First BIAB! Get 'er Brewed's Hoppy APA

[Thumper]

I had an extra day off work, so got the new gear out and got my first BIAB on.

It took ages. 6, maybe 7 hours, though I did spend some time putting an accurate scale on the side before getting started. I'm hoping this will get quicker. I also ended up with way less going into the FV than I expected, and way more break material! I need a bazooka filter.

Anyway, the specifics of the kit as given by GEB are as below:

Grain Bill is 6kg- Maris Otter Pale Ale, Munich, Crystal and Wheat; they don't give proportions.
Hops are Magnum, Cascade and Centennial

15 Litres of strike water at 75 degrees
Mashing for 60 minutes at 66 degrees
Sparging 13 Litres
Boil size of 28 Litres
Hop additions at 60 mins, 10 mins and 0 mins - 44 IBU's
Fermentis US 05 West Coast Ale Yeast
OG 1060
FG 1011

The tl;dr version of my day (added as an edit when I saw the length of this post :lol:):

16l of strike water at 76c
Mashed 75min at 69c
Dunk sparge 12l at c. 60c
Hop additions as per instructions, with whirlfloc added at 10 min
Pre boil volume 24l
16l into FV (with 3l left in dead space of boiler)
Yeast rehydrated and pitched at 22c
OG 1053

And the detail, for those that want it:

I had the day off and had a lie in, so got up late and spent the first hour of my day putting a new scale on the peco boiler. I then filled to 28l and plugged it in, threw in a crushed Campden and went away to take care of the three S's. Came back half an hour later and it was at 65, which I was quite impressed with.

I thought 75c looked a bit high for the strike water, but what do I know? I decided to follow instructions. I ran the sparge water off into my fv and set that to the side, put my bag in, and mashed in.

After faffing about I had missed target slightly and ended up mashing in at 76c. Once finished I measured again, and the mash temp was 69c. In future, I will be mashing in at 72c, and ignoring all instruction to the contrary. I also learned that plastic spoons dont work for stirring heavy, hot mash.

The mash looked a bit thick, and I surmised that this was because the false bottom in the peco meant it wasn't getting the full volume of water, so I grabbed a litre jug out of the "sparge" water and poured that over the top, and it looked much better.

I then cooked and ate a very large bacon and egg sandwich. One nice thing about this method is that it's sort of spaced out. I then nipped up the high street to the pharmacy because I wanted to see if I could get some Epsom salts. I'm in London, and I know other London brewers add Epsom salts and gypsum when doing a hoppy brew. I had neither, but could at least get some Epsom salts. I also picked up some bog roll so I could tell the missus I'd done something useful that day, since we'd run out.

This took longer than expected, so it was mashing for 75 minutes, but I don't suppose that hurt it. After that time, temp had dropped to 66.5c, so I think I need better insulation than the old towel I used. Not that it mattered this time since I was over temp anyway.

Gave the bag a good drain, dunk sparged for about 10 minutes at about 60c, and did the same again. Added the runnings to the FV and had a pre boil volume of 24l (including my 3l dead space). Pre boil SG (at 56.6c) was 1034. At this stage, I chucked half a teaspoon of Epsom salts in the wort and turned the boiler back on.

It took longer than expected to sparge. It then took longer than expected to get to a rolling boil. But it did, and I had no boil overs (yay!). Hops were clearly labelled with the addition times so that all went smoothly, but I added my crushed whirlfloc along with my 10 minute addition, and I'm a touch worried that was too late?

I eventually got 16l into the FV at an OG of 1053. So taking into account my 3l of dead space in the boiler, I think that's a boil off rate of 5l. Is that normal?

I also missed target OG by 7 points, which seems a lot. Since the target ABV is 6.4% I'm actually not too bothered this time, but if anyone has any tips on how improve efficiency (or, come to think of it, how to work out what my efficiency was) I'd appreciate them.

Anyway, apologies for the level of detail but I'm quite excited about the whole process! Looking forward to getting better.

Cheers all.

 

[Piperbrew]

Thanks for the write up, hopefully I will learn from what you have said as just ordered my boiler and grains etc for my attempt at all grain soon. Hope the beer turns out well.

 

[Oneflewover]

Entertaining read, and I'm sure you'll end up with a cracking beer.

There's a brewer's friend efficiency calculator somewhere, easy to use. If you do an Internet search it'll come up readily enough.

I'm no expert, but I'm not sure that your sparge water temp is hot enough. I aim for around 78 degc. The biggest improvement to efficiency for me so far is in stirring the mash a couple of times during the mash.

 

[Thumper]

Thanks @Oneflewover, I'll have a look for that calculator. Next time I will draw off some of the sparge water and heat it on the stove to bring the whole back up to temp before dunking.

@Piperbrew, if I have any advice based on my first go, it would be:
- Allow more time than you think you need. I didn't take into account the length of time needed to drain the bag and sparge, and it takes longer to reach a rolling boil than you think.

- If your boiler comes with a false bottom like mine, then don't try and leave it in for the boil. I Did, thinking it could act as a break and hop particle filter, but it just shifts about and floats off as soon as the water starts bubbling and it's a load of stress trying to get it back into place. Accept the trub this time and take the damn thing out.

