squeezing grain bag is bad?

[m_stodd]

I love the two pages of people band-wagoning on the "squeezing is bad" train... without any actual input or evidence or anything. Thats why science will always win the day.. because so many people are ignorant!

The earth was flat one day... and you would be put to death for heresy if you objected. Don't beleive the hype!

I don't think I've seen conclusive evidence for either side (might have missed it), and I'm not going to trust someone tasting beer with their tongue for tannin detection. It looks like someone in chemistry could easily do a KOH test for the presence of tannins in wort (see wikipedia below).

According to wikipedia, tannin extraction can be accelerated with increased temperature and pH, but they're still water soluble, and they'd still probably leach out if they sat in room temperature water long enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannin#cite_note-Hagerman1988-26

For me, I don't think there's enough tannin on my grains to care if it all ends up in my beer. Off to squeeze my bag...

 

[Johnnyhitch1]

Nope, have done it, seen it done, never tasted anything "bad" or "off"

Will continue to do it, tomatoe tomatoe.

 

[bob1852]

Palmer refuted the the need for a secondary in his first edition and no-where in his book does he say not to squeeze. Talking out of your ass is talking out of your ass whether you call it "conventional wisdom" or not.

By the way "conventional wisdom" *now* says pitching dry yeast dry (not rehydrating) means absorbing wort through cell walls and killing half your yeast and seriously underpitching. Verified evidence through expermiment and observation? None. Zero.

We're still talking out of our asses we're still getting away with it..

You can argue the results, but here's one experiment...

http://seanterrill.com/2011/04/01/dry-yeast-viability/

 

[rideincircles]

After reading this thread I plan on squeezing as much flavor out of the bag for all brews going forward. I left some sugar behind I think in my last brew and didn't hit my gravity targets (didn't sparge either though). I prefer the idea of getting as much of the flavor and sugar out of the grain as possible.

I will add a note on the astringency side, I made the nutcastle brown ale recipe and accidently hit 180 degrees on the grain temp when soaking and the beer was astringent for a month or 2 after bottling. Then it aged out and was fine.

 

[Ridire]

Hi, my name is Ridire and...I'm a bag squeezer [sobs of regret and shame].

 

[Trail]

I squeezed the piss out of my bags

Why are you brewing a PBR clone?

 

[woozy]

You can argue the results, but here's one experiment...

http://seanterrill.com/2011/04/01/dry-yeast-viability/

Oh... okay. Chalk one for rehydrating.

 

[ElKabong]

wish i had read this thread before, cause i squeezed the bag!!

 

[woozy]

wish i had read this thread before, cause i squeezed the bag!!

Good! It felt good, didn't it?

 

[LLBeanJ]

wish i had read this thread before, cause i squeezed the bag!!

The main point to be gleaned from reading this thread is that there should be no regrets for having squeezed the bag, as no harm to your beer would likely result, and that any foregone squeezing out of a misplaced fear of tannin extraction would've only resulted in missed opportunities to liberate more of the sweet, sugary goodness from your wort than what was actually achieved.

 

[jeuentes]

I used to squeeze my bag and rub my handle but Jesus said it was bad. Now I just mash in a tun.

 

[Tiber_Brew]

I used to squeeze my bag and rub my handle but Jesus said it was bad. Now I just mash in a tun.

What you do in the privacy of your own kitchen is your business. We won't judge you.

 

[Jayslay]

When and where were people put to death for heresy for not believing in a flat earth?

You may have caught me in a bad quote. Giordano Bruno was convicted of heresy in the Roman inqusition and burned at the stake for beleiving..get this... that the sun is actually just a star, one of many. Blasphemy!
A similar charge of heresy befell Gallileo Galilei.
You can question-troll me if you want, my simple point being the bandwagon always seems right until people reallize its wrong, generally through science. I guess its hard for a mob of people to beleive anything unless the science is shown to all, or a promminent brewer speaks his mind and people beleive him/her.

Woozy, you do also make a good point though, always question everything someone presents as fact, as you have shown me!

