A thought occurred reading a post about needing a vessel for a sparge and I thought 'why not sparge in the boiler' which led to thinking about mash and sparge in the boiler. Clibit had mentioned before about not doing a sparge so I did some googling. Doing a no-sparge BIAB seems to be common in the US and Australia. In fact there is a setting in brewmate for BIAB that assumes no sparge. So I gave it a go.
Recipe was for a Czech pilsner adapted from the Greg Hughes book.
5kg pilsner malt (actually British lager malt)
100g of saaz 50, 30,20 at 0, 10, flame out
20 litres (roughly) from 25 litres of morrisons shepley spring (almost no minerals, ideal for a lager).
So heated water to 68 and started to put the grains in
Discovered that 25 litres of water plus 5kg of malt was too much so had to drain off about a litre. Did a quick refractometer test and it was already 1032 and this was before I'd finished putting the grains in.
Put the lid on and mashed, didn't insulate and it only lost a degree in the hour.
After the hour raised the temp to 75 and left it there for about 5 mins and then lifted out the bag using a pulley. Gave it a squeeze.
I diluted the wort a bit to bring up the volume and then on with the boil.
In terms of efficiency I used slightly more grains than the recipe 5kg instead of 4.66 but ended up with the same volume of wort. The recipe was for 1050 using normal AG and I got 1058 so I don't think I lost anything in terms of efficiency.
Seems to work fine.
One confession though, broke the unwritten law about drinking HB whilst making HB. Didn't get chance so had a quick one after to celebrate :-P
Recipe was for a Czech pilsner adapted from the Greg Hughes book.
5kg pilsner malt (actually British lager malt)
100g of saaz 50, 30,20 at 0, 10, flame out
20 litres (roughly) from 25 litres of morrisons shepley spring (almost no minerals, ideal for a lager).
So heated water to 68 and started to put the grains in
Discovered that 25 litres of water plus 5kg of malt was too much so had to drain off about a litre. Did a quick refractometer test and it was already 1032 and this was before I'd finished putting the grains in.
Put the lid on and mashed, didn't insulate and it only lost a degree in the hour.
After the hour raised the temp to 75 and left it there for about 5 mins and then lifted out the bag using a pulley. Gave it a squeeze.
I diluted the wort a bit to bring up the volume and then on with the boil.
In terms of efficiency I used slightly more grains than the recipe 5kg instead of 4.66 but ended up with the same volume of wort. The recipe was for 1050 using normal AG and I got 1058 so I don't think I lost anything in terms of efficiency.
Seems to work fine.
One confession though, broke the unwritten law about drinking HB whilst making HB. Didn't get chance so had a quick one after to celebrate :-P