Advise needed Burner set and AG BIAB

[Matty1974]

Hi All,

Yesterday i did my first AG BIAB of Wainwrights beer, first issue i had was it took ages to get my 27L of water (campden tablet 24 hours prior)to 75-80 'C as i was doing i t on a electric hob and they dont match the diameter of my pan 35CM.
After the 90 minutes in the pan i took the grains out and sparged with about 5 litres of water of whihc i dont think i got much back in term of liquid(very sticky though)

Then i had an issue getting to the boil which to for f'in ever went through whole process of add hops at the specified times.

Once i had cooled the wort to around 25'c i siphoned off using a autosiphon which kept getting blocked by hop leaves, it ended up more like a pump than a siphon.

At the end of it all the OG was spot on at 1045 but i only had 16-17 liters in my FV.

So any advise or tip on how i can end up with my desired 23l and the OG to be spot on plus getting the wort etc to the boil quicker.

thanks in advance

Matt

 

[Matty1974]

Bump

 

[Galena]

Buy yourself a gas burner or a induction hob, don't ask me which one as I use an electric mash tun.
How are you calculating your water volumes? Are you allowing for grain absorption and boil off?
Grain absorbs around 1 litre per Kg and boil off can easily be 4 litres per hour, mine varies depending on wort volume, but this is something you can work out from your last brew if you have the numbers for pre and post boil volume, or you can just boil water for an hour and measure that.

 

[samale]

Personally I use pellets and bag them in Sainsbury's bag's that they use for the fruit. Nylon draw string.
I don't know if they work for leaf but I can't see why not especially if it's a low hop brew.
Other option would be to put the nylon bag over the end of the Syphon

 

[samale]

As regards the recipe and expected efficiency I wouldn't worry about it at the start. Just learn how to brew first, you will get used to your system and what to expect.

 

[Matty1974]

Thanks for the advise. I thought about the nylon bags for the hops this morning, will try that next time as there was a lot in this kit and probably lost about a litre just to them...

 

[Matty1974]

Just a note on this the Brew fermented for about 3 days then it pretty much ground to halt, i have checked the gravity and its only gone from 1045 to 1031 and it doesn't appear to be moving anywhere fast.

Should i get some more yeast and make a mini starter and pitch it once its started foaming or just leave it for the full ten day and bottle and hope the carbonation drops increase its ABV?

Thanks in advance
Matt

 

[Galena]

3 days is not long, leave it until its been fermenting a week then check the gravity again.

 

[An Ankoù]

I would go down to Calor Gas, tell them what you want to do and come back with a burner and Bottle of Propane. You have to pay a deposit on the bottle, but the refill price is reasonable and I get 12-13 brews out of a bottle (using an electric tea urn for my sparge water). You should be looking for a burner of about 9-12 kW and be prepared to work outside somewhere sheltered from the wind. This'll do you for 25-50 litre batches.