First AG = BIAB

[earle]

Just mashed in my first AG - BIAB in my crown urn. Going to be a galaxy pale ale.

[big dave]

Nice Earle.

If it's anything like my first, it will involve lots of nervous fiddling with things and double-checking lists. You will get into the swing pretty easily, and the beer is cracking. I think brewing is a pretty forgiving process.

[Bum]

Nicely done, earle!

If you don't burn yourself you've done it wrong.

Let us know how she goes.

[emnpaul]

Kudos to you Earle.

[warra48]

Nice one, earle.
No looking back now.

[earle]

Thanks everyone. Not feeling like it was a huge success but there will be beer at the end and it is all a learning experience.

Here's my results. Feedback would definitely be appreciated.

My urn in the 40L concealed element crown. I picked up some 10mm foil coated foam from clark rubber to insulate it.

I have the urn profile set up in beersmith for a 60min boil with 4.85L evap and 3.18L trub loss for a 23L btach volume.

As I don't have a grain mill yet, the grain was milled using the blended method.

Day started with 35L water heated to 70C, popped by bag in, tipped in the 5kg of grain and gave it a good mix around with the paint stirrer. Temp was then 67C so lid on and a sleeping bag.

After 75 minutes I attempted to do the mash out. Sleeping bag and lid came off, turned urn on and started stirring with the paint stirrer. Beersmith suggests 7min to get the temp up to 75.6C but after 10min the temp was only 70C so I thought I would live with that.

90min after mash in I started to hoist the bag. I have a pulley set up but will have to set up something to tie the rope to - didn't realise the bag would be quite that heavy.

After squeezing the bag a bit the volume was 31L, hydrometer reading of 1014 at 70C converts to a real reading of 1031. At this stage I realise I'm not going to be close to the numbers.

Added 1L of water at this stage to get to the suggested preboil volume of 32L and get the urn going. I leave the thermometer in the liquor to keep an eye on the boil temps. The gentle boil I could achieve seemed to have temps in the mod-90s.

10 minutes before the end of the 60min boil I popped the immersion coil in. After cooling to 30C the volume was 29.6L, of this I transferred 23L into the fermenter. Hydro reading at 30C was 1028 which converts to 1031.

Seems I may have three issues:
1. Poor efficiency - 50% I think, maybe someone can check this for me.
2. Volume issues - I guess I'll dial this in over time.
3. Sufficient boil - I know there's a lot of posts about the crown concealed urn not being able to maintain a good boil. I was talking to a fellow here in toowoomba who has used one for two years without the cut-out mod and has no issues as long as the element cover is clean ans shiny. I will be getting some feedback from him as well.

[emnpaul]

Hey Earle,

I don't do full volume AG but I'll try to help where I can.

If your worried that your efficiency might not be where you want it avoid adding any extra liquor at the start of your boil. Boiling a few points over gravity won't do any harm and you can add a kettle full of boiled water at the end without any problems.

I usually include a mash out step in my brewing but don't get around to running the numbers very often so can't really say how much extra efficiency I get from it. Through reading I'm led to believe it would only be a point or two. If your efficiency is down around 50% I'd be looking elsewhere, at least initially.

I've used a blender as a mill for some time but found it is good for turning pre-milled grains into flour, which works well for BIAB, but when using whole grains a fair few slip through uncracked and I think this may be part of your problem. Your experience may differ. If you can access your spent grain maybe have a look to see if this is the case. I've recently acquired a grain mill but previously got all my grain orders milled (bar one) for this reason, then blended them.

Somewhere to tie off your rope for an extended drain and a bit more of a squeeze might help, but I see you're already across that.

If you can reserve a portion of your strike water and use it to do a sparge step in a large pot it might help your efficiency too. A heat stick will enable you to do this in the comfort of the great outdoors and might be the answer to your boil problems but then again might give too good a boil. I haven't got a heat stick yet and just use my stove to heat my sparge water so just thinking out loud.

[big dave]

Hey Earle, it is a steep learning curve eh? Don't stress too much, the beer at the end will be good, even if a touch under strength.

Our set-ups are different. I use a three ring LPG burner under a 50 litre keg with the top cut out, and a camping foam mattress for insulation during the mash. Your set-up sounds ideal, and your method sounds the same as mine up to mash-in. I don't have a grain mill, and buy all my grain pre-milled. If you tell the retailer you are doing a BIAB, they will often double-mill it, but I have had fine and coarse crushes, and found it not to make too much difference. I have a fine-weave bag, so I find the coarser crush drains a bit more readily. They have never charged me a fee for milling.

I generally heat the water to the temp I want to mash in at, then as I turn the flame off, the water will generally rise a degree or two (absorbing more heat out of the heavy stainless keggle), which will then drop back to the desired mark as I add the bag and then the grain. I agitate the mash every 15 or 20 minutes. I usually do a 90 min mash, during which time I lose a couple of degrees on a mild day, and up to five on a cold day. As most of the saccharification occurs in the first few minutes of the mash, I don't tend to worry about it too much, although I have a false bottom in, and have turned on the flame once or twice in seven brews to date.

Your volumes might take a while to hone. Once you have done a few brews you will know how much to allow for loss to absorption, boil-off and trub. I use a calculator from the BIABrewer forum site which suggests what the volumes should be, but I have had to alter my rates of evaporation loss because I tend to have a gentle boil and lose less than others. I can email you the calculator spreadsheet if you like. Samples are taken to check SG pre and post boil, but I usually let them cool rather than correcting for temp.

