First (small-batch) all-grain BIAB gameplan: do I have this right?

[deadwolfbones]

Hey all! I've been an extract and partial mash brewer up to this point, but at the moment I'm living in tight quarters and need to do my brewing entirely in a pretty cramped kitchen. Obviously, small-batch BIAB is the ideal choice. i'll be working with a 6-gallon kettle, and to make things even more interesting for myself, I'm going to try using my Anova sous vide wand to maintain the mash temp.

My first try is coming up this Saturday, and I'm going with a pretty simple low-gravity SMaSH to get my feet wet. The recipe and mash steps are below. Can y'all check 'em out and tell me if I'm doing anything monumentally stupid? Thanks in advance!

========================================

BREW DAY PLAN - 2/10/18 - Vienna / Calypso Session SMaSH
(BIAB, no sparge, sous vide)

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: US-05
Yeast Starter: No
Batch Size (Gallons): 2.5
Original Gravity: 1.042
Final Gravity: 1.006
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
IBU: 43
Color: 5
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 14 @ 66F

Ingredients:
4 lb Vienna
0.25 oz Calypso @ 60min
0.25 oz Calypso @ 15min
0.25 oz Calypso @ 5min
1.0 oz Calypso @ Whirlpool (170F)
2.0 oz Calypso @ Dry Hop (7 days)

Steps:
1. Heat 4 gal RO strike water to 157.5F on gas burner. Add 3 grams each calcium chloride & gypsum.
3. While water is heating, measure out and re-crush 4 lbs of pre-crushed grains.
4. Once strike temp is reached, turn off gas, attach sous vide wand to kettle and set to 153F.
5. Set up bag, add grains, stir to remove dough balls.
6. Set sous vide timer to 60 minutes.
7. While sous vide is going, work on sanitizing various crap. Stir mash occasionally. Measure out hops for boil.
8. Once mash is done, remove bag w/ grains to secondary pot to drain over colander. Squeeze bag as much as possible and return drippings to main kettle. Proceed to boil.

 

[beerlover77]

This sounds ok. The only thing is that 3g calcuim chloride seems like a lot. I usually add 1g for a 5g batch of Pale ale or IPA

 

[deadwolfbones]

Yeah, I originally had 3g gypsum and 1.5g CaCl, but a pro brewer friend told me to just do 3g of each. :shruggie:

 

[mongoose33]

I think you may be a bit low on the strike water temp. The grain, which is likely at room temp, will cool the water. When I did a 4-gallon strike with 10 or 11 pounds of grain, I'd usually aim for 168 degrees or so, to get me low 150s. You have only 4 pounds, so it won't drop the temp as much, and your strike temp of 157.5 reflects that...

But I think you're a degree or two low. I'd probably do 159 or so. Something to consider. Take good notes on this so you can use the actual numbers to adjust next time.

I'm OK with the water additions, however, I think your pH will be too high. I'd add 1.5 ml of lactic acid to this to bring the pH down to an acceptable range.

 

[deadwolfbones]

I appreciate the tips!

I used the Brewer's Friend calculator to get that number (assuming 68F grain). In any case, for my particular setup I think undershooting is better than overshooting, since the Anova will bring it up to the desired mash temp quickly, but it would be more difficult to cool down.

 

[madscientist451]

I use the strike water calculator on the green bay rackers website:

https://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

According to that, your strike water should be 160.
I'm a little skeptical about the gravity finishing at 1.006, something around 1.011 as a target would be more realistic, but perhaps it will work out as planned.
Other than those things, looks great, please post a follow up, I'd like to try sous-vide brewing.

 

[deadwolfbones]

I'm not too worried about the final gravity, honestly. I'm expecting it to be low ABV, so it's ok whether it's 4.4% or 4.0% or whatever.

Thanks again for the strike water advice. I'll go a little higher.

