Afternoon everyone,
Before reading - this is a little diary entry and is not meant to be a gripping read!!
So just this afternoon I finished my first BIAB. I went for a Brew UK Saison all grain pack - using just a 50L kettle with 2.4kw element.
Now I put the exact grain bill and hop additions in Beersmith, and it suggested a 35.98L post boil / mash volume to end up with 23L - I ran it through another homebrew calculator online and it gave me a 30.5 L give or take as a post boil volume.
Now to brewuk instructions for the brewmeister suggested a 60min mash and top up to 27L post boil or 90min mash using 2.5kg per L in a traditional 3 tier format and top up to 26L, so i took a view and went for a 32L half way between the 27 and the 35L. As i know Beersmith from what i have read is pretty much on the money once dialed in.
So I went for 32L full volume mash and boil. I lost about 1L per kg of grain (even after giving the bag a gentle squeeze) which gave a post boil, post mash volume of 27L - I then boiled for 70 minutes and lost a subsequent 6.5 liters over the boil duration, which was slightly more than the 4.7L per hour I found from an online calculator, took this to 20L of wort pre-trub loss ( this worked out to be just under 1.5L after tipping the brew kettle) so my 23L batch turned out to be just about smack bang on 19L, so have lost 4 L to the beer gods ...
So after all this the outcome and i want i have learnt is - dial the figures in on beersmith as working back the maths the pre-boil volum was almost smack on the money. I also did not account for hop absorption loss.
On a side note, would anyone know whether a 10min mash out at 77'c could be the reason I lost an extra liter or so ? As it would make sense!
Anywho, enjoy your sunday everyone!
Before reading - this is a little diary entry and is not meant to be a gripping read!!
So just this afternoon I finished my first BIAB. I went for a Brew UK Saison all grain pack - using just a 50L kettle with 2.4kw element.
Now I put the exact grain bill and hop additions in Beersmith, and it suggested a 35.98L post boil / mash volume to end up with 23L - I ran it through another homebrew calculator online and it gave me a 30.5 L give or take as a post boil volume.
Now to brewuk instructions for the brewmeister suggested a 60min mash and top up to 27L post boil or 90min mash using 2.5kg per L in a traditional 3 tier format and top up to 26L, so i took a view and went for a 32L half way between the 27 and the 35L. As i know Beersmith from what i have read is pretty much on the money once dialed in.
So I went for 32L full volume mash and boil. I lost about 1L per kg of grain (even after giving the bag a gentle squeeze) which gave a post boil, post mash volume of 27L - I then boiled for 70 minutes and lost a subsequent 6.5 liters over the boil duration, which was slightly more than the 4.7L per hour I found from an online calculator, took this to 20L of wort pre-trub loss ( this worked out to be just under 1.5L after tipping the brew kettle) so my 23L batch turned out to be just about smack bang on 19L, so have lost 4 L to the beer gods ...
So after all this the outcome and i want i have learnt is - dial the figures in on beersmith as working back the maths the pre-boil volum was almost smack on the money. I also did not account for hop absorption loss.
On a side note, would anyone know whether a 10min mash out at 77'c could be the reason I lost an extra liter or so ? As it would make sense!
Anywho, enjoy your sunday everyone!
