1 Gallon BIAB brewing questions

[guitarguy6]

Hey guys, I'm looking to do some 1 gallon all grain BIAB batches and had a few questions. I usually do 10 gallon all grain and found that when I have 20+LB grain bills sometimes a 60 minute mash isn't sufficient. Based on that I was wondering if a full 60 minute mash is necessary for <3lb of grain. I don't have iodine at the moment and all the stores are closed. Rather than trying to sparge the grain by pouring hot water over it I was planning on using a second pot to sparge in. What would you guys suggest? Is a full 60 min boil necessary if it's a basic grain bill ie. 2-row with a bit of crystal. Beersmith is calculating a pre-boil volume of 2.3 Gallons. Does that sound right? I've never made a batch this small so I'm not sure. Any other tips you guys might have? Cheers

 

[Iseneye]

If you are doing a small batch you could try to mash in with your full volume of water rather than sparging.

If you don't have a way of testing for conversion then go with the 60 minutes. You may not need to mash that long but it's a safe number.

 

[guitarguy6]

I just finished brewing my first 1 gallon BIAB and everything went well. I mashed in 1 gallon of water for 30min at 150f and then put the grain bag into 1 gallon of water at 168f. I put the first gallon of wort on my burner and when it was about to come to a boil I removed the grain bag from the second pot and added all the wort together. I was targeting an OG of 1.05 and got 1.048 so that's close enough for me. It was a pretty quick brew day and I enjoyed how simple it was. Bringing a couple gallons up to a boil and then chilling took very little time compared to my 10 gallon all grain brews.

 

[Gavin C]

Mash times are not related to the batch size. It takes the same time to mash 1 pound of grain as it does 100 pounds of grain. The only difference is in scale not in the chemistry.

 

[guitarguy6]

Mash times are not related to the batch size. It takes the same time to mash 1 pound of grain as it does 100 pounds of grain. The only difference is in scale not in the chemistry.

That's what I thought but when I moved from 5 gallon all grain batches to 10 gallon but I found that sometimes 60 min mashes weren't long enough to pass a starch conversion test. Next time I'll have some iodine to test for conversion.

 

[Biscuits]

If you're doing small batches with BIAB method, why sparge? The whole point of BIAB is simplicity...just do foll volume mashes, after 60 minutes, remove the grain bag, squeeze the be-jesus out of it, and start your boil.

 

[Spartan300man]

When I did not have a a big enough pot for 5 gallons of water as well as the grains, I used BIAB for almost 3 gallon of water and the bag, and then a second small pot with additional 2 gallons for the dunk sparging. Then I was able to get close to 5 gallons of the combined wort in a boil pot. I topped it off as needed in the bucket with boiled and cooled water.