1st all grain-Q about mash temp&low eff

[CascadeOK]

Just did my first all grain brew - a 10 gal blue moon type clone. The recipe kit said OG was 1.056 but I ended up with 1.047. I'm thinking a couple things contributed that I need to work on next time. Using an online calculator I believe I calculated my brewhouse eff at 55.5%.

1) The kits for a 5 gal batch really seem to be for just 5 gals, so if you're wanting 5.5 gal into the ferm bucket so you can net 5 gals in the keg it seems like you'll need to increase the grain bill. Should I scale just base malts or all of the grains in the recipe

2) I let the grain bag drip for 3 mins and gave a light squeeze. I'm thinking hard squeezing or longer drip time might help a bit? Also I got whatever grind is standard and local brew shop wont do a double or finer grind. May need to get my own mill.

3) Mash temp - after hitting 153 I turned the pump off to mash in. The prob is my temp prob is inline with the pump so it turned the heating element back on while I slowly stirred in the large grain bill. I think I was 164 or 166 when I turned the pump back on. After 3 mins of not dropping fast I went ahead and put my chiller in the wort to drop it faster. Can this be enough to screw up my efficiency?

Worst case..I made beer and I will drink it anyway! But I would like to improve the quality of what I do. Suggestions or thoughts? Thanks

 

[Buckeye_Phil]

Can you describe your process a bit more? Sounds like BIAB, but with a recirc pump and heating element? Maybe I'm just confused.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

My advice would be to get your own grain bill and crush as fine as you can.

 

[YeastMode]

Hey congratulations, you are on your way to making beer!

Answers to your questions:

1. Yes, 5 gallon kits are made to produce 5 gallons of wort in the the fermentation bucket, and even adding .5 gallons of water will make a noticeable difference. As far as scaling, the proper answer is to scale all grains. I, however, just up my base grain by a bit and go with it. I consider it to be the equivalent of "Kentucky Windage" for beer, so to speak. But if I have to adjust by more than half a pound or so, then I scale the recipie so that the malt rations remain basically correct.

2. I am not a BIAB'er, so someone may be better served to answer this for you. My understanding is that some people squeeze, some don't. Palmer's book says to squeeze and I feel like I have heard that advice before, so I am going to go with squeeze. The counterpoint is that you may extract tannins and some grain will go through the bag and into the wort, both issues not being preferred. Do a quick search in this forum and you will see many threads on the debate. As for the crush, I understand that BIAB allows for much finer crush. If they won't double crush, I would at least make sure that they have their mill set to proper tightness tolerance and that they use a proper speed. Someone's a highly used mill with a drill can really give you a poor crush. You may find that one crush with a good mill is all you need.

3. Yes, the higher temp would have a negitive effect on your conversion and thus you would have less efficiency. More importantly, watch your temps to ensure that you are consistent in the process so you can adjust accordingly. Efficiency is a funny thing in that improvements can either come from better process (and thus free) or by adjusting your grain accordingly (costs money, albeit usually not much). I just buy a bit kore grain and go about my work, but there are people in this forum who see 80% plus efficiency using BIAB methods. I'm sure they will chime in here.

But be happy! That's a good outcome for your first rodeo. Cheers to you.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Hey congratulations, you are on your way to making beer!

Answers to your questions:

1. Yes, 5 gallon kits are made to produce 5 gallons of wort in the the fermentation bucket, and even adding .5 gallons of water will make a noticeable difference. As far as scaling, the proper answer is to scale all grains. I, however, just up my base grain by a bit and go with it. I consider it to be the equivalent of "Kentucky Windage" for beer, so to speak. But if I have to adjust by more than half a pound or so, then I scale the recipie so that the malt rations remain basically correct.

2. I am not a BIAB'er, so someone may be better served to answer this for you. My understanding is that some people squeeze, some don't. Palmer's book says to squeeze and I feel like I have heard that advice before, so I am going to go with squeeze. The counterpoint is that you may extract tannins and some grain will go through the bag and into the wort, both issues not being preferred. Do a quick search in this forum and you will see many threads on the debate. As for the crush, I understand that BIAB allows for much finer crush. If they won't double crush, I would at least make sure that they have their mill set to proper tightness tolerance and that they use a proper speed. Someone's a highly used mill with a drill can really give you a poor crush. You may find that one crush with a good mill is all you need.

