Murphy's Stout BIAB Recipe, Help!

[sillbeer]

Greetings,

I've done this recipe before with my neighbor and we just doubled the recipe below with good results. We also had two 3 tier setups running side by side. My neighbor has BeerSmith and the profile on his computer. I bought BeerSmith a few months back and just setup my BIAB profile today. I input the recipe and the water seems a little off to me. Can someone validate what I have?

5 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row)
10 oz Roasted Barley
3 oz Chocolate Malt
2 oz Crystal Malt 80L
12 oz Cane Sugar (15 Min)

2 oz Willamette (60 Min)
.25 oz East Kent Goldings (15 Min)
Dry English Ale Yeast

36.91 quarts of water (9.22 gallons) for 90 minute mash

Batch size: 5 gallons
Boil size: 8.74 gallons
boil time 60 minutes
End of boil Volume: 6.94

It says the estimated mash efficiency is 93.4%. That seems really high.

This will be my first time with electric and my first time doing BIAB. I also put a street 90 in my kettle as a pickup so I will have almost no loss. That's what I'm thinking anyway. Lots of changes so I'm expecting this to be a full on trial and error/learning experience. I just want to get a second opinion before I jump into this later today.

Thanks!

 

[beernut70]

That's a lot of water for that amount of grain. I use about 7.5 gallons for a 5.5 gallon batch into the fermentor. I squeeze the bag so I have very little grain absorption. Attached is my BIAB profile.

View attachment BIAB Profile.bsmx

 

[sillbeer]

Thanks for posting your profile. That helps a lot. It's closer to what I was thinking. The 9.22 gallons seemed really high.

 

[beernut70]

No problem. Hope you have a great brew.

 

[RM-MN]

Unless you change out the default parameters to account for your setup, Beersmith will always tell you to use way to much water. Since you are BIAB you can mill your grains fine which will get you a very high mash efficiency as you should be able to convert nearly all starches. Then if you squeeze out all the wort you can, your absorption will be really low. Control the heat so your wort is just at a low rolling boil and you won't be boiling off much of the water either. I expect to only boil of about half a gallon while Beersmith expects you to boil off more than double that. 6.94 gallons post boil seems like a terrible amount too. I really want about 5.5 gallons there to go into the fermenter because I don't waste any to the trub, I dump everything into the fermenter and let the yeast decide what is to be wasted. It will settle out and compact in the fermenter so I can get about 5 gallons to bottle.

 

[sillbeer]

Thanks for the replies everyone. The guy at my LHBS suggested starting with 8 gallons. I mashed for 90 minutes and held the bag over the kettle for about 5 minutes to let it drip. I shook the bag a little but did not squeeze the grains. During the boil I lost about 1.75 gallons and was left over with a hair over 5 gallons with no lose to trub. The new pickup tube worked great. I ended up just shy of the 5 gallon mark in my fermenter due to leaving a valve open. Other than that, everything went pretty smooth. I forgot to take a gravity reading after the boil. Hopefully it turns out well. This is one of my favorite beers so I'll definitely be experimenting with it in the near future.

 

[sillbeer]

I'm going to try this Murphy's again tomorrow but I have another question in regards to the water in general. More specifically for big beers but in general.

I would like to be able to do a 10 gallon high gravity beers but I'll run out of room in my 20 gallon kettle. What is the minimum amount of water I should recirculate during the mash? Is there a minimum amount of water required per pound of grain during the mash only? Then for the sparge water, is it best to increase the heat for the final 10 minutes then top off for the boil or add higher temp water from a separate vessel for the final 10 minutes.

Thanks.

 

[sillbeer]

I stumbled across this BIAB thread and it answered a few questions. I'm still curious if there is a minimum amount of water required per pound during the mash process.