BIAB Help

[simon19791]

Hey guys,

I have been brewing kits for about a year now and i have made the jump to BIAB, i bought the kit from HMC (the £81.00 one) and have just about got the kit toghether. I am also making prgress with a brew fridge just waiting for the electris to arrive.

Anyway, as part of the HMC deal was an included AG kit, now i know the instructios are a little vague and this is not a complaint or bad comment against the HMC, but i bought the Double American IPA and as mentioned this is my first BIAB and i am completly unsure how much water to use.

Can anyone help?

 

[Cwrw666]

With proper BIAB you're supposed to use the full volume of the brew which in this case is 27L which allows for evaporation plus a bit extra for grain absorption. Your boiler might not be big enough for this though - mine is 30L which is too small. So what I do is put about 20L in the boiler, put the bag in, add the grains. This usually fills my boiler. I do the mash, take out the bag, squeeze it dry into the boiler - then I do a `dunk sparge' which means I just dunk the grain bag into about 3 kettle fulls of 75 degree water then squeeze the bag dry again to get most of the remaining sugars out. Add this sparge fluid to the boiler. This usually adds up to about 23L which is as much as you would want boiling in a 30L boiler. During the boil I top up occasionally with a kettlefull of boiling water. At the end of the boil I usually get 23L in the fermentation bin, if it's a bit short I top up with more boiling water.
Works for me as I always seem to get the OG that the recipe calls for. If you don't sparge at all, you'll end up with a lower OG.
Hope that's a help. I've just done an Olga's Oregon Stout from HBC and I also found the instructions less than helpful.

 

[simon19791]

CWRW666,

Cheers for that, really helpful. Looking forward to brewday now!

 

[clibit]

You will lose about 1 litre for each kg of grain. So add that onto the 23 litres you want to finish with. You will also lose around 15 - 20% of the volume you start the boil with to evaporation. And maybe a litre or two to trub/hops. So maybe 4 or 5 litres evaporation, 2 litres trub. So you want to use around 33 to 35 litres in total probably. But you can use this in stages as Cwrw describes, if your boiler isn't big enough for all the water and grain. Hold some back for a sparge, and hold some back to top up the fv with if you find you are short.

With the Peco boiler, and that double IPA kit, which has about 6kg grain I think, I would mash with about 23 litres. After the mash you should have about 17 litres. Sparge with 10 litres and start the boil with around 27 litres. Boil for one hour and you should be down to 23 ish. This varies from boiler to boiler, and air temperature. Rack the cooled wort to FV and top up to 23 if necessary.

I will feed back to HBC about their instructions. I reckon they don't bother cos there are so many ways to make AG beer.

 

[simon19791]

Clibit,

Again, very many thanks, very helpful info, i was beginning to panic, but i think i have a plan now!

 

[clibit]

Jot down all the quantities you use and what you end up with. Next time you can then adjust the amount of water you use to suit your system. The only variable really is grain quantity, adjust one litre per kg of grain variance between recipes.

If you have another pot in which you can heat sparge water do as I said above. If not, the question is how to sparge with a one boiler BIAB system.

The answer is either don't sparge, just use as much water as possible in the mash, 25-26 litres probably, and top up in the boiler and/or the FV.

Or, batch sparge by lifting the grain bag into a separate container (an FV would do) with water boiled in the kitchen kettle and adjusted to 85C ish The grain and stirring this will drop the temp to 78C ish.

Or, find a way of sitting the grain in a strainer over the pot after the mash and pouring 78C water through the grains to wash out as much sugar as possible. But keep on eye on how much wort you have, don't go above 27 litres I'd suggest.