3. Yes, the higher temp would have a negitive effect on your conversion and thus you would have less efficiency. More importantly, watch your temps to ensure that you are consistent in the process so you can adjust accordingly. Efficiency is a funny thing in that improvements can either come from better process (and thus free) or by adjusting your grain accordingly (costs money, albeit usually not much). I just buy a bit kore grain and go about my work, but there are people in this forum who see 80% plus efficiency using BIAB methods. I'm sure they will chime in here.

But be happy! That's a good outcome for your first rodeo. Cheers to you.

squeezing does not affect tannins. Tannins are a product of high temps or ph. Effeciency isn't really affect by the mash temp, as long as mash temp is within 140-160 you're fine

 

[CascadeOK]

Thanks for all the info. To answer a few questions I am doing a biab using a wilser bag (love it) and I was using your online calc priceless (also love it).

I have a 20 gal pot, built a slightly scaled down controller ala electricbrewery.com and I am using a recirc pump. Basically looked at what others had success with and tried to make something that works for me.

I think Ill assume a lower efficiency next time and increase my grain bill until I can get a decent mill like a cereal killer. Also being more careful with temp during mash. The PID does a great job, but not running the pump circumvents the temp probe and definitely allowed the wort to get hotter than I wanted.

I'm really liking what biab has to offer, I just need to get better at the details and learn my equipment so I can brew more consistently.

 

[TexasWine]

Just did my first all grain brew - a 10 gal blue moon type clone. The recipe kit said OG was 1.056 but I ended up with 1.047. I'm thinking a couple things contributed that I need to work on next time. Using an online calculator I believe I calculated my brewhouse eff at 55.5%.

3) Mash temp - after hitting 153 I turned the pump off to mash in. The prob is my temp prob is inline with the pump so it turned the heating element back on while I slowly stirred in the large grain bill. I think I was 164 or 166 when I turned the pump back on. After 3 mins of not dropping fast I went ahead and put my chiller in the wort to drop it faster. Can this be enough to screw up my efficiency?

First a question. Did you end up with 5.5 or 5 gallons at 1.047?

Something else to keep in mind is that brewhouse efficiency accounts for the losses you see in your particular system. If, as an extreme example, I hit all my numbers of gravity, but my drain valve I use to dump wort to the fermenter is half way up my kettle and I leave 3 gallons behind, then my efficiency will stink.

I say this because when helping someone trouble shoot their process, gravity readings at various stages are very beneficial. How do we know you're not leaving 3 gallons behind in your janky kettle

Edit: gravity AND volume are both needed

Another lesson learned I think you've already picked up on. When you're doughing in, turn that element off! Unplug it or something.

Another thing, your mash temp should not be the same as your strike temp. Sounds like you wanted to mash at 153F. So you heated the water to 153F and dropped your grains in. Because as soon as you drop those room temp grains into the hot water the water temp will drop like a rock, you should have heated the strike water to something higher than 153F if that was the temp you wanted to mash at.

Hope this helps some!

 

[casualbrewer]

I did my first biab last week and it worked great! Had my lhbs run my grain through twice and I squeezed my grain like it owed me money. Got 75% which is about what most people get.

 

[CascadeOK]

Sorry here is a more complete look

6.5 lb White Wheat
4.5 lb 2 Row
2.5 lb Munich
2 lb 6 row
1.5 lb flaked oats
1.5 lb flaked wheat
1 lb carafoam

2 oz Bittering hops
1 oz Aroma hops

1 lb Candi sugar
1.5 oz Coriander crushed
.5 oz Orange peel
4 oz Orange Marmalade

S-04 yeast
[21.5 lbs of grain, 3 oz of hops]
20 gal pot, 240V 5500W element using pump to recirc during and stirred about 4 times during 60 mins

Started with 14 gals water, heated to strike 157 F
PID set to 153 F Mash in set timer for 60 mins. When done set PID to 170 for 20 mins and allowed it to climb
no sparge light bag squeeze, barely anything left in bottom of kettle when done
Netted 9.44 gals into ferm containers so 4.72 gals in each 5 gal bucket & FG 1.047

 

[TexasWine]

I'm assuming the 1.047 you measured was after you added the Candi Sugar?

