My second brew / first AG BIAB

[KaiserW]

Did an extract kit for my first brew.
I liked to idea of real grain brewing for flavor and complexity.

I have 2 - 1 gallon carboys for fermenting.
Picked up a 24 qt. AL stock pot.
APA style, 5.38lb grain bill in a 5 gal nylon paint strainer / 2.3oz. of hops for boil and another 1.1oz to be added for dry hop later (no hop bag, I'll get to that later)

3.8 gal mash volume / 60 min mash
Strike temp @ 174 F
Mash temp @ 156 F

I got the pot up to strike temp, flame out and poured in my milled grains.
Didn't get down to mash temp till about 30 min in. I kept the top on the pot unless I was stirring, about every 10-15 min.

3.25 gallon / 1.048 SG after mash.

75 min boil (Wasn't quite rolling enough, and didn't want to have extra watered down wort)

Volume was good, OG of 1.059 @ 60% efficiency. split the wort between the 2 carboys and pitched S-04 evenly across the 2.

Have great krausen and bubbling at less than 24 hours.

Things I learned:
A) need to figure out better efficiency, should come with time / technique

B) either I need to use hop bags or a bigger funnel/filter setup. Whirl-pooling to not transfer trub didn't work very well on my first attempt.

C) no matter how well I think things will go, never start your brew making process at 6pm on a Friday night or any night for that matter

Any thoughts or suggestions from the community would be great too

 

[RM-MN]

1. Your strike temp seems awfully high. Unless your grains are stored in a cold location you should have only needed about 163 for strike temp. (no calculation, just guessed)
2. If your grains were milled fine I would guess that the beta amylase was denatured rather quickly and your FG will be quite high. I hope you like malty beers.
3. If your grains were milled very fine, your mash was over before you got down to the intended mash temp. I don't mash for an hour any more, according to the iodine tests my mash converts in less than 5 minutes. I let it go for 30 anyway and my wort turns out quite fermentable, leaving me with a lower FG than I want even.
4. Your efficiency is tied closely with the crush/grind of the grain. If your grain is milled fine, you have no choice but to get good brewhouse efficiency unless you throw away part of the wort.
5. Now that you know how much you boil off, reduce the amount of water you start with. I start with about that same amount and get a bit more than 2 1/2 gallons.
6. I don't bother trying to whirlpool, I just dump it all into the fermenter and let it settle out there. Any wort/trub left in the pot is wasted potential beer. That lowers your efficiency.

 

[Rdom]

+1 on the strike temp. There are plenty of good strike temp calculators online. Also some decent apps for smartphone if you have one. I use Brewzor for Android. I don't use all of its features but regularly use the calculators for strike temp, attenuation, carbonation, and unit conversions and they all seem reliable and accurate.
Ever since I started using reusable fine mesh hop bags, I get fewer hop "floaties" in my beers and also have less material at the bottom of the fermentor (which makes racking a little easier and gets me just a little more volume of beer at the end). However, I also did fine without them and I don't think they are a necessity.

 

[KaiserW]

Yeah, I'll have to go back through and see which site/calc gave me the high strike temp. I figured it would be ok because I was assuming a high loss of heat having a large pot un-insulated. Next time I will see if the bag hits the bottom or not and see if I can just use a low burner to maintain mash temp, or even step up through the full mash cycle.

I tend like hoppy beers at the moment so I have a lot of trub. Are your bags cotton or syntetic? Do they just float around in the boil?

I don't mind malty beer, just won't match quite the style, but hey beer is beer right, and it's my creation. I'll be sure to update with FG in 3-5 weeks and taste in another 1-3 after that.

 

[Rdom]

I got my bag and hop bag from wilserbrewer from this site. Synthetic, good quality, durable, fine mesh, would highly recommend getting your bags from him if you don't want to use the paint strainer bags (which I used with fine results for over a year) or make your own fine mesh bag. The hop bag is pretty long so I just tie it to one of the handles on the kettle so that the hops are submerged but have plenty of room to move around without the bag touching the bottom of the kettle. I add hops to the bag throughout the boil as called for in the recipe and then retie it to the handle. After the boil, I tie it a little tighter so it hangs above the wort and let it drip while I cool the wort.
I wouldn't leave a burner on during the mash. You can prevent loss of heat by covering the pot with towels, jackets, or whatever you have. Once I started using a couple of extra towels to cover my pot, my mash temp held much better. If you have to add some heat by turning on the burner to maintain your temp, you should stir all the while the burner is on to prevent scorching of the bag.