 

[mirthfuldragon]

Remember that you can add cold water or hot water to adjust your strike temperature within reason. I like my little electric kettle for small adjustments. I would also sparge a half gallon of water or so though your colander after you pull the bag - you can use those second runnings to top off your boil volume. Within in-door small-batch BIAB, I leave my electric flat-top stove at max the entire time. All of it will come in time - take a lot of notes and make adjustments for next time. Good luck.

 

[deadwolfbones]

Well, I managed to royally **** this one up. Accidentally used 0.31 for grain absorption on the BIAB Calculator instead of 0.031, so I ended up mashing with an extra gallon of water. I'm going to have to boil the hell out of this to try to get it down to the right volume. Oh well, first timer mistake, I guess. Not much money down the drain if it's a loss.

 

[deadwolfbones]

2.5 hours into the boil and still going!!

 

[chickypad]

This sounds ok. The only thing is that 3g calcuim chloride seems like a lot. I usually add 1g for a 5g batch of Pale ale or IPA

1g or 1 tsp? Are you adding any gypsum? 1g in a 5 gal batch with RO water is hardly any and you'd be low in calcium. Unless you aren't starting with RO water in which case we are comparing apples to oranges.

 

[beerlover77]

1g or 1 tsp? Are you adding any gypsum? 1g in a 5 gal batch with RO water is hardly any and you'd be low in calcium. Unless you aren't starting with RO water in which case we are comparing apples to oranges.

Keep in mind the OP posted a 2.5 gal batch.
I use city tap water which has some calcium in it already. Checked my city water profile a few years back and formulated water recipes based on it using online calculators. Just looking at my recipes I actually use 10 gr gypsum and 2 gr cal chloride for IPA's for a 5gal batch.

I guess if you look at it with RO water you are right, 3 gr of cal chloride seems normal for a 5gal batch

 

[doug293cz]

Well, I managed to royally fudge this one up. Accidentally used 0.31 for grain absorption on the BIAB Calculator instead of 0.031, so I ended up mashing with an extra gallon of water. I'm going to have to boil the hell out of this to try to get it down to the right volume. Oh well, first timer mistake, I guess. Not much money down the drain if it's a loss.

What are the units on your grain absorption? For BIAB with a moderate squeeze, typical absorption rate is about 0.08 gal/lb. I have never seen any credible reports of BIAB absorptions as low as 0.031 gal/lb.

Brew on

 

[deadwolfbones]

What are the units on your grain absorption? For BIAB with a moderate squeeze, typical absorption rate is about 0.08 gal/lb. I have never seen any credible reports of BIAB absorptions as low as 0.031 gal/lb.

Brew on

I was using biabcalculator.com. If you hover over the ? next to grain absorption, you'll see that the default is 0.045 gal/lb, and it says to lower it to 0.031 if you squeeze.

Anyway, to update this, I ended up boiling for about 3.5 hours (adding the first hops after 2.5 hours) and ended up overshooting the boiloff, ending up with around 2 gal. Luckily I had an extra 1/2 gal of distilled water, so I topped up and hit my expected OG. It's bubbling away now, so... we'll see how it comes out.

Anyway, now I know and I won't make that mistake again!

 

[chickypad]

I was using biabcalculator.com. If you hover over the ? next to grain absorption, you'll see that the default is 0.045 gal/lb, and it says to lower it to 0.031 if you squeeze.

Wow I'm surprised at that. My numbers are more in line with what doug quoted - I get .08gal/lb letting it drain in a colander then giving it a minor squeeze. You might check out Priceless's calculator below. It gives some additional info and also allows for a sparge which is nice for those of us with kettle limitations.

https://pricelessbrewing.github.io/BiabCalc/#Advanced

 

[deadwolfbones]

Update: Currently fermenting happily, so here's hoping the extra-long boil was a successful course-correction.

 

[Cevan65]

I've brewed 12 small BIAB batches so far. I can get about 4.1 gallons of wort out of 4.55 gallons of strike/sparge water and 6.5 lb grain bill, which is .07 gal/lb.