 

[jahdub]

Not all kits are made for 5 gal to the fermenter. Not every shop tells you enough specifics about this. The best way to know for sure is to plug the recipe into beersmith and see what your estimated OG would be and compare it to the kit estimated OG.

I've seen kits that look like they assume 70% efficiency at 5 gal batch size and 75% efficiency at 5 gal batch size sold on the same site.

 

[CascadeOK]

Yes the 1.047 was after the candi sugar addition and also made a slight compensating for temp based on a chart I found.

I appreciate all the feedback. It can be overwhelming with so many details to learn but I feel like this forum drastically lowers the learning curve!

 

[Gavin C]

Two big tickets to improving your process.

Crush fine. (my grist is like coarse cornmeal with 1 pass at the narrowest setting on my mill (0.02 I think although I question the accuracy of this cheap mill)

Squeeze the bag or let it drain over the pot as you bring to boil (if you have the facility to hoist gravity will do its thing).

I squeeze with the wort at 168F. I lose under 0.05 gallons per pound of grain to absorption.

This is 9lb soaking up 0.4 gallons

Two links in my sig may be of use to you and cover a lot of the commonly overlooked aspects of BIAB. Might be of use.

I typically see consistent results at 77-83% brewhouse efficiency depending on the target OG. The consistency being far more important means I brew the beer I intended, the efficiency saves me minimal money per brew.

I believe that by refining the process consistency will result and better efficiency is the bonus, albeit a less important byproduct.

 

[CascadeOK]

I wanted to come back and post a followup in case it helps someone else.

My first all grain Blue Moon clone was a 10 gallon batch that had a low efficiency. Possible problems were grains not crushed fine enough, only mashed 60 mins when I may have needed 90, accidentally left heating element on while doughing in and may have had a negative impact. Beer was much too light in color and thin tasting.

12/15 - Trying exact same all grain Blue Moon Kit but brewing 5 gals. I also bought Beersmith so I can get a better understanding of what Im doing, got a refractometer to take more measurements along the way, got a grain mill since my local shop wont 2nd grind or fine grind for me. Shop did first grain crush and I did again at home set at .028 on my cereal killer.

​7.25 gal start water was estimate needed (BIAB)
Target OG was 1.056@ 5 gals, or 1.051 at 5.5 gals

After a 60 min mash & 10 min mash out @ 170, pre-boil 1.044
Squeeze bag like it owes me money
After 60 min boil 1.078 (wow!) into the fermenter and about 4.4 gallons
Added 1.1 gal top off water to get to 5.5 gallons and now at 1.061 (still a bit high for the style..but its all good. Approx 86% mash efficiency)

Thoughts - While my former loss of efficiency could have come from a few different things, I believe my 86% efficiency I saw was because of the fine crush of my grains. I had to add back in 1.1 gals of water, so I went into Beersmith and kept adjusting my gal lost/hr until my target of 5.5 gals ended at 4.4 gals (which was I believe changed .5 gal lost/hr to 1.53 gal lost/hr. I have a 20 gal pot with a large surface area so this is reasonable). This adjustment is then a starting point for a next brew to better calculate the total water I should start with.

Same night I also brewed a Vanilla Porter all grain 5 gal kit. Crushed at store, I also 2nd crushed this to .028

Using my adjusted equipment profile to account for a larger loss per hour to evap during the boil the software said I needed 7.85 gallons of water

After 60 min mash 1.040
After 10 min mash out @ 170 and bag squeeze 1.046 (took before and after readings because I was curious what mash out/bag squeeze difference would be)
After 60 min boil 1.057 and I put 5.5 gals into the fermenter. No top off water needed this time so water calculation seemed right on. Beersmith also calculated this at 86% efficiency.

I appreciate the helpfulness of these forums and all the people the posted. It's a huge quantity of info to digest at first. Experienced homebrewers willingness to help new people makes a big difference!