"Clone Brew" recipe for BIAB, how?

I have been brewing kits for some time and have just started collecting everything to move over to BIAB. I have been given a book called " Clone Brew, recipes for 200 commercial brews" by Szamatulski. Being very new to this I am confused as you seem to make a concentrate then dilute when in the fermenter, not how I had read/understood to do it from reading this forum. I want to use a BIAB method but am not sure how to convert their reciepe into BeerSmith for BIAB.

I am looking at a few of them with interest and was going to start with the South African Castle lager ( for old times sake) on page 36. The book is written for extract brewing, but has additions for mini-mash and for all-grain.
All help appreciated.

The recipe says:
steep: Crush and steep in 1/2 gallon (1.9l 150F (65.5 C). 4oz German light crystal malt (Cara-Hell), 4oz German Vienna malt
Strain & Sparge: Strain the grain water into your brew pot, Sparge the grains. With 1/2 gal (1.9 lt) water at 150F (65.5C). Add water to the brew pot for 1.5 gal (5.7 ltr) total volume. Bring the water to the boil, remove the pot from the boil and add: 5lb (2.3kg) muntons extra-light DME 1lb (0.45kg) corn sugar, 1oz (28g) Spalt at 5% AA.

Boil: Add water until total volume in the brew pot is 2.5 gal (9.5 ltr) boil for 45 minutes then add: 1/4 oz (7g) Tettnanger (flavour hop), 1/4oz (7g) German Hallertau Hersbrucker (flavour hop, 1tsb Irish moss.

Boil: Boil for 13 mins and add 1/4oz (7g) Tettananger (aroma hop)

Cool and pitch: boil for 2 minutes, remove pot from stove, cool for 15 minutes. Strain wort into wort into fermenter and add cold water to 51/2 gal (19.5 ltr). When wort is under 60f (15C) pitch yeast Wyeast's 2007 Pilsen or Wyeast's 2778 Czech Pils

Ferment: ferment in primary for 7 days then into secondary.

The variations are:
Mini-Mash method: mash 2.75lb (1.3kg) German 2 row Pilsner malt with the speciality grains at 122F (50C) for 30 min and at 150F (65.5C) for 60 mins. Then follow the extract recipe, omitting 2lb (.9kg) DME at the beginning of e boil.

All Grain method: Mash 7.75lb (3.5kg) German 2 row pilsner malt, 1.5lb (.68kg) flaked maize and 1lb (45kg) rice hulls with the speciality grains at 122F (50C) for 30 mins and at 150F (65.5C) for 60 min. Add 3.8 HBU (24% less than the extract recipe) of the battering hops for 90 minutes of the boil. Add the flavour hops and Irish moss for the last 15 minutes of the boil and the aroma hops for the last 2 minutes.

Thanks in advance.
Tom
So far in 2013: 350 litres of beer, wine and ginger beer, and going strong.

Sounds interesting, I can't comment on the methodology as I am still new to the art of homebrew.

But, one thing I would add is that any clone of Castle Lager is probably going to be way better than the stuff you get commercially - this coming from a South African. I would lean toward a Hansa if offered the choice.

Good luck though and keep us informed if you do brew a Castle

Cheers
BrewBilly

I'm new to this lark too, but I have been reading a lot! If you're doing true Biab you just need to put all your grains and water into the pot. That's all the mash water and the sparge water together with the grain. The dilution you mention is normal extract brewing practice, just ignore that. You need to calculate how much water to start with using a water calculation tool or a beer recipe program like beersmith, beer engine, brewtoad, brewmate etc. I've started using brewmate, seems straight forward and works for me, so far.

If you don't have a pot big enough for all the water and grain, like me, you could mash with part of the water and then do a batch sparge, by sticking the mash wort into an FV or something, and then adding more water to the grain at the right temp. This way you can do a mash out at a higher temp. I think! In fact, I don't really understand why you would choose to put all the water in in one go. I use a ratio of 3 litres water to 1 kg of grain to start with, and use the rest of the water calculated by brewmate to sparge the grains. By this I mean I just add the water to the pot and leave for 15/20 minutes to extract more sugars and rinse the grains. I'm a simple beast, and I look at what some people do in wonderment. As in, is it all really necessary, I wonder. All these sparge arms and three tiers and lauter tuns and stuff. Is it all boys with toys, or does it make better beer? I wonder.

I'm probably going to be corrected on all this left, right and centre in the morning.....

BrewBilly said:

But, one thing I would add is that any clone of Castle Lager is probably going to be way better than the stuff you get commercially - this coming from a South African. I would lean toward a Hansa if offered the choice.

