Hey guys, I'm planning on doing my first AG brew using BIAB technique. I crushed my grain today, which is also a first for me, and did a test run with just water in my brew pot to see how well I could hold my temperatures. This might get kind of long, but hopefully I provided enough information to get some good insight from you brewers with more experience.
I will be doing a simple SMaSH (well, almost a SMaSH recipe, I will be adding in a 1/2 pound of some crushed grain from my lhbs that I've had laying around for about a month and need to get rid of). I am doing a small 2.5 Gallon batch. I have a 5 gallon pot, a cheapo Polar "stainless steel," although it feels more like some thin aluminum. I will also be doing this on my gas stove top.
The recipe I came up for this is:
- 5.07# 2-Row (.07 just because I put I bit too much on my scale, I crushed it)
- 1/2# Carapils (crushed an puchased at lhbs)
- 1oz Sterling 5.7AA @60 min
- .5oz Sterling 5.7AA @ 20 min
- .5oz Sterling 5.7AA @ 10min
- 1/2 cup brown sugar @ 5min
- Nottingham Ale Yeast (DRY)
This will be a 60 minute boil. I am thinking of mashing for 60-70 minutes @ 152 degrees F. I'm thinking that getting my strike water up for 163 degrees, after adding the grain I should probably be close to 152. I'll also bring this water up to mashout temps of 170 degrees. I know there's mixed opinions of using a mashout, but I figure I'd use it anyway for my first attempt at AG. I input all this data into an app on my Iphone, BrewPal, while I was at work and got these numbers based on my ingredients:
- Grains/Adj. - 5.75lbs
- Pre-boil OG - 1.048
- Post-boil OG - 1.065
- FG - 1.015
- ABV - 6.6%
- IBU - 55
I have the free trial of BeerSmith on my laptop, but still have to get to know it a bit better, as well as set it up for BIAB method, I'll have to research on this topic a little more before I use it.
Now, in BrewPal, it says that I'd want 2.1 gallons for strike water and 2.4 gallons for my sparge. I know with BIAB I put in all my water in the brew pot at once in the beginning, so so does combining these numbers and using 4.5 gallons right from the start sound right? I was hoping I could use closer to 4 since it gives me a bit more room in the pot, but if 4.5 sounds better I'll use that. I'm just not sure how much water 5.5# of grain will absorb. I burn off about 1 gallon of water an hour, but I've never boiled this much water at one time, so I can't say I'm sure it'll be the same. I have my test run of water doing its 60 minute boil now, so I'll measure after it cools to see what's left, and I'll update it here as well later on.
On the test run with holding my temperature, it actually went a lot better than expected! I only used 4 gallons on this test run. I heated it up to the strike temp of 162, with the lid on just so it could heat up faster. I then took the lid off, lowered the heat to very low (I will be using a smaller SS lid as a 'false bottom' as I read somewhere before), took the reading on my thermometer of 162, and then simulated putting in my paint strainer bag, and then used my imagination to simulate pouring in and stirring the grain (good thing SWMBO wasn't around, she would've probably thought I was crazy). I obviously couldn't tell how much the temperature would drop once I dropped in the grain since I was just using water, so instead after having the lid off and running through all this, I took a temp reading again and it was still right at 162 - 162.5. I turned off the heat. I put the lid on, put a small kitchen towel on the lid, and then took an old thermal long sleeve shirt and put i over that and tied up the sleeves nice and tight to prevent an heat escaping from the lid. I let it sit for half an hour, before i came back to "stir" it and check temp. The temp was still right at 162 -162.5! I thought I'd lose quite a bit, but this was great. I'm guessing it'll hold just about the same with grain in there. I put the lid on and covered it again. I came back 40 minutes later (I meant to make it 30) and "stirred" and checked temp again, it was at 157, so I lost 5 degrees. To make up for this, I'll just turn the burner on for maybe a minute next time after the 30 minute stir to make up for heat loss from taking the lid off. When I do the real thing, after 60 minutes I will take out the grain bag, let it drip, then put it into a bucket and give it a good squeeze and pour that into the pot again, and then proceed with a the usual 60 minute boil.
So if you stuck around to read all this, how does this sound? Do I need to make any changes based on my test run?
Also, I have some pics of my crush. This was my first time doing this and using a grain mill. I think it actually looked a bit better than my lhbs' crush. I tried to go as fine as I felt comfortable, but with my grain mill I either got what is pictured, and if I tightened it just a tiny bit more, I'd start giving off a lot more powder, there was like no in-between. So I went with this, even though I've read that BIAB allows for the crush to be a lot more finer than a traditional mash. Hopefully it works ok:
Please note that there is a lot more powder than what you can actually see in the pictures, I just don't have a very good camera haha. Some of the husks that look whole are actually cracked (well at least most), I was constantly, constantly checking to make sure there weren't many uncracked ones, but I was a little scared to tighten the mill plates up anymore, because then I was just getting way more powder.
Well if you read this all, thank you, and would appreciate any feedback!
