What I learned today (BIAB brew day)

[NeoBrew]

I did my 7th BIAB brew day today. While I'm optimistic the results will be delicious, It seems there was a heaping helping of learning for me in it. I’m sharing here partly as therapy and partly in case it helps someone else. I’m pretty happy that despite all this, I hit all my numbers within reasonable tolerances. I’m looking forward to trying this Arrogant Bastard clone in a few weeks!

1. Time to look for some new brew software. I have been committed to Beersmith, but it's design is just too convoluted for me. I had a couple issues today, but the capper was it deleting my file with my brew notes today when I stumbled over some unknown key combination by accident. I suspect the file is somewhere hidden on my computer, but should it be so hard to find it?
   
2. I also learned that you should take 5 minutes and run through Beersmith settings before your day starts. I have been tweaking a recipe for AB for a couple weeks. The mash temp got reset to 152 instead of 147. I didn’t notice until I mashed in with the recommended temp and ended up at 152. (At least I hit the number! lol) In those revisions it also deleted my notes where I transcribed the recipe from the Brewing Network Re-brew episode. So I hope there were no other settings that I didn’t have right.
   
3. The Captain Crush grain mill will in fact crack if it tips over on the garage floor. There has been lots of speculation on Home Brew Talk about whether it’s polycarbonate. I still don’t know the answer, but I can say for certain that when it tips over from the height of a 5 gallon bucket it will crack the base. Oh, and the little pile of bronze on the base when I got done kinda sucked too. Apparently the bushing is wearing out. I’ll hope that Northern Brewer is interested in standing behind the thing. It's only my 5th batch with it.
   
4. I do think I finally had figured out the right gap settings. By reducing the gap on the upper roller I finally got through a whole batch without clogging the thing up. I think I had the delta between the upper and lower gap too big. The grain must have been getting clogged up on the lower roller.
   
5. Bru’n Water really does work! I picked up a used PH meter on ebay a few weeks ago. I have hit my PH both times I’ve used it now. I’m using my home RO water and adding everything back with salt additions.
   
6. Whirfloc and Irish Moss produce about the same amount of trub in my kettle. BIAB produces a lot of sediment. I have adjusted my recipe to leave 1.5 gallons in the bottom of the pot. Even after letting it settle for an hour it still sucks some of the sediment through the drain. This seems to be very similar in volume between Whirlfloc and Irish Moss (In my unscientific comparison). I'm comfortable that this settles out in the fermenter and doesn't significantly affect the finished product.
   
7. A proper pitch takes a lot more starter than I thought. I finally bothered to ask how to determine the date of White labs yeast. (It’s 6 months before the expiration date on the label.) I have been using Beersmith for my yeast pitch rate. The Dry English Ale yeast I was using only had a 44% viability. Beersmith made it look fine with a 1.8L starter. I tried a few other online calcs and found that different algorithms showed a considerably lower yield. I settled on doing my first two step starter based on Yeascalc’s Zainesheff formulas. This is a far bigger starter than I had ever done before. But with my 1.067 beer, it only called for a 255 billion cell target. This probably explains why my beers have been taking 2+ weeks to really finish up fermenting. I’m optimistic that this one will ferment out faster.
   
8. Yeast nutrient puts your starters on overdrive. I used nutrient in both my starters and both of them blew off and made a mess. This was also my first time making and using pre-canned starter wort. Not sure which one may have cause the foaming. I haven’t had any overflows since I built my stir plate a year ago.

None of this dampens my love of this hobby. I learn something new every time. And the fringe benefits of always having good beer on tap is pretty awesome too. I hope this helps someone along the way.

 

[NeoBrew]

One nice outcome of all this. I took my mill into Northern Brewer today and they replaced the whole thing for me!

This was mostly because they felt the adjustment of the rollers was not quite right, but it also got a new base plate out of the deal.

We'll see how this one works, but I'm a happy customer for the time being.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[1MadScientist]

I recommend joining biabrewer.info and download the BIABacus PR1.3K. There is bugger all kinds of help and support there.

 

[DurtyChemist]

I use my iPad when I brew and have an app called Brewers Assistant. I started using it with extract to log recipes but now that I'm all grain it makes a huge difference and once you play with it enough it's a great app.

 

[soccerdad]

bugger all

 

[HopSong]

+1 for BIABacus.. it's awesome !! And MadScientist is a great resource with it.. He rocks too.

 

[tmendick]

I finally bothered to ask how to determine the date of White labs yeast. (It’s 6 months before the expiration date on the label.) I have been using Beersmith for my yeast pitch rate. .

It is 4 months for regular yeast and 6 for bug yeasts