Starting volume calculation

[OHStone]

I brewed my first BIAB batch this past Monday! I used the spreadsheet calculator over at BIAB.info to calculate my starting volume, and got the result of 9.5 gallons which I thought was high but went with anyway. My recipe called for 11 pounds of grain and I did a 60 minute boil. After all was said and done I had 6.5 gallons of wort, 1 gallon more than I was shooting for. After chilling and filling my fermenter to 5.5 gallons, I noticed that the extra gallon-ish was mostly cold break and hop material. I then noticed that the calculator had accounted for the trub, but I'm not sure if the recipe did or not. Did I lose some major gravity points? If I did, how much base malt should I add to avoid this problem in the future? Or should I just build a filter for my ball valve and laugh in the face of pesky hop material and proteins?

 

[RM-MN]

Yes you lost some potential beer in the hop and break material. I dump all that stuff into the fermenter and when it settles out it might be a cup or 2 of solid material and the rest is beer. How did your beer turn out? What was the OG compared to the predicted OG. I've noticed that my efficiency is so much higher with BIAB that a recipe for a conventional tun usually overshoots and I get beer with a higher alcohol content.

 

[RM-MN]

I brewed my first BIAB batch this past Monday! I used the spreadsheet calculator over at BIAB.info to calculate my starting volume, and got the result of 9.5 gallons which I thought was high but went with anyway. My recipe called for 11 pounds of grain and I did a 60 minute boil. After all was said and done I had 6.5 gallons of wort, 1 gallon more than I was shooting for. After chilling and filling my fermenter to 5.5 gallons, I noticed that the extra gallon-ish was mostly cold break and hop material. I then noticed that the calculator had accounted for the trub, but I'm not sure if the recipe did or not. Did I lose some major gravity points? If I did, how much base malt should I add to avoid this problem in the future? Or should I just build a filter for my ball valve and laugh in the face of pesky hop material and proteins?

9.5 gallons?? I start with about 6 1/2 gallons, sparge with a quart or 2 and put 5.25 into my fermenter so I get 5 into bottles.

 

[smyrnaquince]

I brewed my first BIAB batch this past Monday! I used the spreadsheet calculator over at BIAB.info to calculate my starting volume, ...

Congratulations! You should be using the latest version of the spreadsheet, which I believe is "BIABacus PR1.3K". The folks at www.biabrewer.info are quite helpful when it comes to BIAB and using their spreadsheet. Try posting your questions over there. Tell them smyrnaquince sent you.

I had 6.5 gallons of wort, 1 gallon more than I was shooting for. After chilling and filling my fermenter to 5.5 gallons, I noticed that the extra gallon-ish was mostly cold break and hop material.

If you were shooting for 5.5 gallons in the fermenter, then it sounds like this came out about right. If you were shooting for an end-of-boil volume (including trub) of 5.5 gallons, then yes it did come out high. If this is the case, you will need to adjust your boil-off rate from what is assumed in the spreadsheet.

I then noticed that the calculator had accounted for the trub, but I'm not sure if the recipe did or not. Did I lose some major gravity points?

If you used the BIABabacus spreadsheet correctly, it scaled the quantity of grains in the recipe for the volumes you were using to hit the gravity you expected, accounting for boil-off, trub, etc. It would have also scaled your hops, as needed.

The BIAB method works quite well, so no reason to move away from it unless you want to.

 

[OHStone]

Yea I love the method it was awesome, just a little unexpected on the amount I got. I broke my hydrometer on brew day so I just said screw it and didn't take a reading. But, I suppose since after looking a bit more at the calculator, it was supposed to put have that 1 ish gallons of trub that it all worked out.