I had some difficulty raising the bag on my first BIAB, with a slow-drain, heavy bag, gloves too thin to squeeze the hot bag with, and a bag of grain that was bigger than the opening I had to pull it thru. So now I use a ratchet tie down strap hooked from the shed roof, and I can bring it up by degrees as I squeeze it out (with thicker rubber gloves ). I will get a bag with a coarser weave next time. As I start to pull the bag, the flame goes on, so it is technically not a mash-out, but the temp comes up a bit. Once the bag is out, I heat flat out until I have a big rolling boil, then kill the second ring, and maintain a slow boil. I have read that a slower boil doesn't cook off all the hop character from the bittering addition, and may result in better hop flavours, but my primary reason for having a slower boil is that I don't have to heat so much water in the first place.

If you like, check out the BIABrewer forum. The guys on there are passionate about their BIAB.

http://www.biabrewer.info/

[Mad Dog]

"Steep' learning curve... Good one

[melykabeer]

Congrats Earl
I'm hoping to do my first one soon!

[Oliver]

Hi Earle,

Congratulations on your first BIAB. I helped Geoff do his first BIAB last Sunday, although I only have two under my belt. We both have Birko urns with exposed elements.

It was an interesting experience helping someone with their first BIAB and gave me a bit of a different perspective on the whole thing.

I am sure your beer will turn out fine.

Here are a few comments about your post:

After 75 minutes I attempted to do the mash out. Sleeping bag and lid came off, turned urn on and started stirring with the paint stirrer. Beersmith suggests 7min to get the temp up to 75.6C but after 10min the temp was only 70C so I thought I would live with that.

Do you know what the temperature at the start of the mash-out was? Geoff's dropped from about 67 to 66, with a couple of minutes of heat in the middle. Seven minutes was about exactly what it took to get it up to 75.4.

90min after mash in I started to hoist the bag. I have a pulley set up but will have to set up something to tie the rope to - didn't realise the bag would be quite that heavy.

Yep, they get heavy! My setup has the pulley hanging from the end of a rope underneath the pergola. The problem with this was that when I tied it off it pulled the pulley off centre. I need to revisit this for my next BIABs, which hopefully will be around Christmas.

Cheers,

Oliver

[earle]

Thanks all for the comments. I think the crush was a big part of my problem, will get a mill soon. That and working out my volumes wk get me more sorted.

I'm going to use a second pulley at the top of the bag next time, will easier to lift and will hopefully stop it from being pulled sideways.

I met a brewer a few Weeks ago who has been using an urn the same as mine for two years so I'll pick his brains as we'll.

[Bum]

The finer "crush" gotten from the blender will only increase your efficiency not reduce it. I'd look elsewhere. Perhaps a bucket sparge will help you out some?

[earle]

The finer "crush" gotten from the blender will only increase your efficiency not reduce it. I'd look elsewhere. Perhaps a bucket sparge will help you out some?

Agreed, but only if you get that finer crush. It was suggested in a previous post that the grain may have not been blended for long enough leaving some of the grains intact and I suspect that this may be the case.

[Bum]

if it was the case you wouldn't need to suspect it at all. The difference is immediately obvious. Could you see a large amount of whole grains amongst the flour?

Perhaps the BIAB equivalent of doughballs might be the answer? Easy to do.

[earle]

if it was the case you wouldn't need to suspect it at all. The difference is immediately obvious. Could you see a large amount of whole grains amongst the flour?

Perhaps the BIAB equivalent of doughballs might be the answer? Easy to do.

Immediately obvious to someone with ag experience yes. For me doing my first ag brew not so obvious until someone suggests it and I recall lots of whole grains with some flour.

[earle]

Have been drinking this and while the clarity is poor the beer itself is actually quite good, just not what was intended. The planned recipe had quite low bitterness so even though my efficiency was poor it is more bitter than intended but still ok.

Brewed my second AG batch yesterday and with a few changes smashed all the beersmith numbers and got over 70% efficiency.

Changes were:

Used a paint masher rather than a paint stirrer for better mixing.
Stirred the whole time that I added the grain to make sure no doughballs (thannks Bum).
Used grain crushed by Craftbrewer this time (in the absence of a mill)
Used the paint masher for the whole mash out which also helped get the mashout temp up.
Added brewbrite which resulted in a much clearer beer.

I pulled the chiller coil out before trying to whirlpool but still didn't get a cone, so the first wort into the fermenter had some break in it, and I only transferred 20.5L rather than the intended 23L. I'll have to have a closer look at the discussion on break in the fermenter, but does anyone know if I transfer break into the fermenter will it continue to settle so that I don't need to rack?

[Tipsy]

I pulled the chiller coil out before trying to whirlpool but still didn't get a cone, so the first wort into the fermenter had some break in it, and I only transferred 20.5L rather than the intended 23L. I'll have to have a closer look at the discussion on break in the fermenter, but does anyone know if I transfer break into the fermenter will it continue to settle so that I don't need to rack?

When I chilled I got a nice cone of break on the bottom of my flat bottomed pot. Now that I no chill, I still get a nice forming cone, but I do notice a lot of cold break forming (precipitating?) in the cube.
This always gets in the fermenter and settles pretty quickly, with time I always have clear beer.
Does the break affect other things like taste and head retention? I'll leave to other people to speculate, but I'm happy with the results I'm getting.