First biab questions

[santanman]

Hey guys,

I've read through the big thread and purchased all the equipment. I've got 5 extract brews under my belt and ready to give all grain a go!

I have just a few questions.
Ill be brewing this
http://www.brew365.com/beer_dennys_bourbon_vanilla_porter.php

Im getting the grains double milled.

1) What I dont understand is how much water I should start with. I know there is more than 1 way to skin a cat. I assume just start with the entire 6 gallons and then add water at the end to make up for evap? I've never used a calculator or brew smith. I plan on it but have no clue where to start.

I'm in a keggle, So I think If I just started with 3 gallons or so, there wouldnt ben enough water for the grains to soak.

2) It says to mash at 153 for 60 min. Do you dunk or tea bag the bag during this? I just have a paint strainer that I may line with the viole I purchased, so I dont really have handles yet. So I was thinking to tie a knot in the top. I do have access to a pulley if that matters.

Well those are my only questions until I forget something else to ask. Thanks

 

[RM-MN]

1. Lots of ways to skin this cat. The premise of BIAB is to start with the entire volume or water needed so when you pull the bag out and squeeze out what wort you can you have your full pre-boil volume. Lots of us bastardize this with adding a sparge step to get more sugars out of the grains and thus raise the efficiency of the process or because our equipment is a little small and we can accommodate that by sparging. Your choice on how to do this. One thing I would suggest is to use plenty of water. The more water you can use (within reason of course) the more sugars can be dissolved in it. I usually start with about 6 gallons of water because with a 7 1/2 gallon pot, starting with the full pre-boil plus absorption by the grain would put me over the top. When I pull the bag of grains out and squeeze out the wort, I do a small sparge to make up the volume I need.

2. Since you have a large volume of water for your mash, if you get the grains stirred in like you should you don't need to do anything more. I don't use a pulley but you may want to as it is not fun to hold the bag of grains while they drain. I pull the bag up slowly so some of the wort drains before I have the bag all the way out. No point in lifting all the weight of the wort just to let it drain back in when it can drain as I lift.

 

[Jimmyjim]

1. Depends on your kettle size, amount of grain/hops and your desired
final volume.
I brew 6 gallon batches, which leaves me with 5 gallons into the keg
Since your are using a keggle, I would wait till you get the proper
size voile bag. Use your pulley system. Makes life much easier.


2. I use a strike temp 5 degrees above my desired mash temp.



Try this:

http://www.copycalc.com/bob/BIAB

 

[Tekn0ph1sh]

For your grain bill you are going to need a minimum of 5 gallons of water. But that does not account for grain loss or boil volume loss. The target recipe is for a 6 gallon batch. I would figure on losing at least a gallon and a half to the boil and to the grains. My last Biab I had 22lbs of grain with a 90 minute boil and I started with 9 gallons of water. A little less than 5 actually made it into the fermenter. I misread my starting volumes with Beersmith. Btw awesome software I think you can still try it 30 days for free. Highly recommended. So I would guess your actual starting volume of water would still need to be in the 10 gallon to 10.5 gallon range. But again that depends on how big of a pot you have.

I usually bring my strike water up to temp. I think I would shoot lower than 153 as the directions say. It's better to err on the low side than the high side during your mash. I usually bring the water with my bag in the pot. Extra sterilization never hurts. And then slowly pour my grains into the bag while stirring to break up all the dough balls. Once all the grain is in I take an instant read from the center of the bag. Hopefully it is in the 148-153 range. Keep in mind the bimetal temp gauges can be a couple degrees inaccurate and take a while to respond to temp changes. And adding the grain to the strike water lowers it's temp. If the grain is too hot leave the lid off and keep stirring until it hits 153ish. Then lid up and take temp readings every 10 minutes or so. If you drop below 148 fire up the burner for a couple minutes. I would bump it up until it says 150 and Ghent shut her down until it drops bellow 148. Steep your grains for 60-90 minutes stirring at temp checks. In the last 10 minutes turn on your burner and let it rise to 172 over 10 minutes and kill Yor burner and let it rest there for about 10 minutes.

Slowly hoist your bag out of the wort. I usually dunk it a couple of times and let it drain. Then I usually take an oven rack and put it on the top of my pot and let the bag sit there and drain. While I fire up the burner to start my boil. Before I thought of this I would throw it into another pot and then add the drippings back to my boil.

Boil until you get a hot break. Then start counting your boil timer. And do your first hops editions. Don't stir until you get a hot break. I usually don't stir at all once my boil begins.

Once you are done and cooled to pitching temps. And pitch your yeast. But your bucket in a Rubbermaid tub and fill the tub with water about halfway up the fermenter and keep adding frozen bottles of water to the tub with a towel over the top of the tub and fermenter. Keep it cold. Around 68 degrees. At least until high kraussen is done. And use a blow off tube. I have blown way to many air locks off my fermenter during primary fermentation not to use a blow off now. That's a pretty big beer I bet you will too.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

Boil until you get a hot break. Then start counting your boil timer. And do your first hops editions. Don't stir until you get a hot break. I usually don't stir at all once my boil begins.

Just curious, is there an advantage to not stirring until the hot break or is that just personal preference?

 

[Tekn0ph1sh]

By stirring you are not allowing the trub to coagulate as effectively. You are essentially breaking up the rafts of floaties and stirring them back into solution. You should try and skim the proteins off or allow them to adhere to the sides of your pot. Don't mix them back into your wort .

With extract you have to keep everything moving to make sure everything dissolve and the extract doesn't burn. I know when I made the transition to AG I was under the impression that I should keep stirring but that's not really necessary with AG unless you are trying to prevent a boil over. But honestly it is better just to lower your burner or hit it with a light mist of cold water from a spray bottle to cool things off rapidly.