- The boil will make way more condensation than you think it will :lol:

Best of luck with your first brew!

 

[AdeDunn]

Thumper, first off google BIABacus, join the forum that comes up and download a copy. It's one of the easiest ways to adapt recipes then calculate volumes and temperatures. Especially strike water. My first BIAB I heated to 72 degrees for strike, and like you ended up mashing too warm. I now strike at 70 degrees thanks to BIABacus, and upon doughing in my temps drop to 64/65 degrees which is perfect for most mashing. It'll also give you volumes for full volume mashing, as I think the instructions you followed are odd to say the least for BIAB. I usually mash in about 23.5 litres of water (giving me a mash volume of just over 27 litres), sparge with about 3 litres (your just rinsing the grain off) and possibly top up the boil another 2.5 litres (it has sections where you can add this if you have to do it) as my boiler instructions recommended only boiling about 25 litres.

Next tip, avoid buying recipe packs for BIAB, they're false economy and you can't adapt them unless creating a custom one, and you will need to in order to adapt it for your efficiency. Besides, weighing out grain is part of the "fun"... :whistle:

I mentioned this on your other thread, a lesson I learned myself as my first BIAB my efficiency was a rather naff 60%. Stir your grain really well, get it up off the bottom of the bag and into the water column. You want to get the sugars off the grain so more can come out. Do this for each stir too (I stir every 20-30 minutes throughout the mash now).

Sparging, I actually sparge at 76 degrees (which is also the temp you would normally mash out, and plenty of sources say it IS hot enough to reduce the viscosity of the wort, so it come out of your grain more readily, which is the point of the sparge, getting the last bit of sugar out). I do a hybrid sort of sparge, where after draining my grain bag into the kettle (I rest it on a cooling rack on top of the kettle) I place it into a bucket so it sits on a circular SS trivet. I then pour the sparge water over the grain nice and slowly from a jug. I then dunk sparge as normal in this, treating the BIAB bag like a giant tea bag. I mashed out 76 degrees last brew day too before lifting the BIAB bag from the kettle (rising over 7 minutes stirring the whole time, rest for 10-15 minutes) but no idea how much difference this made. My sparge liquor had an SG of 1.030 though, which isn't bad for 3 litres of warm water just to rinse the grain.

If you really really want a few more points, you can always mash for 90 minutes. I measured regularly last time around, and the difference between 60 minutes and 90 minutes was 0.005 though so might not be worth it.

Last of all, if you still have problems you might want to check your mash pH. Living in London your water is going to be liquid rock (I was a student there in the 90s, I had to use filtered water in my kettle if I wanted it to last longer than a few weeks... lol). This means that lighter malts aren't going to be able to reduce the pH as much. I have the same problem here, and using 20 litres of reverse osmosis filtered water with 9 litres of tap water I now get a mash pH of about 5.4, which is still a tiny bit high but a fair bit better than it was... Only look to this step though if the improved stirring doesn't help enough, as stirring costs nothing.

Re your spoon, yeah gotta love those long bendy spoons. :lol: I have a long stainless steel mash paddle that I use, but plenty of folks recommend either a long handled stainless steel potato masher (about £26 each) or (mainly Americans) a metal paint stirrer (if I was to use either I'd go for the masher personally, as yuch. lol). The idea been that these are more effective at getting the grain up into the water column. I find my paddle works just fine though.

Last but not least, unless you are going to use flower hops, don't bother with a bazooka. Mine clogs horribly within about 5 litres when transferring. If you don't have one already get yourself an auto-siphon and transfer with that, you can leave all of the trub and hop mush behind that way. If you can afford one the DX hop filters on brew builder look nice though (and I have one on my want list). Or you could try whirlpooling big time, let it settle then just draw off without any filter.

I only did my 4th proper BIAB New Years Eve myself, but these are things I've picked up already. Really has helped. :thumb:

Good luck!

 

[foxbat]

Efficiency... 28l of total liquor down to 24l pre-boil = 4l loss to grain. Looking at your grain bill of 6kg I would have expected to lose about 2.5l which suggests that you're not squeezing as hard you should. When you're done dunking squeeze the living daylights out of your bag into the sparge bucket then tip the lot into the boiler. Also, 12l is more than you need for the sparge. 8 litres for 6kg would be enough. Don't leave it idle soaking for 10 minutes. Poke it. Prod it with the paddle. Make sure the water gets through into all that grain and out again.

Follow those instructions and you should hit 70-75% efficiency with a store-supplied crush. If you move up to your own crusher then you'll easily hit 80+% as you can crush finer than for a traditional setup.

 

[Thumper]

Cheers AdeDunne, all great advice! Yeah I think the instructions assumed a three vessel system, and that may have been half the problem.

I joined the forum and downloaded the BIABacus. Christ, but that's not designed to be viewed on a phone, is it? :lol:

 

[Thumper]

Thanks foxbat, I actually thought you were supposed to lose a litre to every kilo of grain. Does that only apply to three vessel?

And I thought squeezing the bag gave you a load of unwanted tannins? I just let it gravity drain.

