My foray into BIAB. First brew is ready!

[yeehaw]

Hey everyone! So, I'm just starting out with homebrewing, and thought I'd post about my experiences here. I bottled my first ever brew (a stout) two weeks ago on the 5th, and popped open a bottle yesterday. The beer is definitely drinkable, and I'm pretty stoked. Woo!

Carbonation is still on the low side, as the bottles have been carbing in my garage at 16 degC, which is not optimal, so I moved them inside the house. The bottle did hiss when I opened the cap, and the head was a nice brown, but only about 1 cm tall. The taste is also a bit weak in body, but I expect it to develop some as the beer ages.

My BIAB system is based on the Klarstein Beerfest 8 gallon electric kettle. I've rigged up a PID control box for the kettle, and I have a "little brown pump" for recirculation. I also have another sparge water vessel that doubles as a bag rinse vessel. I grind my grain with a Corona-type mill, which works nicely after I straightened out the back plate with some washers and added a screw adapter for the cordless drill.

I also have six kegs that I've finally managed to rebuild, wash and sanitize for upcoming brews. We have a cellar that keeps at a steady 10 degC temperature, and the kegs and CO2 bottle fit inside nicely.

My next brew will be a British Nut Brown Ale. Can't wait!

 

[kh54s10]

Congratulations. And yes, at 16c it will take longer to fully bottle condition. 21c would be a much better temperature, and then I would still count on 3 weeks of conditioning. Also a Stout will get better as the flavors mellow and blend over time. I usually say my stouts are best after at least a couple months aging and depending on the ABV% higher ones are best at a year or so.

A nut brown ale sounds great. I haven't done one in a long time, I'll have to put one in my lineup.

 

[JohnSand]

Welcome!
I'm glad your first brew is a success.

 

[jan_b19]

Gratz on your brew!
I usually let my bottles sit at 21°C for 1-2 weeks then move them to a 16°C environment. My personal experience is that, yes beer is drinkable after 2 weeks but it takes 2-3 months until all the flavors are there.

 

[yeehaw]

Thanks, everyone! Sounds like I'm going to let the beer carbonate at 23degC for a week or so, and then take it back to the garage and let it condition for a month or two at 15degC. Meanwhile, I'm going to brew a couple more batches so my kegs won't feel all neglected. The British Nut Brown Ale recipe I took from on here uses Nottingham yeast that ferments down to 14degC, so I think it will do well in the garage.

I'm also posting some images of my setup. I rigged up a control box for the kettle with a PID controller for mashing and an SCR controller for heating up and boiling. It also has a PWM controller for the little brown pump. As for the kettle, I attached a tee-pipe on the kettle valve for the temp probe and pump. I'm still waiting for some camlocks, so that I can easily disconnect the tee piece and probe & pump for dunking in oxiclean.

I found an excellent resource for the kettle at the Italian brewing community (http://www.ilforumdellabirra.net/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=7734&start=190) and borrowed their ideas. I should go and thank them, actually.

Anyway, the kettle has two resistors (900W + 1600W) that were originally wired in parallel, so it was always both or nothing. There was also a cheap thermostat and a useless timer. I pulled the thermostat and timer, and rewired the resistors and switch so that only the 900W resistor is working when the power switch is at "0", and both resistors are working when the switch is at "I". The plan is to fire both resistors during warm-up and boil with the SCR, and only the low-power resistor during mashing, letting the PID take care of temp control. I did an auto-tune for the PID, and it appears to blip the resistor on for only 3 seconds in 24 second cycles, so the kettle seems to have pretty good insulation.

I also have a basic rope pulley system installed in the ceiling for pulling the bag, and a large air pipe/hose pulling the steam outside, so my garage won't end up all misty like a rain forest.

So there. I'll try to update this thread with further experiences.

 

[Kharnynb]

nice one, as you know I use a similar system with the buldog brewer, but that has a bit better controller and external pump instead of internal.

Looks like a good setup though, especially with the new controller improving the old one.

looking forward to swap a beer or 2 some day soon ;D

 

[Devin]

Nice work! I'll echo what others have said - let it sit a while. Especially with a stout. It'll come around.

 

[RM-MN]

Conditioning of the beer proceeds faster at warmer temperatures. I'd leave it in the house for the month or 2 (or 3 or more if you have the patience) to mature more. A stout will continue to smooth out for at least 2 years. I've never been able to keep from drinking them to test longer than 2 years.

 

[yeehaw]

I'm going to enjoy a bottle now and then from the batch to see how it matures. I think I might have underprimed a bit, although I used the priming calculator (the batch was 20 l, and I added 95 grams of corn sugar based on a CO2 vol. ratio of 1,9).

Kharnynb, let's try to arrange a swap some time soon! I only have some young and undercarbed stout to hit you up with at the moment, though.

 

[Kharnynb]

i'm up for that

currently got wheat, apa's , red ale and pilsners and some 2 year old belgian quad

 

[yeehaw]

So I thought I'd update the thread. I currently have four brews under my belt (two stouts, a hefeweizen and a nut brown ale), and it's been a learning journey for sure.

