Hitting mash ph with grain only

hi zephyr, i did intend the use the whole 5kg bag as i thought it would compensate for the low efficiency that i will probably end up with, and i will use the whole bag of hops just because, i forgot to mention that they are leaf hops
which soft ware are you using? i had it in the brewers friend calculator but wasn't sure about the boil size and im not sure if it takes grain absorption into account but i figured by the second attempt i will have a clearer idea of the volume of strike water that i need to start with
i will aim to make 23 litres but i dont mind if it is more so long as it fit into the fermentor without blowing out of the top
the fermentor i have is this one

This was my first ever BIAB brew:

https://www.brewerscoop.co.nz/biab.php

Expect low efficiency with BIAB, certainly in the initial stages. Given it's your first go, 60% is likely - but with BIAB it's really all down to grain crush and thoroughly mixed grains. But that doesn't really matter right now.

If you're using whole hops vs pellet then I think you need around 10% more but I can't confirm as I've only ever used pellets.

The recipe gives the following hop addition timings:

14g 60 minutes
14g 30 minutes
28g 15 minutes

I'd dry hop with the remaining hops, I love dry hopped beers!

Centiweasel said:

hi zephyr, i did intend the use the whole 5kg bag as i thought it would compensate for the low efficiency that i will probably end up with, and i will use the whole bag of hops just because, i forgot to mention that they are leaf hops
which soft ware are you using? i had it in the brewers friend calculator but wasn't sure about the boil size and im not sure if it takes grain absorption into account but i figured by the second attempt i will have a clearer idea of the volume of strike water that i need to start with
i will aim to make 23 litres but i dont mind if it is more so long as it fit into the fermentor without blowing out of the top
the fermentor i have is this one

Click to expand...

I was using the grainfather recipe builder to do the calcs, that's the same FV I've been using for the last year, I like it. I've never done BIAB except for 4 small 5 - 8 L stove top batches when I first started so not sure what efficiency you're likely to get, I know some folks on here do a dunk sparge in a 2nd pot to help boost efficiency a bit.

I used 0.8L/kg for grain absorption in a gravity draining system, you might get less as you can squeeze the bag (controversial action I believe). Pre-boil volume is a bit of a guess on new equipment, boil-off is generally 2 - 4 L/hr is often an average I think, then you have kettle dead volume to add as well. If you under shoot you can always top up in the FV or leave it be if you're happy with the OG.

I'm not the person to advise on hops as I'm not an IPA drinker and I'm not keen on american hops in general. I struggle with beers that hit 40+IBUs unless it's a barleywine-type brew which needs it for balance. Plenty of others about who have good experience with these beers.

Good Luck.

I've found Brewers Friend to be quite good at calculating weights, volumes and predicting SG. I have found the strike and sparge water temperatures to be too low for me and add about 3 degrees.

My first two brews ended up mashing at 62-64°C, but... it still made very drinkable beer. Don't sweat about the numbers too much when you start, head for middle of the band for now, then adapt later.

For instance, go for about 67 degrees, if you don't hit it right, you have 3-4 degrees leeway. Aim for about 4.5-5% ABV, because it's the middle of a 3.5-6% band. If you don't hit your SG bang on, adjust next time.

Looking at your hop schedule, ignore the mid-boil hops. You'll get best effect from 60min bittering addition, 0-5min aroma addition and a dry hop.

hi all so today is the day im still not sure about the hops, i have been reviewing online recipes and they are have different hop schedules, what they do have in common is that they all use more than 100g
i have been on the calculator and if i use 30g at 60 mins and 70g at 5 mins its coming in at 42 ibu and i will dry hop next time round think
how does this sound?
cheers every one

Centiweasel said:

hi all so today is the day im still not sure about the hops, i have been reviewing online recipes and they are have different hop schedules, what they do have in common is that they all use more than 100g
i have been on the calculator and if i use 30g at 60 mins and 70g at 5 mins its coming in at 42 ibu and i will dry hop next time round think
how does this sound?
cheers every one

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Sounds good - have fun :)

Probably a bit late to comment now but unless you have a rapid means of cooling after the boil you should not be adding much, if anything, in the way of mid boil hops. They will add an unpredictable amount of bitterness. I would just use bittering for 60 minutes then allow the wort to cool to 80C or less post boil to whack a load of hops in. Use any remaining hops for a dry hop about 2 or 3 days before bottling. Splitting a 100g pack into three equal portions may be a good idea.