 

[Foosier]

The another good calculator for BIAB is the SIMPLE BIAB CALCULATOR. Do a google search for it. It works very well.

Regarding how to handle your grain bag. As you said, there are many ways to skin this cat. I go with the easiest approach possible. Once I mash in I leave my bag alone. I do stir every 15 minutes duringt he mash but that is it. Once the mash is done, I pull the bag all at once. I hold it over the kettle till the worst of the wort has drained out (maybe 20 seconds) and then set it in a clean bucket to continue draining. While it drains I get my burner going and start heating to a boil. When I get to a boil I dump the drained wort out of the bucket into the kettle. This works well and keeps me from having to move my bag too many times.

 

[RM-MN]

The another good calculator for BIAB is the SIMPLE BIAB CALCULATOR. Do a google search for it. It works very well.

Regarding how to handle your grain bag. As you said, there are many ways to skin this cat. I go with the easiest approach possible. Once I mash in I leave my bag alone. I do stir every 15 minutes duringt he mash but that is it. Once the mash is done, I pull the bag all at once. I hold it over the kettle till the worst of the wort has drained out (maybe 20 seconds) and then set it in a clean bucket to continue draining. While it drains I get my burner going and start heating to a boil. When I get to a boil I dump the drained wort out of the bucket into the kettle. This works well and keeps me from having to move my bag too many times.

Read this post I made about mash times and then think about what happened when you stirred the mash at 15 minutes. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f244/tell-me-about-mash-time-443848/

 

[Jeff_H]

Read this post I made about mash times and then think about what happened when you stirred the mash at 15 minutes. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f244/tell-me-about-mash-time-443848/

I've read that most of the conversion is generally done within the first 15 minutes or so...but wouldn't you think that severely truncating the mash time would affect other characteristics? I'd think that depth of color would be a lot less...might be interesting to do some experimentation.

 

[santanman]

Thank you for all the replies and help.

I have my starter made

I have read all the advice and will take notes and follow up with you (with pics). Thanks again and will reciprocate once i know what im doing...

 

[DigB]

santanman, I stumbled onto another forum called BIABrewer.info Its got a ton of information on it as well as something called the BIABacus.....it has helped a ton with figuring out my total starting volume and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was confusing at first but I found if you play around with it for a bit you can figure it out pretty quickly.
Whoever did the hours upon hours of work on this spreadsheet needs a medal as this spreadsheet figures everything out for you and it is quite customizable!

http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1869

good Luck!

 

[DigB]

I forgot to mention that you need to register and post in the my first post section in order to have full access to all the calculators etc. but its quick and soo worth it.

 

[santanman]

OK, I'll check that out DigB

Well, I wrote out an entire checklist at work and forgot it. So, the day was. hmm interesting...
My keggle has a 12 inch cut out at the top, it's pretty jagged and snags the bag/voile. So I "engineered" a solution. I cut a 3/8 hose longwise and used it as a cover and wrapped it around the opening. kept it there with standard clips. works well.

My grainbill is 12 lbs. It fills 1.5 or so 5 gallon buckets. I smartly decided that my 5 gallon paint strainer should hold it just fine

So after bringing the water up to 160, I filled the keggle/5 gal bag with grain, then figured out I didnt have room in the bag and decided to remove it. I would have to line hot keggle with my unsewed voile curtain.

I managed to remove the bag, but it took a long time. lined the keggle with the curtain, added all my grain. Took the temp of the water and it was only 100. ugg. I also didnt start with enough water so I basically had a bunch of 100 degree sludge.

I tried heating kettle for about 40 min and stirred. couldnt get it above 145. It took me 45 minutes to figure out I needed more water AND more heat. Duh, boil some water and add it. I now know I should have just heated the water, but anyways, after adding, and stirring, I finally got my temp to 153. wrapped with sleeping bag and stirred a few times over the next hour.

So, my grain was at varying temps for about an hour, then 1 hour at 153. i then raised the temp to 170, cut the heat, and waited 10 min. hopefully all the temp changes wont hurt too bad.

Well, now with my 12 lbs of grain soaked and inside of the keggle, there was no way of getting it out of the hole. I was coming up with all type of ideas of using spoons as levers, using the pulley, etc to try and extract the grain filled voile. Luckily, my wife showed up and said. "hey, why don't you just scoop a bunch out?" duh

Scooped out half into a strainer inside of a bucket, hung the rest, squeezed both added to pot and started the boil. (is there a reason to take a sample here and test gravity?)



Boiled for an hour. Finally no issues
cooled and racked. og should be 1.079 I hit 1.07. I did only have about 5 gallons, not the full six, but at this point, I'll take it.


Oh yea, with all that was going on, I forgot to add my hops

I don't really like hoppy beer, I'm more of a stout guy, no idea if I should have done this but added all the hops into a sack and tossed em into the fermenter.


Thank you for all the advice, I learned alot, and wish I had brought my notes so I could have actually used it. especially the "get the right sized bag first" and "use 10 gallons to start" My thoughts were to use (2) 5 gallon paint strainers to get around it. I must have forgot. Now, I'll be sewing up a new bag.

The good news is, we are bubbling away just fine in the carboy.

 

[Milan37]

I'm willing to bet it turns out fine. I'd be interested to hear about it.

FWIW, with a 12-13# grain bill I use 7.5 gallons or so, with a lot of draining/squeezing to extract as much wort as possible. I think 10 would be quite a bit too much, unless you're really planning for heavy absorption and no squeezing of the bag.