I think the biggest thing I've been having difficulties with is the relationship between the weight of the grain bill, amount of water and the extraction rate/efficiency. All this coupled with the fact that I just can't fit enough strike water in my BV for a 19 liter batch, forcing me to sparge, has been giving me a slight headache.

Anyway, I've figured out that for a middle-of-the-road 1.055 OG brew I typically need about 4,5 kg of grain and just under 25 liters of water. What seems to work nicely is mashing in with 20 liters of strike water, and sparging with just under 5 liters to hit the desired batch volume. In my last brew (Lil' Sparky's Nut Brown Ale), this worked perfectly and I hit my batch amount of 19 liters just about spot on. However, I was 3 points short of my target OG of 1.054. I'm using BrewMate for my recipe with an efficiency setting of 75%, but I think I need to dial it back to the default 70%, as I hit the recipe OG with my first brew no problem with the default 70% setting (don't know why I adjusted it up in the first place... maybe I was assuming that my efficiency should be better).

Another thing I've found is that hops block the spigot something awful. I used a hop spider in my last brew, and this seems to have solved the stuck spigot issue. However, it's one more thing to dodge at the end of the boil, when I'm trying to get everything sanitized: there's the hop spider, the immersion cooler with hoses sticking out, and the whirlpool paddle... the BV looks more like an overfilled garbage can than a brewing vessel, but whatever.

I'm also thinking about building a couple of those iSpindle thingies: https://hackaday.com/2017/03/01/iot-device-pulls-its-weight-in-home-brewing/

Reason being I went to take a gravity reading from the stout I was fermenting, and managed to flop the FV lid gasket into the beer! Argh. Luckily the beer had fermented 8 days already, so I just decided to rack it into the keg for conditioning, as it was most likely done fermenting at that point.

Here are some more pictures. I cobbled together a hood for extracting the boil vapors, and I made lists for my vessels to help determine the volume of liquid inside: I take a measurement from the top of the liquid to the top edge of the vessel and check the list for the relevant amount of liquid inside the vessel. Helps a lot!

 

[RM-MN]

The amount of grain you need for a certain gravity target is closely related to the quality of the milling of the grain. If you have someone else do the milling they will likely mill it very conservatively for a conventional mash tun. It's in their best interests to do so. People using the conventional mash tun don't like dealing with a stuck mash or sparge and would rather buy a little more grain to hit their target OG. Since you are brewing in a bag and don't have to worry about the fine crush you should change the mill setting if you own it or buy one of your own so you can control the milling. By milling fine, your efficiency will go up requiring you to use less grain to hit your target OG which will leave you with more room in the kettle for water.

 

[yeehaw]

Thanks for the good pointer, RM-MN -- I grind my own grains with a Corona-type mill, and I adjusted it coarser for the latest brew as I thought flour might be contributing to the stuck spigot. After pulling the hop spider post-boil I quickly realized that flour was not the issue but rather the hops. So I'm definitely going to tighten the mill back for the next brew.

 

[yeehaw]

Now that I think of it, the first two batches I brewed called for a 90 minute boil, which I did, but the latest two had a typical 60 minute boil. So maybe the coarser grind in combination with a shorter boil time (and consequently less boil-off) caused the slight drop in efficiency. Although BrewMate should take the boil time into account... hm.

I'm also not sure whether I like the hop spider or not. I'm thinking I could avoid using it by pulling the false bottom out post-boil and before I whirlpool. Most of the hop sludge would have settled on the false bottom, and I could maybe get the rest to cone in the middle with a vigorous whirlpool. Not sure how to get it out of there, though. I read somewhere that someone used dental floss -- they tied a knot to the false bottom and pulled it up with the floss. Maybe I'd rather use a rod with a hook at the end or something.

 

[RM-MN]

Now that I think of it, the first two batches I brewed called for a 90 minute boil, which I did, but the latest two had a typical 60 minute boil. So maybe the coarser grind in combination with a shorter boil time (and consequently less boil-off) caused the slight drop in efficiency. Although BrewMate should take the boil time into account... hm.

I'm also not sure whether I like the hop spider or not. I'm thinking I could avoid using it by pulling the false bottom out post-boil and before I whirlpool. Most of the hop sludge would have settled on the false bottom, and I could maybe get the rest to cone in the middle with a vigorous whirlpool. Not sure how to get it out of there, though. I read somewhere that someone used dental floss -- they tied a knot to the false bottom and pulled it up with the floss. Maybe I'd rather use a rod with a hook at the end or something.

Unless you have a ton of hops in your beer or if you are harvesting yeast, don't whirlpool at all. The break material and hops will settle out, get covered by the yeasts and compact down. You'll lose less beer this way than you will in your whirlpool.

 

[yeehaw]

Sorry, just to clarify: The stuck spigot is in the BV. I’m referring to whirlpooling in the BV after the boil and before I drain the wort from the BV to the FV.

I whirlpooled my third brew, but the spigot was still getting stuck and I had to siphon the wort into the FV. I broke out the hop spider for the fourth and last brew, and that seemed to take care of it as I was able to drain using the spigot. However, I’d rather not use the hop spider unless forced to, so I’m thinking about other ways to keep hops from blocking the spigot.