Beginning brewer questions

[jbush_13]

I'm brewing a 5 gallon biab American amber ale.
1. Is a 5 gallon glass carboy big enough for primary with a blowoff tube?
2. Is a secondary fermentation vessel essential? Pros and cons of not having one?
3. I know some people sparge when doing a biab brew? What are the pros and cons of sparking?
4. What size kette should I have? Would 7 gallons work?

Thanks!

 

[madscientist451]

1. Not really, thats why they make 6.5 gallon carboys. The karger volume allows for headspace for yeast expansion and you can put 5.5 gallons in there since you might lose 1/2 gallon because of yeast cake and other items settling to bottom.
2. No, its not essential. Many brewers today just use a primary and bottle directly from that. I'm a little stuck in my ways and always rack to secondary, I go from the 6.5 carboy to a 5 gallon. This frees up my big carboy for the next brew and gets my beer off the dead yeast while I let it condition a while in the carboy. I'm not saying either way is better, its just what I'm used to.
3. The original BIAB method used the whole volume of water all in one go. I suppose some brewers are sparging their BIAB grains to raise the efficiency, but thats just a guess.
4. A 7 gallon pot will work fine, but you may have to experiment a little and it may be better to scale back to 4 gallon brews if all you have is 5 gallon carboy. Shoot for 4.5 gallons of wort in the carboy and 4 gallons finished beer. You have to allow for extra water that boils off, water absorbed by the grain and the space taken up in the pot by the grain.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

Ditto for a larger primary and not secondary. As for BIAB with sparging, your setup is a perfect example of when sparging can help. First of all, my BIAB efficiency went up about 5% when I started doing a slow trickle sparge through the bag. More importantly in your case is that by withholding about 2 gal for sparging, you will can do a 5 gal brew with a 7 gal pot.

You can either raise the bag over the pot and sparge through it or put your sparge water in another pot and "dunk sparge" the bag in that pot and transfer those "runnings" into your main pot. Either way, once you remove the bag from your pot, you now have room for your sparge water and have a 6 - 6.5 gal boil for a 5 gal batch.

 

[C-Rider]

My BIAB mash eff went up about 10 points when I began t o grind my grain to flour in a blender

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

+1 for C-Rider. Fine grinding was my single biggest jump in efficiency.

 

[unionrdr]

My efficiency went up not by getting an even crush from my barley crusher mill. But by dunk sparging with a nylon grain bag so I could stir the grains & let'em sit in the 170F water for 10 minutes. I've gotten 1.046-1.049 OG's up to 1.061 this way. And I do pb/pm biab in the same 5 gallon SS kettle I started with. But, even doing biab, I found I didn't need to grind it into flour to get good efficiency. My BC mill is set at .039". Gives a nice, even crush.

 

[rodwha]

I sparge too, but I'm only doing a partial mash as I use a large colander. It can only handle about 6.5 lbs of grains without being hard to handle and messy. Might be able to squeeze another 1/2 lb in it if you really wanted.

I use what's called an 8 gal pot, but I think in reality it only handles about 7. I brew 5.5 gals but use ~1/2 gal of top off water so as not to concern myself with exact amounts and exact boil offs. And then I also use a pint for rehydrating yeast. I boil 5.5 gals.

Sparging rinses out additional sugars that were converted. I have no idea how much more I get as I've always done it. At times my efficiency seems to be in the mid to high 80's. 75% seems about average.

Are you treating your mash water?

 

[halcyondays]

I've been doing BIAB for a couple years now and have a 10 gallon kettle. Depending on how high you're planning on going with your gravity, a 7 gallon kettle will only fit so much grain. Unless of course you do some sparging to get the gravity up, like others have mentioned.

My 10 gallon kettle has worked for every brew I've done, and with double milling my grains at the LHBS, I've gotten dead on gravities every single time with no sparge. I just pull it out, let it drip, then squeeze the hell out of it in another kettle and pour the extra liquid back into the boil kettle. Works like a charm every time, no sparge necessary. Efficiency is generally around 70-72% according to my Beersmith calculations which isn't super high, but about right on with the recipes I've used.

 

[imp81318]

I'm brewing a 5 gallon biab American amber ale.
1. Is a 5 gallon glass carboy big enough for primary with a blowoff tube?

To answer your first question, no a 5 gallon carboy is not big enough for primary fermentation of a 5 gallon batch. See below for photo of my attempt at doing this very thing. I am not about 52 hours out from pitching yeast and I believe the krausen has fallen to the point that I can remove the blowoff and insert an airlock...

 

[jbush_13]

Wow thanks for all the help guys! I'll take all the advice I can get im just starting off I'm only 19 lol. I'm borrowing a turkey fryer from an uncle for the boil. I was hoping not to have to buy a bigger carboy to save some money but off to Craigslist I go. I think I'm may have a bucket big enough to give the brew more headspace in primary, but will the blowoff tube fit in the hole? I'm using a 1 inch blowoff tube

 

[oogaboogachiefwalkingdeer]

Use the 5 gallon carboy and the blow off. Just don't fill to the top. I have had no issues with them.