Getting the most out of a brew bag

[Teggy]

Hello everyone,

I used a brew bag to contain all the solids during the fermentation process, and I am ready to remove it in order to distill the liquid. I currently have it suspended over the pot, letting gravity drain as much as possible, but I was wondering if there was a better method to ensure I'm not losing any product other than just squeezing the grain. Can I pour spring water and rinse the grain? Or will this ruin the mash?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Agent]

Do you feel a large amount of liquid is being retained with the grains?

I personally remove grains right after mashing just like in beer making. I'll say that grainbills >50% corn hold a lot of liquid for me.

 

[Teggy]

Do you feel a large amount of liquid is being retained with the grains?

I personally remove grains right after mashing just like in beer making. I'll say that grainbills >50% corn hold a lot of liquid for me.

It certainly seems so, yeah.

I will definitely remove the grains after mashing moving forward. This is my first time attempting a run, so I definitely expected to learn from the inevitable mistakes. Thanks for the advice!

 

[Agent]

That's not to say that fermenting on the grain doesn't have a number of benefits, but I lean hard into ease of operations.

 

[doug293cz]

Can I pour spring water and rinse the grain? Or will this ruin the mash?

Yes you can pour water over the mashed grains to extract more sugar. This is called "sparging." Generally when sparging, you will start will less water in the mash, and save the rest of the water for sparging. If you don't cut the original mash water volume, then you end up with lower alcohol concentration in your still feed stock. You can sparge with hot or cold water - doesn't make any difference, as long as your mash fully converted all of the available starch to sugar before you sparge. If your conversion wasn't complete, then a hot water sparge will allow some additional conversion to occur during the sparge, which will increase your extraction yield.

If using hot water to sparge, keep the temp below about 170°F to avoid excessive tannin extraction during the sparge. Adding acid to the sparge water to get the pH below about 5.8 will also help minimize tannin extraction.

The simplest way to sparge with a bag is a dunk sparge. After draining, and optionally squeezing, the bag, lower the bag into a bucket containing the sparge water, stir vigorously, and then lift and drain the bag (plus optionally squeeze.) Combine the initial wort with the sparged wort and proceed to the next process. Best efficiency for a dunk sparge is achieved when you use about 60% of your total water for mashing, and 40% for sparging. Squeezing the bag before and after sparging will also increase extraction yield, with the pre-sparge squeeze having the most effect.

Simply pouring water over the bag of mashed grains after draining will have some beneficial effect, but it is a poorly controlled process, that may or may not adequately rinse the entire grain mass. A better method is to place the bag in a bucket within a bucket where the inner bucket has lots of small (1/16" diameter is plenty big) holes drilled in the bottom. Then use a sprayer with a flow of about 1 quart per minute to distribute the sparge water uniformly across the surface of the grain mass (open the bag first.)

Brew on

 

[hottpeper13]

When I mash and ferment for the same reason I do it loose, the grains will settle in the 3 week ferment I give them, then rack off the top. Sorry i can't fix this one.

 

[BrewZer]

You can twist and squeeze the bag to expel as much wort/mash as you want from the grains.

Contrary to popular belief, squeezing doesn't magically create or release tannins.

ETA: how the heck did I get into the distilling zone???

 

[Agent]

You can twist and squeeze the bag to expel as much wort/mash as you want from the grains.

Contrary to popular belief, squeezing doesn't magically create or release tannins.

ETA: how the heck did I get into the distilling zone???