex than that but that is the basic explanation.

Also there are two types of "malt" you'll encounter: those that require mashing (like normal 2 or 6 row) and those that have already been converted (like Crystal).

Typically with extract + grain brewing, you use converted malts like Crystal to impart flavors and other properties like better head retention and mouthfeel to the "base" of sugars that you get from LME or DME. Even when using this method, boiling the grain is counterindicated since you could leach more tannins away from the husks than you'd like. Steep them at 150 or 160F for 30 min. You're not mashing them, just allowing time for the converted sugars to dissolve.

When you're doing a partial mash or all grain brew, you're using unconverted malts (in addition to a small percentage of converted ones) to create some or all of the sugars for brewing. An easy way to hold the grains and water at the required temp is to put them in a somewhat altered cooler, known as a Mash Lauter Tun (MLT).

Please read the Palmer and come back here with any questions.