BIAB Brewing (with pics)

[eulipion2]

My bad. Yes, 0.035. My recollection was hazy, but now I see that the CK is adjustable from 0.025 to 0.100". I just didn't know how fine I should go.

.035" would probably be just fine. It's certainly a good starting point. As long as all the kernels are crushed and you get relatively consistent efficiency from brew to brew it's fine. If you want to (try to) increase efficiency narrow the gap.

I think the knurling on my BC is starting to wear, so I'm seeing some uncrushed grains on the first pass, so I occasionally double-mill the grain. Since your mill is new, and presumably free of defect that shouldn't be a problem for you, so a single pass should be fine.

 

[Griffin495]

I was thinking of doing Northern Brewer's bourbon Barrel Porter for my first BIAB. It was one of the first beers I did (although it was an extract with steeping grains) and I still have 2 bottles left that have aged just over 3 years. But with the primary and secondary fermenters and aging it, I'm starting to think I'd rather do something with a quicker turnaround. Something light to drink this summer, but I'm having a mental block on coming up with something. The problem is I've already got a pale ale and an Irish red in bottles ready to drink, a Witbier that I am bottling this weekend and a 15 minute extract pale ale that I'm brewing next week. So PA is out, wit or hefe is out, what's something light and refreshing and not too hoppy for summer?

 

[eulipion2]

So PA is out, wit or hefe is out, what's something light and refreshing and not too hoppy for summer?

How about Cream of Three Crops or Fizzy Yellow Beer? Light, crisp, refreshing summer quaffers.

 

[VagueSkunk]

The obvious answer (to me at least ) is an NEIPA: http://www.alesoftheriverwards.com/2015/08/tired-hands-hophands-clone-revisted.html

 

[Griffin495]

Well, since this is my first attempt at BIAB, I decided to brew a cheap beer. Printed out the Speckled Heifer recipe from NB and took it down to my local store and got all the ingredients. $17.71 out the door vs NB $19.21 + their $7.99 S/H I think they charge. I've brewed their extract kit for it with steeping grains so I have a ballpark of what it should taste like and its not bad and should be a good beer to drink this summer when we start hitting 100+ temps. I did up the 2 row from 7.5 lbs to 8 lbs just in case I have poor efficiency and according to what I put in Brewer's Friend that only puts me at 4.47% ABV with a 70% efficiency (if I entered everything correctly). Now I'm just waiting on my Cereal Killer mill to arrive as well as next Friday which will be my brew day.

 

[Griffin495]

Do you need to wash Wilser's bags before using them and if so what is the best method?

 

[wilserbrewer]

Likely best to wash any food use product....would you wash a new beer glass before you filled it?

Well anyways maybe this will help....

Preparation for use.

Hand wash the bag in very warm water and a detergent. Triple rinse with hot water to remove all traces of detergent and then hang to dry. The bag will dry very quickly when hung. - THERE IS NO NEED TO TWIST. DO NOT PLACE IN A CLOTHES DRYER.

I would guesss most users don't bother as the bags as delivered appear very clean and pristine, but when you ask you always get the conservative answer.

Hope this helps cheers!

 

[Inkleg]

Preparation for use.

Hand wash the bag in very warm water and a detergent. Triple rinse with hot water to remove all traces of detergent and then hang to dry. The bag will dry very quickly when hung. - THERE IS NO NEED TO TWIST. DO NOT PLACE IN A CLOTHES DRYER.

Haha, sounds like a typical CYA answer from a manufacturer.
Which is exactly what I did with mine so many years ago. Well....because he said I should.

Now after too many brew days to count with my Wilser bag.
I shake the snot out of it after dumping the spent grains, rinse it in the kitchen sink till it looks.......well good enough, then shake the snot out of it again before hanging it up to dry (watch out, the cord will get you).
My Wilser bag looks like a old Civil War bandage and makes fantastic beer.

 

[Handsaw]

Does anyone else used this method of getting the bag out of the pot?

 

[doug293cz]

Overkill, but effective.









Actually, I'd worry about what might fall off of that rig into the BK.

Brew on

 

[nmfree]

Does anyone else used this method of getting the bag out of the pot?

If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

 

[Griffin495]

Well, I've finally read through all 197 pages of this thread. And just in time. Tomorrow I try my first true BIAB full volume no sparge batch. It will actually be my 22 batch of beer I've brewed including extract, partial and a hybrid BIAB method I was doing using a crappy bag from my LHBS and a cooler. Looking forward to simplifying my process and using less equipment.

Got my grains, my new wilser bag and my new cereal killer mill and am ready for action as soon as I drop my kid off at daycare tomorrow and get my propane tank refilled.

Wish me luck.

