First BIAB— successful!!!

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camonick

Mediocre brewer... Expert drinker
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After acquiring all the necessary equipment and supplies to advance my brewing technique up to AG from extract brewing, I got my first BIAB batch under my belt today. The brew day went without a hitch and I’m quite pleased. I used the recipe by @Yooper for Fizzy Yellow Beer. I followed the recipe as written (adjusting my hopping rates to maintain recipe IBUs) as I wanted to use a proven recipe and I figured it’d be a good test to make a light beer right out of the gate. I plugged the recipe into Beersmith and proceeded with the printed brew steps. I also used my new @wilserbrewer bag and it worked flawlessly. I adjusted my full volume of mash water according to the results I got using Bru’n water. I heated my strike water to the predicted temp and stirred in my grain bill. The water didn’t cool quite as much as predicted after dough-in so my mash was about 3° higher than my target temp of 150° for the beginning of the mash. After a few minutes of stirring my water was 1° high so I covered and insulted everything for the remainder of my 60 min mash. Temp was holding at 149° when it was time to remove the bag of grain. I hoisted the bag and let it drip while the kettle came to a boil. I took a post mash SG reading and was .002 higher than the predicted 1.036. The boil went as usual but I noticed my boil-off rate wasn’t quite as high as I measured earlier... oh well, I’ll adjust my equipment profile a little. I cooled the wort and checked my actual OG and was .001 short of the estimated target of 1.047 (due to the wort being slightly diluted because of missed boil-off volume) with a proud 5.5 gallons of nice clear wort into my fermenter. I’m going to pitch a packet of Nottingham and let the yeasties finish making my beer. Can’t wait to taste it!!! One of the lightest colored beers I’ve ever made.
The weird green tinge in the pics is because of the green fiberglass garage door in my shop.
Dough-in
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Mash out
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My brew area with newly built hoist frame.
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Hydrometer in test jar... man it’s light colored!!
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....bbbbut I thought BIAB wort was supposed to be cloudy
Ha Ha...I've read a lot about this debate lately and am impressed with my first try. I was a little skeptical at first since my mash water was kind of ugly. I used half a tablet of whirlfloc and tried to leave as much trub in the kettle as I could when I racked to the fermenter. I was able to leave a little more behind since I had more wort due to my missed volumes because of my boil-off rate. I typically did a 30 minute steep with specialty grains with my extract batches and don't think the amount of gunk was any worse this way.
I also don't think I had as much absorption by the grain as Beersmith predicted. In my recipe it calculated a .73 gal loss (approximately .073 gal/lb) but I think it was closer to half a gallon or less. What is everybody else using for their absorption rate? I squeezed the bag a little but didn't horse on it too much. I let the bag drip for 20-25 minutes and when I took it down, it wasn't dripping at all. It's going to take a few more brews to get my equipment dialed in for sure.
 
Wow...that is a very clear looking wort!!!

Looks good. How many extract batches you have under your belt?
I started brewing about 15 years ago but had a few years when I didn’t when my kids were younger... I never kept an official count but would estimate 30 or more at least.
 
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