Good luck though and keep us informed if you do brew a Castle

Cheers
BrewBilly

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That's why, just to remember, other brews are a Zambesi , Windhoek Special or a Lion (remember those).

clibit said:

I'm new to this lark too, ,

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Me too!

clibit said:

You need to calculate how much water to start with using a water calculation tool or a beer recipe program like beersmith, beer engine, brewtoad, brewmate etc. I've started using brewmate, seems straight forward and works for me, so far.,

Click to expand...

I bought BeerSmith andcouldn't see how to enter the info, or why the quantities

I

clibit said:

f you don't have a pot big enough for all the water and grain, like me, you could mash with part of the water and then do a batch sparge, by sticking the mash wort into an FV or something,

Click to expand...

I bought a 70 ltr 'Marmite' from the German' via eBay France.

I find the BIAB designer spreadsheet about the most useful for calculating water volumes etc.
You do need to create an account but it is free - http://aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/28-all-grain-brewing/

The above site has some great posts from the early days of BIAB and the FAQ is worth a read.

I use the BIABacus calculator from BIABrewer - very easy to scale recipes to suit your kettle. You will need to register and post on the site in order to download the file...

must_dash said:

South African Castle lager

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- :sick: agree with Brewbilly - your beer will be a million times better than that commercial slop.

remember the book is for 5 gallon us so to get 5 gallon uk divide by 18.9 the times by 23 , very good book .

Brewmate is excellent software -http://www.brewmate.net/ it's free and has a BIAB setting. I do full volume BIAB in a 40L urn and it works out all your strike temperatures and water volumes for you.
Here's a couple of screenshots of a typical recipe.

anthonyUK said:

The above site has some great posts from the early days of BIAB

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Hi Bribie,
Are you the same Bribie as on AHB?
If so it is a pleasure to have someone with your BIAB experience on the forum.
It is a lot less 'rowdy' than AHB which seems to devolve in to chaos in a heartbeat :lol:

I really like Brewmate, it's a very well designed piece of software IMO. I played with a few different programs before settling on it. I am transferring all the recipes I want to try into Brewmate because it is quick and easy, it tells me everything I want to know and enables me to adapt recipes and quantities very easily, and I can store the recipes I want in one place. It's also free, and it occupies about 2mb on my hard drive.

I also use the BIABacus. Has been very successful so far for my brews.

must_dash said:

I have been brewing kits for some time and have just started collecting everything to move over to BIAB. I have been given a book called " Clone Brew, recipes for 200 commercial brews" by Szamatulski. Being very new to this I am confused as you seem to make a concentrate then dilute when in the fermenter, not how I had read/understood to do it from reading this forum. I want to use a BIAB method but am not sure how to convert their reciepe into BeerSmith for BIAB.

Click to expand...

Quite simple - enter it exactly as is - so the grain and hops etc and the timings. Pick an appropriate BIAB Mash schedule. Reduce total efficiency to 60%. Then adjust the ingredients until you are back to the IBU and estimated ABV you wanted.

must_dash said:

I am looking at a few of them with interest and was going to start with the South African Castle lager ( for old times sake) on page 36. The book is written for extract brewing, but has additions for mini-mash and for all-grain.
All help appreciated.

Click to expand...

Use the all grain version as your start point.

must_dash said:

All Grain method: Mash 7.75lb (3.5kg) German 2 row pilsner malt, 1.5lb (.68kg) flaked maize and 1lb (45kg) rice hulls with the speciality grains at 122F (50C) for 30 mins and at 150F (65.5C) for 60 min. Add 3.8 HBU (24% less than the extract recipe) of the battering hops for 90 minutes of the boil. Add the flavour hops and Irish moss for the last 15 minutes of the boil and the aroma hops for the last 2 minutes.

Click to expand...

They seem to want a stepped mash - they are quite straightforward to set up - start with the BIAB Light Body profile and add the 50C step in the "Mash" tab, remove the mashout step.

I'm assuming you are doing a full volume BIAB by the way...

Check out my How To for a runthrough of the complete process. :thumb:

Hi there,
There is also this excellent "How To" by Calum Scott giving a short and precise document on how to brew BIAB.
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=35233

Thanks for all the replies. My initial query was how to convert that recipe to a full volume BIAB.
If I started with the full liquid volume by using 5 gallons of water plus .1 gallons of water for each pound of grain you are using. (On the assumption that each pound of grain will absorb .1 gallons of water) Would that give a usable drinkable full volume BIAB?

There are a few of decent BIAB calculators such as BIABacus which will assist you in working out now much water is needed to compensate for grain absortion and evaporation losses etc.

when I brewed using the full volume biab style from gw book. I used the amount of liquor quoted plus what my boiler dead space is and losses to trub and chiller and came in bang on gravity.

Just use the BIABacus. It's very good at estimating efficiencies, dead space, boil off rates etc. Once you've done a couple of brews you can make adjustments to better fit your specific equipment.