 

[AdeDunn]

Cheers AdeDunne, all great advice! Yeah I think the instructions assumed a three vessel system, and that may have been half the problem.

I joined the forum and downloaded the BIABacus. Christ, but that's not designed to be viewed on a phone, is it? [emoji38]

Lol Nope. Plus at first glance I wanted to run a mile! I've used it for 3 brew days now though and it has helped. Once I've built the recipe I then use Beer Smith 2 app on my phone as a handy timer.

Sent from my NEM-L51 using Tapatalk

 

[foxbat]

Thanks foxbat, I actually thought you were supposed to lose a litre to every kilo of grain. Does that only apply to three vessel?

That figure is for 3V.

And I thought squeezing the bag gave you a load of unwanted tannins? I just let it gravity drain.

That's a myth that's been widely debunked. You can and should squeeze as hard as you can. If you are detecting astringency that you think is due to tannins then water pH is the first place to look.

 

[Thumper]

Excellent, thanks for the new info!

 

[Piperbrew]

Thanks @Oneflewover, I'll have a look for that calculator. Next time I will draw off some of the sparge water and heat it on the stove to bring the whole back up to temp before dunking.

@Piperbrew, if I have any advice based on my first go, it would be:
- Allow more time than you think you need. I didn't take into account the length of time needed to drain the bag and sparge, and it takes longer to reach a rolling boil than you think.

- If your boiler comes with a false bottom like mine, then don't try and leave it in for the boil. I Did, thinking it could act as a break and hop particle filter, but it just shifts about and floats off as soon as the water starts bubbling and it's a load of stress trying to get it back into place. Accept the trub this time and take the damn thing out.

- The boil will make way more condensation than you think it will :lol:

Best of luck with your first brew!

Cheers for the advice, I will take heed with the condensation as I intended to do the boil in my garage which doubles as a workshop for my knife making. Condensation, high carbon steel for knives and my metal machinery really don't like condensation :thumb:

 

[Thumper]

It's been in primary nearly three weeks now as I didn't have any spare bottles. I've ordered some and hopefully they will arrive by Saturday!

It's at 1007, and the trial jar tasted good, though not as hoppy as I was expecting. Also quite cloudy, but I suspect thats the wheat in the grist. I gave it a swirl just to make sure it's done fermenting. About an inch of trub, which I don't think is too bad? Should bottle this Saturday!

 

[BeerCat]

Good job mate. You must be well chuffed. If it's not hoppy enough you could add a hop tea. When I did BIAB I used to put the bag on half a pedestal fan cover. Saves squeezing and burning your hand.

 

[Thumper]

Thanks @BeerCat! Dead chuffed, I can't wait to try some once it's properly conditioned.

I have a metal colander that just about did the job, but we do have an old pedestal fan in the cupboard somewhere... I may have to dig it out:laugh2:

 

[AdeDunn]

I use a cake cooling rack, the bag sits on this nicely over my boiler to drain for a bit, and I then use it again to sparge the grain and drain again into the sparge bucket. I have a flat bottomed bag though (BeerCat has an ACE boiler, so probably know the bag I mean).

Backtracking to the discussion about squeezing the bag. I squoze a teeny tiny bit last brew after draining from the sparge and got a bit more out of the grain, I just pressed down on it gently with the lid of my boiler. I certainly didn't go mad with it, and still managed to get more than enough wort into the boil, and just a touch over 21 litres into my FV. After my last brew, I'd say good trub management does more to get more wort into your FV than any amount of bag squeezing can. If you're not having to fight with the trub to transfer your wort it's just so much easier to get right down to the dregs. :thumb: I'm not telling anybody not to squeeze the bag though, just that for me improving my trub management (bigger bazooka filter, whole hops instead of pellets) was much more helpful. Or as another member once said here, YMMV.:nod:

Now you have your first AG out of the way though, odds are it's just going to get better and better from here, with just the odd blip here and there.:cheers1:

 

[Thumper]

Just bottled this. Got 27 pints of it bottled, aimed for 2.5 volumes.

Looks great, that pale cloudy yellow that an APA should be, and the trial jar tasted great too!

I got better attenuation than the kit predicted, FG was 1004. So despite the poor efficiency, it's about 6.6%abv :thumb:
Tastes great already, can't wait till it's conditioned!

 

[Stephenj]

Just bottled this. Got 27 pints of it bottled, aimed for 2.5 volumes.

Looks great, that pale cloudy yellow that an APA should be, and the trial jar tasted great too!

I got better attenuation than the kit predicted, FG was 1004. So despite the poor efficiency, it's about 6.6%abv :thumb:
Tastes great already, can't wait till it's conditioned!

Nice one.

 

[Thumper]

Well I'm slightly disappointed with this. It's cleared beautifully, carbonation is spot on, but it's got a strange vanillary flavour which I can only assume is diacetyl. Which I can't understand, because it had two weeks in the FV and I couldn't taste it when I tried some at bottling stage. Its also got a sort of bad fruit smell? Very strange.

 

[Thumper]

Wait. Maybe not. The further down the pint I get, the more convinced I am that it simply doesnt have the IBUs for the alcohol content. Hence the gone off fruit smell?