Can one just brew BIAB and top it up with boiled water?

[Elysium82]

hey guys,

Is there a way to, say, make a 2 gallon BIAB batch and top it up with roughly the same amount of water?

I am wondering if the wort can have such a high OG that the water we add would balance it out to an OG that we are aiming for. How do I even calculate it?

I would like to brew an APA with OG that is around 1.043. I do understand that the mashing bill has a certain "capacity" that I might refer to as the water/bill ratio that produces a certain OG, but how do I calculate it?

IBU would be another issue too. Do I lose more time and energy with the problematic calculations than what I would actually gain out of this idea?

Thank you.

 

[madscientist451]

I would like to brew an APA with OG that is around 1.043. I do understand that the mashing bill has a certain "capacity" that I might refer to as the water/bill ratio that produces a certain OG, but how do I calculate it?

IBU would be another issue too. Do I lose more time and energy with the problematic calculations than what I would actually gain out of this idea?

I use the Brewer's friend recipe calculator:

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator
If you are just starting out, its probably best to stick with established recipes and hold off creating your own recipes for a while.

Big industrial brewers make a high gravity beer and then dilute it when is put in packaging, so you can do the same thing, but you have to tweak your ingredients to make the beer come out the same as if you did a full volume brew.

https://blog.homebrewing.org/high-g...ckily, there's a way to,to make it go further.

 

[Bobby_M]

One could do that but at the cost of brewhouse efficiency. If you don't mind spending the extra money on grain, it's no problem. All the software from Beersmith to BrewFather allow you to make up equipment profiles that specify some level of topup water and shows you the resulting gravity in the fermenter. The other aspect it should account for is the dilution of IBUs.

 

[hotbeer]

I did BIAB for my 2 brews. I was given some stretchy muslin bags that look like a sock, but stretch to a very large diameter. They are sort of a loose weave so I double bag the grain.

The last brew, I had my boil kettle and two other completely sanitized pots with water on the stove at mash temp. I started with the grain bag in one of the smaller pots and mashed in it for most of the time. Squeezing the bag with tongs every once in a while and making sure the grains were kept loose and not clumping together tightly. Near the end, I lifted out the bag and put it in my boil kettle. Squeezed it around in there and when I felt I'd gotten all out I put the bag in the remaining small kettle. Not much change in water murkiness, so I put the bag in a strainer over the boil kettle and poured the water through the grain. The original pot of wort was added to the kettle too then all boiled.

It was an IPA, the recipe doesn't suggest a OG, but mine was 1.053 just prior to putting in the fermenter at 70°F. Don't know if that is good for an IPA or that particular recipe or not. Find out in a few weeks.

To answer your title...

Can one just brew BIAB and top it up with boiled water?

Why wouldn't you run it through your grain first to wash all you can from it?

But if you are asking can you adjust the SG with water to bring it down, then I don't know. I've rambled quite a bit if that is the question.

 

[phbern]

That's how I did all my brews before I got the Grainfather. As others said, stick with established recipes to start. Also, rather than just adding water (I always used distilled, no need to boil) take a gravity reading and add as much water as you need to get to your desired FG. There are online calculators and phone apps to do this.

 

[cmac62]

E, the short answer is yes. I have done it and it works . If you use ice water to top off this also helps with cooling the wort. Also, this is frequently done when using malt extracts.

 

[cmac62]

I also recommend using one of the online calculators. They make things easier.

 

[Phitz]

That is the method in which a lot of extract kits use.

 

[hamachi]

I do all-grain partial boil batches in my kitchen. I do the mash in a bag-lined 10 gallon cooler (mash-in-a-bag). I have a weak electric stove, so I have to do the boil in three different pots. The first running from the mash goes into the big pot, then the runnings from two rounds of batch sparging go into two smaller pots. After boil and chill, I typically end up with about 3.8 gallons total which I then dilute to 5 - 5.5 gallons in the fermenter to get the O.G. where I want it.

For the purpose of O.G. and IBU calculators, I just pretend I'm doing a full volume boil. The IBU calculation will be off by a little, but not enough that it matters to me.

 

[North_of_60]

I started making 5 gallon BIAB batches in a 7.5 gallon kettle so I had to top of after the boil to get my volume up. It works fine. As a bonus you cool your wort a little with the top off.