Hope it went well. Yeah american pales use way too many hops (just my biased opinion), 100g should be fine for a more balanced character and your schedule sounds great, won't get the massive aroma that folks like but I feel that's a waste since it take so much hops to create then fades rapidly. Should taste great.

hi every one
i wanted to let u all know how it went have to say that the numbers are not as accurate as they should be i was going off the marks on the inside of the pot and they are us gallon so i have converted it into litres.
well i heated the strike water (30.2L) to 70c added the grains and it dropped to 68c it had dropped to 67 after the hour was up.
i think i managed to guess the amount of water all most spot on and according to the scale on the fermenter is just above 23L mark, im guessing that its not accurate so when its done im going to fill it up litre by litre and make my own mark.
so after mashing i was down to about 28.4L so that was 0.32l /kg that the grains soaked up (i did squeeze)
started heating to boiling and it took about 30 mins to reach boiling, i didnt time it.
and by the time it was boiling it was down to about 27.45L
boiled for 55 mins with 30g cascade hops
put in wort cooler that i made at 15 mins
and then a further 35 g of cascade at 5 mins
i decided to hold some back to dry hop it
as soon as it his 60 mins i turned the tap on and it was cooled to 25c in about 10 mins
it was down tot 23.7L at this point
now it got a bit tricky as i discovered that the spout on the big pan was clogged with the gunk and hops and i couldnt get it to drain out of there so i was forced to pick up and carefully tip it into the fermentor,
i poured it through another piece of sanitised voile and then squeezed that a bit too for 23.5L into the fermentor (if the scale on the side is any use)
so im guessing that probably 15 to 20 mins after it was finished boiling i had pitched the yeast
the pack said to dry pitch above 2oc, my wort was probably in the low 20s
it wansnt bubbling wen i went to bed but it had started bubbling during the night and now im home from work the following day its bubbling crazy, the ambient temp in that room is 20+/-1c
and that is all for now

i have put this info into brewers friend and it says this, think the efficiency is about 63.5 so pretty crappy
about 33.5 ibu and 4.5%
i have to say that i tasted the hydrometer sample and it was disgusting so lets hope its better when finished

That sounds like a pretty successful brewday.

Impressed with your rapid cooling, maybe you could show off your wort chiller next time you take some pics.

I think you made a good choice on hop schedule and keeping some back for dry hopping too.

That sounds great! Very smoothly for for the first AG brew. That efficiency sounds about right for first time biab, once you're comfortable with the process look into dunk sparging.

Now the real test, leaving it alone for 2 weeks...

33IBU's is perfect (certainly on my pallete) - you'll enjoy it I'm sure.

Nice work.

hi all, its been two weeks now and i wanted to do you a bit of an up date,
so on Thursday evening i used the 35g of hops to dry hop the beer i just emptied them into to top of the fermenting vessel
let them sit for 4 days and went on to bottle it today.
i had some difficulty siphoning the beer into the bucket was trying not to suck up the yeast and all the hops made it difficult so i ended up leaving a bit of beer wasting it.
i managed to get 37 bottles altogether
i used 92g of sugar to prime it so that works out roughly 2.5g per bottle and should be about 2 volumes of co2 according to brewers friend beer priming calculator
the final gravity was 1.008 as predicted so the beer must be 4.5%ish
the beer was quite cloudy buy the sample was very cloudy it was from the bottom of the fv

here is a picture of the cooler i made
its 10mm x 10m copper pipe from screwfix
nothing special at all i think the speed of cooling was because it was a cold day and the tap water would have been really cold

also i forgot to mention that it still didn't taste very nice

Centiweasel said:

also i forgot to mention that it still didn't taste very nice

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It's always an option to post a bottle to a forum member(s) to ask for their opinion on it.

Some guys are really good at picking out faults and more importantly where they came from and why they likely came about.