 

[Inkleg]

Wish me luck.

Good luck! You'll realize like the rest of us that's it's rather simple and that you will refine your process with each brew day.

 

[Griffin495]

Everything went great. Easily my smoothest brew date ever. With the use of all the advice here and some online calculators I hit all my volumes perfectly. 6.25 gallons pre-boil, 5.25 gallons post boil. All into my fermentor and the extra .25 to account for trub.

My starting gravity was 1.044 and my OG was 1.052. According to Brewer's Friend, it should have been 1.044 so I guess I had better efficiency than I thought? I had it set at 70%. Not sure what happened there.

Used my brand new Cereal Killer mill and it worked great. Not sure what I had it set to. Its got a mark for 0.025 and 0.05. Figure half way in between would be 0.0375. I tightened it up a little more than that, so maybe 0.03. About a credit card thickness.

Did a 90 minute mash and it held pretty steady. Nailed my 152 temp and by the end of 90 minutes it had fallen to 148, but I didn't worry about it as after an hour it had only dropped to 150. Also did a 10 minute mashout at 168. Some say its needed, some say its not, but I didn't have anything else going on yesterday so I decided to give it a shot.

Don't think I'll be going back to using my cooler as a mash tun anymore. Heck, I'm thinking I might go to my local clubs next meeting and seeing if anybody wants to buy it. You can count me as another BIAB convert. Can't wait to try this brew.

 

[Griffin495]

I will say that I did "cheat" little. I had to take my son to daycare yesterday before I could start brewing. As I was making him breakfast and getting him ready, I thought to myself "Why don't I start preheating my water a bit?" So I grabbed my three largest cooking pots in the kitchen and filled them up and started heating on my stove while getting him ready. So I got half my strike water to boiling, then shut it off and put lids on them. When I got home from dropping him off, I dumped the water into my kettle and added the rest of the water that was at room temp. So technically, I ended up using 4 pots, but the 3 kitchen pots just got set in the dry rack and didn't need to be cleaned and while my whole strike water wasn't yet at temperature (and I didn't check to see what it was), it was above room temp and gave me a jump on warming it all up to mash temps. That count as "cheating?"

 

[doug293cz]

I will say that I did "cheat" little. I had to take my son to daycare yesterday before I could start brewing. As I was making him breakfast and getting him ready, I thought to myself "Why don't I start preheating my water a bit?" So I grabbed my three largest cooking pots in the kitchen and filled them up and started heating on my stove while getting him ready. So I got half my strike water to boiling, then shut it off and put lids on them. When I got home from dropping him off, I dumped the water into my kettle and added the rest of the water that was at room temp. So technically, I ended up using 4 pots, but the 3 kitchen pots just got set in the dry rack and didn't need to be cleaned and while my whole strike water wasn't yet at temperature (and I didn't check to see what it was), it was above room temp and gave me a jump on warming it all up to mash temps. That count as "cheating?"

Not cheating at all.

Brew on

 

[wilserbrewer]

Good work....
Do a mash out if it makes you happy, my opinion is it's not needed and can lead to burnt grain and or bag.

Scorch flavor is the worst I've tasted in 3 decades of brewing, only dumped batch to date.

 

[Griffin495]

Thanks Wilser and thanks for the bag. They worked great. I thought I was going to undershoot my volume by .25 gallons until all the wort from my hop bag drained out. I was surprised when I pulled it and .25 gallons drained out.

I was worried about a melted bag as well even after reading all through this thread. I just used your pulley and raised the bag until it was off the bottom of the kettle till I hit 168, killed the heat and then released the bag, stirred it and let it sit 10 minutes.

 

[MaxStout]

Thanks Wilser and thanks for the bag. They worked great. I thought I was going to undershoot my volume by .25 gallons until all the wort from my hop bag drained out. I was surprised when I pulled it and .25 gallons drained out.

I was worried about a melted bag as well even after reading all through this thread. I just used your pulley and raised the bag until it was off the bottom of the kettle till I hit 168, killed the heat and then released the bag, stirred it and let it sit 10 minutes.

Nice job! Once you get the BIAB bug you won't want to brew any other way.

FWIW, I have done it with and without mashout. Don't think I have ever gleaned much more from the mashout, so I skip that now. But to each their own.

And brewing is so much nicer with a Wilser bag, than to use those coarse bags from the LHBS.

 

[Jwin]

I have a Bayou 20g pot with a steamer basket. All aluminum. Any known issues with using the steamer basket to hoist a bag?
It would keep the bag off the bottom. I will still continue traditional brewing, but would like the option to biab for a quick one off here or there. I typically gyle brew 20g in a day. Got that down to 5 hours. But if I can knock out 10 in a couple hours at night, I would brew more often.

