BIAB Saison, potentially gone wrong. Critique?

[maximep]

Hey all,

Just finished up a long (and as always, exciting) brewday. I was in a pinch for a mesh bag, so instead of using the large ones my LHBS has, I picked up two of those paint straining bags (for 5 gal buckets) at the hardware store. Despite having 10 lbs of grain, I stuffed the bags pretty full. One of my potentials for error here may be that the water wasn't getting to the grains in the center of the bag, but it may also be a process thing. Lets see what y'all think !My recipe was the following:

7.75 lbs Belgian Pils
.75 lb German Rye
.75 lb Belgian What
.75 lb Rolled Oats

I beersmithed it to check what the specs would be, and the predicted OG was:
1.050, somewhere in the range of what i was looking for.

I had intended to follow the mash schedule described in "Farmhouse Ales" by Markowski of:

Protein Rest (all farenheit) at 113 30 min
Rest at 131 for 15 mins
Sacch at 144 for 30, which i modified to a 45 min rest to ensure full conversion (overshot by 4*, so 45 min @ 148 no huge deal)
Dextrin at 154 for 15
Mashout at 168

I admittedly was being a lazy brewer and took my eye off the pot and overshot my Dextrin rest, hitting 160*. Thinking the dextrin rest was negligible because I anticipated my compensation during Sacch to be sufficient, I skipped to the mashout and hit 168 for 5 mins.

However, after a 90 minute boil and cooling, i took my OG and it read 1.030... I had anticipated a potential point or even up to 5 off from Brewsmith's calcs (due to efficiencies, etc), but not a whole 20 by any means. I figured at first my hydrometer was broken but I checked with tap water and the water's gravity read true. My question then is, was the omission of the dextrin rest the issue? And as far as I've read, dextrins are unfermentable anyways, so is this for sure an equipment issue? Too many grains in the bags to get them all converted? Anyone have a similar issue?

 

[Cider123]

When you say you had 2 grains bags and you stuffed the bags pretty full, I am trying to imagine what your procedure was.

Getting a good amount of strike water in contact with grains when mashing is very important. If you fill two mesh bags with your grains first, and then dunked them into a kettle of strike water then you would have a whole bunch of grains never contacting water.

When you use one of those big mesh bags that you can fit in the kettle with the ends draped around the mouth of the kettle then you have a whole bunch of room for you to slowly add grain to your water while stirring so that all your grain is making contact with water. This allows each grain to give up its starch and sugars to the mash water. As your mash goes through its mash time, you also want to periodically stir them to keep exposing the grains and releasing the nutrients for dissolving and chemical reactions.
You seem to be hung up on hitting all those rests times and temperatures. Yes, those are helpful to getting a brew just right, but if your grains are not making good contact with your water, then the other stuff is a waste of time.

Check out morebeer.com. They sell a great big grain bag that works well for 10 and 15 gallon pots. Cheap too. How big is your kettle and how much water are you using to mash? sparge?

 

[wilserbrewer]

IMO the bag should at least be big enough so that you can stir the grain well periodically through the mash...or at least very well at the beginning and end to assure a good mash and rinse. If the grain is packed like a tea bag, efficiency might suffer for various reasons.