First all grain and first BIAB!

[Psych]

So awesome, did an American Amber last night, lightly hopped though. This is my fifth brew, and my first all grain, and also my first brew in a bag. It was a small batch, 2.5 gallons expected, done with a 5G pot on my stove.

Basically took 4G up to mash temp, threw in my bag, threw in 5.5lbs of grains I ground on my pasta mill DIY grinder (woo, thank you homebrewtalk!) and popped that baby in the oven. Grain bill was 4.25lbs 2-row, 1lb crystal-80, .25lb carapils. Mashed in at 156 or so, oven was on at 170 MOST of the time, I periodically turned it off then on again a couple times. After a full hour I took the pot out (go figure the handles were hot, huh!) and temps showed 156. Nice!!!

Mashed out at 165-168'ish for 5 mins, got scared and started tea bagging my grain in the brew pot for a bit, left it in a strainer sitting in another pot, squeezed it like there's no tomorrow, got another 500ml's out of it or so.

Hopped it with .25oz centennial at 60 mins, .25oz cascade at 30 mins and .10oz cascade at 10 mins.

Used my home-made 3/8th inch 25 foot immersion chiller for the first time too, unfortunately my digital thermometer decided to start reading about 40F higher than actual, so I had that running for WAY longer than I needed to. Brought 2.5G of wort down to 60F or so pretty fast!

My gravity after mash out was around 1.029 at around 160F, so 1.049'ish maybe? Guessing on the temps...then after boil it was 1.051 or so. Hurray, I brewed beer from grains!

I even pitched in some washed S-04 from a batch I bottled a week ago, checked the fermenter this morning and ZERO activity but now after 8 more hours I have bubbles! Hurray!

So sweet to go from grain to beer, and to have ground it myself using a $30 homemade grinder, AND chilled great (yucky massive cold break, ewww!) with my $40 homemade immersion chiller, AND to have spent nothing on yeast! Hurray for $7 for 2.5gallons of beer!

I think my efficiency was around 66%, pretty bad but my crush was a bit off on the first 2lbs of 2-row, will work on that and on better bag draining/squeezing/mild sparging.

 

[cyclonite]

Congrats!!! It feels so good going to all grain, doesn't it?!?!

I was a bit intimidated by all grain brewing at first, but after doing one partial mash, going to BIAB was just a matter of using a bigger bag . I finally found that grinding the grain twice gave me a good boost in efficiency (you can go pretty fine with BIAB since there is no worry of a stuck sparge) - getting around 77-80% pretty consistently now. I also started using the sparge method of dunking in another kettle to good effect too around the same time, so not sure how much of that efficiency came from the double grind versus the sparge.

Have fun!

 

[sendkyleanemail]

Can you share the thread from which you gained the knowledge required to use a pasta mill for crushing grains? Thanks!

Beer sounds mighty tasty, BTW!

 

[kcpup]

Horray for you! You'll love BIAB and the challenge and opportunity of all grain.

For me it's a gas to reuse yeast as well. All grain and reused yeast is a big money saver.

Enjoy!

 

[Erroneous]

Just did my first BIAB/AG as well. Hit my estimated OG of 1.047 after temp corrections. Used my strainer I got from a restaurant supply store for $9 to hold the grain bag above the pot instead of squeezing (heard squeezing is bad, but idk why). Did 2 2.5 gallon boils in succession since I only have that 5 gallon pot. Chilled in ice bath, going to take another OG and pitch here in a minute. Did Bier Muncher's Centennial Blonde.

BIAB seems to be working for many people!

*edit: guess I didn't have the volume I wanted for my first SG measurement. Came out to 1.034, 55% efficiency. Next time I'm going to get some pH stabilizer. Maybe wait until I get a bigger pot too.

 

[Psych]

Can you share the thread from which you gained the knowledge required to use a pasta mill for crushing grains? Thanks!

Beer sounds mighty tasty, BTW!

Sure thing: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/using-pasta-maker-mill-grain-75784/

It's a pasta roller from Michaels or any craft store, for rolling clay I think? Works a treat, just had to re-grind up my rollers to get it working nicely.

Cyclonite: Yeah I think I'll try a finer crush next time, or crush twice. I shouldn't be afraid of the flour I guess

 

[cyclonite]

Sure thing: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/using-pasta-maker-mill-grain-75784/

It's a pasta roller from Michaels or any craft store, for rolling clay I think? Works a treat, just had to re-grind up my rollers to get it working nicely.

Cyclonite: Yeah I think I'll try a finer crush next time, or crush twice. I shouldn't be afraid of the flour I guess

Don't be afraid of the flour... With BIAB flour == efficiency!!! The only downside i have seen with flouring (is that even a word??? ;-) is haziness. But, it still tastes freakin' great!

 

[SolidBrewRider]

Just did my first BIAB/AG as well. Hit my estimated OG of 1.047 after temp corrections. Used my strainer I got from a restaurant supply store for $9 to hold the grain bag above the pot instead of squeezing (heard squeezing is bad, but idk why). Did 2 2.5 gallon boils in succession since I only have that 5 gallon pot. Chilled in ice bath, going to take another OG and pitch here in a minute. Did Bier Muncher's Centennial Blonde.

BIAB seems to be working for many people!

*edit: guess I didn't have the volume I wanted for my first SG measurement. Came out to 1.034, 55% efficiency. Next time I'm going to get some pH stabilizer. Maybe wait until I get a bigger pot too.

Squeezing the tea bag results in extracting the tannins from the husks. This is the puckering effect your beer likely has, almost like drinking a very young cabernet wine. You'll want to let the bag drain naturally or "rinse" it by pouring additional sparge water over it while draining into your BK.

Enjoy the beer. Once I went to AG, I haven't done an extract since.

 

[Grahambo]

Ignore the previous post.

Congrats on your BIAB AG cherry. Sure does make things easy

 

[bschoenb]

I've done two BIAB thusfar. Using a standard Mill from My LHBS, with MAsh out and no Sparge/bag squeezing, etc... 61% effeciency.....

What I like about it more than anything is the fact that I can do a small 2 1/2 gallon "test sample/I gotta try this recipe" for my small keg.

This give me a real simple way to try lots of variants and flavors that Malt Extract can't give me and I don't have to commit to lots of other pieces of equipement.

So far so good

 

[Mysticmead]

Squeezing the tea bag results in extracting the tannins from the husks. This is the puckering effect your beer likely has, almost like drinking a very young cabernet wine.

squeezing does NOT extract tannins.. going to high at mash out extracts tannins. I squeeze for every drop I can get with BIAB and have zero astringent mouth feel. look at it this way. a commercial brewery will have a huge amount grain in the mash tun. That grain will exert more pressure on the grains than you can by squeezing the bag and they still don't extract tannins. squeeze the bag all you want...

 

[cyclonite]

Agreed, squeezing does NOT extract tannins - this is a myth that has been propagated over and over. High temps will cause tannin extraction, as Mysticmead said. I too squeeze the heck out of my bag to get every drop I can (sparging helps a bit also). Squeeze away!

 

[dubiouschewy]

Re: squeezing and astringency myth.

I don't have the link handy, but Alaskan Brewing Co. recently installed a commercial scale grain press to up overall brewhouse efficiency. And other commercial breweries around the world use them too without any noticeable astringency in the final product.

And while we're on the subject, I am skeptical that 170f is some sort of magic astringency line either. Just goes to show we need more side-by-side experiments at the homebrew scale.