Also, with no sparge, what's the max gravity I could expect out of a 20g kettle, shooting for 11g in the fermentor?

Thanks biabers.

 

[Jwin]

There's a pic of the basket in question.
Also, I would recirculate through the grain bed, some hopefully temps would stay even
My biggest worry is if my blickmann burner would overshoot, though I do have a rims system in the works.
Also, not sure if it will fit in the kettle due to my spin cycle whilpool arm. Should probably check that.
Third concern would be if the basket handle(also Al) could handle the weight.

View attachment 1494110876755.jpg

 

[eulipion2]

I have a Bayou 20g pot with a steamer basket. All aluminum. Any known issues with using the steamer basket to hoist a bag?
It would keep the bag off the bottom.

I've used the steamer basket since I started BIAB. The only problem I've had is since I started recirculating the grain bag/basket combo clogs up occasionally, and if I don't catch it my element runs dry and trips my breaker. Usually I stir every few minutes and it's fine, but once I find a break in my brew schedule I'm going to take a step bit to every other hole the make them a little bigger, hopefully preventing clogging.

 

[doug293cz]

I have a Bayou 20g pot with a steamer basket. All aluminum. Any known issues with using the steamer basket to hoist a bag?
It would keep the bag off the bottom. I will still continue traditional brewing, but would like the option to biab for a quick one off here or there. I typically gyle brew 20g in a day. Got that down to 5 hours. But if I can knock out 10 in a couple hours at night, I would brew more often.

Also, with no sparge, what's the max gravity I could expect out of a 20g kettle, shooting for 11g in the fermentor?

Thanks biabers.

For an 18.5 gal mash volume, with ~40 lbs of grain, and a grain absorption rate of 0.08 gal/lb (moderate squeeze), I get your max OG for 11 gal at about 1.087. You'd probably have to do this without the steamer basket.

Brew on

 

[wilserbrewer]

I have a Bayou 20g pot with a steamer basket. All aluminum. Any known issues with using the steamer basket to hoist a bag?
It would keep the bag off the bottom. I will still continue traditional brewing, but would like the option to biab for a quick one off here or there. I typically gyle brew 20g in a day. Got that down to 5 hours. But if I can knock out 10 in a couple hours at night, I would brew more often.

.

I've never used a basket. With larger batches mash temps are pretty stable due to the large mass. If you need to raise your mash temp use low heat and stir to avoid scorching the grain or bag, and be patient

Jmo, but I feel a basket and recirculating with a pump unnecessarily complicates a simple process that works very well.

 

[Jwin]

Sounds like I could possibly pull off a 1060 brew anyway
Cool. Thanks for the reply
As far as the pump goes, I already have it, and everything is triclover, so it's not too complicated.

 

[wilserbrewer]

As far as the pump goes, I already have it, and everything is triclover, so it's not too complicated.

I suppose, but to do 10 gal in a couple hours (optimistic) I would imagine streamlining as much as possible. Heat strike, dough in, rest, stir and remove bag.

I just don't see what benefit the pump and basket brings to the party for large batches that will hold mash temp reasonably well.

If you enjoy using it during the mash, that's cool. But I would imagine you will want to monitor the pump as well, plus connecting, disconnecting, cleaning pump and lines. Compared to doing other tasks....perhaps not even brewing related.

 

[Inkleg]

I agree with larger batches holding temperatures extremely well with the kettle properly wrapped. One trick I've learned from here regardless of batch size is to lay some aluminum foil on top of the mash before putting the lid on. This helps with the dead space in the kettle.

I brewed my yearly RIS at my LHBS for Big Brew Day kind of teaching as I brewed. I was explaining strike and mash temperatures and said I was looking for 149* which was spot on. Put down the foil on top of the mash, wrapped the kettle in my redux/blanket concoction and set the timer for 75 minutes. At the end of the mash everyone gathered around as I unwrapped the kettle. I poked the thermometer through the foil and it read 148*. Man I love brewing.

Sorry @wilserbrewer , no picture of your bag in action with 21 pound of grain in it, but I sure let people know where to get one.

 

[philly224]

For those of you that don't do a mash out do you do a longer mash?

 

[Inkleg]

For those of you that don't do a mash out do you do a longer mash?

I stopped doing a mash out after trying both ways about 3 times each way and couldn't tell any difference. I also only stir while mashing in and again at the end of the mash. I normally do a 75 minute mash for beers 1.070 up. Anything less I just go for 60.

 

[Morrey]

. One trick I've learned from here regardless of batch size is to lay some aluminum foil on top of the mash before putting the lid on. This helps with the dead space in the kettle.

I like that tip!