HomebrewandBeer.com forum

I know it's best to boil the runnings to produce the wort, cool and pitch ASAP, but my brew days are getting out of hand as I'm currently doing two 14l boils in my 19l pot and then cooling each batch in the bath tub.

What do people think of mashing the grains the night before and then storing the runnings in a sterilised cube till the next day before undertaking the boil ASAP.

I know that it still allows some time for the wild things to grow, but I know that they would be killed in the boil and hopefully without leaving any flavours.

I'm hoping that this will allow me not to lose my passion before I get a chance to upgrade my equipment which is the real solution.


What are people's thoughts?

Hirns

Why can't you cube the boiled wort?

Bum wrote:Why can't you cube the boiled wort?

Bum, I'm trying to split my brew day as it's taking too long to do a full batch (don't want to do halves as I keg). I know about no chilling, but I don't think that it will solve my time issue. It's not the cooling of the wort that causing the biggest headache, its the mash followed by two boils and then two chills. I was hoping to do the mash at night, and then two boils and two chills the next day.

Cheers

Hirns

I'm suggesting no chilling. That's why using a cube is referred to as "no-chill". Two 10L cubes (these would usually hold something closer to 12 or 13L) would get you out of your chilling predicament. I don't see how you could avoid a boil on brewday.

As I see it the above or going full volume is the only real solution (aside from getting chilling gear, of course) - your proposed method is inviting nothing but crap beer.

Thanks for the advice Bum. It appears that I'll just have to soldier on. It's the two seperate 1 hour plus boils that is really killing me. The chilling in the bath with ice is down to nearly 15min. So even with my chiller which I hope to make this weekend, I'm not saving any real time. As I suggested and you reinforced, going the full volume pot is the solution. Will have to start looking for that keg or pot!

Cheers

Hirns

Hi Hirns,

I hope that I've understood your problem correctly. Do you only have 1 x 19L pot and are you mashing a full grain bill then doing the first half of the batch in a 60min boil, then once the original pot has been emptied you boil the second half of the batch boiled for another 60mins?

If this is the case have you thought of doing an overstrength boil?

I did my first AG brew, a half volume of Dr Smurto's Golden Ale about 7 or 8 weeks ago in a 19L pot using BIAB. I followed the method outlined in the "move to AG for $30" thread from AHB. I know that some of the advice on this thread might be a bit dubious in regards to the brewing science and despite this it turned out great (i did do a lot of other reading to learn some of the basics of AG brewing). My problem was that it was a lot of time and effort to only produce 12L (14 long necks) of beer as the finished product. I saw another thread on AHB that described basically using the same technique but using a full grain bill to produce an over strength wort and then putting the bag into a bucket and batch sparging 2-3 times (until the runnings are less than 1040) to top up the pot during a single 60min boil (keep it almost full to the brim). The only other change was to add additional hops due to reduced hop utilisation at SGs above 1050 (approx 10% more per 10 SG points). This was then further diluted in the fermeter to acheive your final SG.

I tried my first overstrength boil 2 weeks ago and I finished with 19L (I lost 3.5L due to trub and high amounts of hop debris) and the only additional time from doing a traditional BIAB (no sparge) was to do the sparges in a bucket (I did 3, 1st runnings SG1091, 2nd runnings 1050 and third runnings 1037 and used them to top up the pot to replace evaporation losses during the boil). I only bottled it on the weekend but tasted ok.

I will upgrade to a bigger pot or a 40L urn soon but I think this will do until I then.
I hope this helps

Cheers
Simon

I've done the same as Simon and now have two over-gravity stove-top BIAB's under my belt. It's not that difficult, I just use two buckets to do my sparging in. Heat up sparge water, remove grain bag after mash, give it a good squeeze, plonk it in bucket 1, add sparge water and give a good stir, lift up bag and squeeze again before plonking it into bucket two, add liquor in bucket one to kettle. Repeat the process until you've sparged enough.

Thanks Simon and Bullfrog. Simon, you have interpreted correctly. I will re-read the BIAB post. I'm not sure how I could extract the required sugers in only 19l without doubling my mash bill. The hop utilisation is understandable. I'll have a read!

Cheers

Hirns

Hirns,

I do my mash (generally a touch over 4kg of grain) in 13L of water, and then batch sparge, as detailed above with about another 10L. With loss to grain (and a small amount to the kitchen floor,) I end up with enough wort to almost fill my 19L boil pot (so let's say 17L, for sake of argument.) After loss to evaporation, I probably have about 15-16L of over-gravity wort going into my fermenter, which then gets topped up with water to 21L before pitching.

Nice and easy

oops double post

SimonG wrote:I tried my first overstrength boil 2 weeks ago and I finished with 19L (I lost 3.5L due to trub and high amounts of hop debris)

Hi Simon,
You can reduce your losses there to about 1.5 Litres, if you just pour the hop / trub leftovers into a sanitised 5 Litre jug, then cover with gladwrap overnight.
In the morning you will have about 1.5 to 2 Litres of nice clear wort on the top, which can then be easily poured off into the fermenter.
I do this every time, and I always get at least 2 Litres of clear wort.

Thats 5 extra stubbies every time mate

cheers,
Chris

bullfrog wrote:Hirns,

I do my mash (generally a touch over 4kg of grain) in 13L of water, and then batch sparge, as detailed above with about another 10L. With loss to grain (and a small amount to the kitchen floor,) I end up with enough wort to almost fill my 19L boil pot (so let's say 17L, for sake of argument.) After loss to evaporation, I probably have about 15-16L of over-gravity wort going into my fermenter, which then gets topped up with water to 21L before pitching.

Nice and easy

Thanks bullfrog. I do like wise, but sparge to get about 27L at present and after boil, and loss in two pots I end up with about 21L with me ususally reaching my final SG. I think that with using the mash tun I would be well under with my SG.

Hirns

Grog wrote:You can reduce your losses there to about 1.5 Litres, if you just pour the hop / trub leftovers into a sanitised 5 Litre jug, then cover with gladwrap overnight.
In the morning you will have about 1.5 to 2 Litres of nice clear wort on the top, which can then be easily poured off into the fermenter.
I do this every time, and I always get at least 2 Litres of clear wort.

Thats 5 extra stubbies every time mate

Thanks Grog! Great idea, too easy (if only I knew this earlier). It's probably even more than 5 stubbies worth because the wort was still quite concentrated in the pot coz I diluted with another 5L of water in my fermenter to reach my OG

hirns wrote:I'm not sure how I could extract the required sugers in only 19l without doubling my mash bill.

Hirns, I used a 4.9kg grain bill all in the pot at once and filled it close to the brim to mash, then I kept topping up my evaporation losses during the boil using sparge liquid. I kept topping up until the last 10mins of the boil to keep my volume as high as possible and to assist hop utilisation. I think a 10min boil is the minimum needed to kill off any nasties. I hope it was enough to remove hot break, boil off DMS???. The aim was to get a final batch volume of 23L and I would probably have got somewhere close to that if I had known Grogs technique earlier to get an extra 1.5-2L of high concentrate wort (that would have been 2-2.5L once I diluted it down to reach my OG).