A very good response to the question of tannin extraction can be found on this page of Mr. Wizard, the second reply: http://byo.com/stories/item/1264-preventing-beer-slime--reducing-tannins-but-not-flavor-mr-wizard

There is a scientific assay to measure tannins through a process with a spectrophotometer.. as per James F. Harbertson and Douglas O. Adams of UC DAVIS http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/adams/tannin/feclass.pdf

And another nice paper expaining tannins from the Uni of Rome http://www.aidic.it/icheap10/webpapers/410Capparucci.pdf

Finally, I would like to say this. I brewed a partial mash Hefeweizen a few months ago. I did a triple decoction, bringing the mash portion to a full boil. I also pressed the bag after removing it, tea-bagged it, and squeezed some more. Not a single hint of any astringency.. and that helps me to beleive that tannin extraction is more about PH in combination with high temps...as I had temps at 220F and no issues.

 

[lgilmore]

To whom asked Grill = Grate.. much like soda = pop.... maybe just different parts of the country. ...

The grill/grate is to set on top of the kettle to set the grain bag on to drain back into the kettle. It also allows me a firm surface to press against that allows for wort to run through.

Started using the grill/grate a while ago as the grain bag gets a bit heavy sometimes.

 

[woozy]

You may have caught me in a bad quote. Giordano Bruno was convicted of heresy in the Roman inqusition and burned at the stake for beleiving..get this... that the sun is actually just a star, one of many. Blasphemy!
A similar charge of heresy befell Gallileo Galilei.
You can question-troll me if you want, my simple point being the

The "Myth of the Flat Earth" is one of my pet peeves. Not entirely *sure* why it's one of my pet peeves but it is. "In the middle ages people believed the earth was flat" is simply not true. The classical greeks had determined that the world was spherical and had even determined it's size and the european scholars of middle ages fully accepted that.

Christopher Columbus of the "Christopher Columbus proved the earth was round" fame was actually a bit of idiot and a whacko. He had a really *stupid* and wrong belief that the world was tapered like a pear and that in the northern lattitudes sailing half way around the world would only be a few thousand miles instead of the dozen of thousands of miles the learned scholars thought it would be. And he was dead wrong and the learned scholars were right. He sailed a few thousand miles, hit a huge honking undiscovered continent, assumed it was asia even though he had gone less than a third of the distance, and the rest was history.

That's the only thing I'm objecting to. People were burned for heresy for being right and not adhering to superstition all the time. But the "flat earth" was simply never a tenet of the church.

 

[C-Rider]

And the ancient Polynesians proved the world was not flat as they colonized just about every island in the central to south pacific.

 

[triskelion]

If I may get back on topic for a moment...
In my last batch, I squeezed and sparged my brew bag until the sparge water was clear. I got 88% efficiency. It's still fermenting, but if I remember, I shall report back about tannins.

 

[DonB]

All I know is that I've brewed about 10 batches so far and 8 of them were fantastic... the 2 that I didn't care for... (an amber, and a 2 Hearted clone) were both squeezed.

I won't be squeezing anymore!

 

[doug293cz]

All I know is that I've brewed about 10 batches so far and 8 of them were fantastic... the 2 that I didn't care for... (an amber, and a 2 Hearted clone) were both squeezed.

I won't be squeezing anymore!

Unless you have done a controlled experiment with the same recipe and process, except for squeeze vs. no-squeeze, your observations do not allow supportable conclusions to be drawn. Brew however you want, but don't try to pass your experience off as evidence of anything.

Brew on

 

[william_shakes_beer]

8 pages and nobody's gone here yet?

What a man does with his bag in the privacy of his own home is nobody else's business.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=492158


Now If I could just keep the bag away from my tube.....
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=356491

 

[PlexVector]

All I know is that I've brewed about 10 batches so far and 8 of them were fantastic... the 2 that I didn't care for... (an amber, and a 2 Hearted clone) were both squeezed.

I won't be squeezing anymore!

Did you read this thread from the beginning?

I believe the gist of this old thread came to a very good conclusion on the subject and it would not benefit new BIABers to be mislead.

 

[Frilock]

*sigh*