EDIT EDIT:
Ok, so after the 4 gallon "mash" and boil I attempted on this test run, after the 60 minute boil cooled, I had just under 3 1/4 gallons of water left. So as long as 5.5# of grain absorb less than a gallon of water, but at least about 3/4 of a gallon, I should be good. So do you guys think they'll absorb more or less? Thanks again
I will be doing a simple SMaSH (well, almost a SMaSH recipe, I will be adding in a 1/2 pound of some crushed grain from my lhbs that I've had laying around for about a month and need to get rid of). I am doing a small 2.5 Gallon batch. I have a 5 gallon pot, a cheapo Polar "stainless steel," although it feels more like some thin aluminum. I will also be doing this on my gas stove top.
The recipe I came up for this is:
- 5.07# 2-Row (.07 just because I put I bit too much on my scale, I crushed it)
- 1/2# Carapils (crushed an puchased at lhbs)
- 1oz Sterling 5.7AA @60 min
- .5oz Sterling 5.7AA @ 20 min
- .5oz Sterling 5.7AA @ 10min
- 1/2 cup brown sugar @ 5min
- Nottingham Ale Yeast (DRY)
This will be a 60 minute boil. I am thinking of mashing for 60-70 minutes @ 152 degrees F. I'm thinking that getting my strike water up for 163 degrees, after adding the grain I should probably be close to 152. I'll also bring this water up to mashout temps of 170 degrees. I know there's mixed opinions of using a mashout, but I figure I'd use it anyway for my first attempt at AG. I input all this data into an app on my Iphone, BrewPal, while I was at work and got these numbers based on my ingredients:
- Grains/Adj. - 5.75lbs
- Pre-boil OG - 1.048
- Post-boil OG - 1.065
- FG - 1.015
- ABV - 6.6%
- IBU - 55
I have the free trial of BeerSmith on my laptop, but still have to get to know it a bit better, as well as set it up for BIAB method, I'll have to research on this topic a little more before I use it.
Now, in BrewPal, it says that I'd want 2.1 gallons for strike water and 2.4 gallons for my sparge. I know with BIAB I put in all my water in the brew pot at once in the beginning, so so does combining these numbers and using 4.5 gallons right from the start sound right? I was hoping I could use closer to 4 since it gives me a bit more room in the pot, but if 4.5 sounds better I'll use that. I'm just not sure how much water 5.5# of grain will absorb. I burn off about 1 gallon of water an hour, but I've never boiled this much water at one time, so I can't say I'm sure it'll be the same. I have my test run of water doing its 60 minute boil now, so I'll measure after it cools to see what's left, and I'll update it here as well later on.
On the test run with holding my temperature, it actually went a lot better than expected! I only used 4 gallons on this test run. I heated it up to the strike temp of 162, with the lid on just so it could heat up faster. I then took the lid off, lowered the heat to very low (I will be using a smaller SS lid as a 'false bottom' as I read somewhere before), took the reading on my thermometer of 162, and then simulated putting in my paint strainer bag, and then used my imagination to simulate pouring in and stirring the grain (good thing SWMBO wasn't around, she would've probably thought I was crazy). I obviously couldn't tell how much the temperature would drop once I dropped in the grain since I was just using water, so instead after having the lid off and running through all this, I took a temp reading again and it was still right at 162 - 162.5. I turned off the heat. I put the lid on, put a small kitchen towel on the lid, and then took an old thermal long sleeve shirt and put i over that and tied up the sleeves nice and tight to prevent an heat escaping from the lid. I let it sit for half an hour, before i came back to "stir" it and check temp. The temp was still right at 162 -162.5! I thought I'd lose quite a bit, but this was great. I'm guessing it'll hold just about the same with grain in there. I put the lid on and covered it again. I came back 40 minutes later (I meant to make it 30) and "stirred" and checked temp again, it was at 157, so I lost 5 degrees. To make up for this, I'll just turn the burner on for maybe a minute next time after the 30 minute stir to make up for heat loss from taking the lid off. When I do the real thing, after 60 minutes I will take out the grain bag, let it drip, then put it into a bucket and give it a good squeeze and pour that into the pot again, and then proceed with a the usual 60 minute boil.
So if you stuck around to read all this, how does this sound? Do I need to make any changes based on my test run?
Also, I have some pics of my crush. This was my first time doing this and using a grain mill. I think it actually looked a bit better than my lhbs' crush. I tried to go as fine as I felt comfortable, but with my grain mill I either got what is pictured, and if I tightened it just a tiny bit more, I'd start giving off a lot more powder, there was like no in-between. So I went with this, even though I've read that BIAB allows for the crush to be a lot more finer than a traditional mash. Hopefully it works ok:
Please note that there is a lot more powder than what you can actually see in the pictures, I just don't have a very good camera haha. Some of the husks that look whole are actually cracked (well at least most), I was constantly, constantly checking to make sure there weren't many uncracked ones, but I was a little scared to tighten the mill plates up anymore, because then I was just getting way more powder.
Well if you read this all, thank you, and would appreciate any feedback!
EDIT EDIT:
Ok, so after the 4 gallon "mash" and boil I attempted on this test run, after the 60 minute boil cooled, I had just under 3 1/4 gallons of water left. So as long as 5.5# of grain absorb less than a gallon of water, but at least about 3/4 of a gallon, I should be good. So do you guys think they'll absorb more or less? Thanks again
