My first AG/BIAB brew!

[happydays]

I would say this is my first brew day but we're currently on Day 3 of the brew day, so that's how that is going.

Last week I got an urn for free so I purchased the second B from BIAB and the Brew Day 23L Citra Pale Ale AG kit.

Day 1: Sunday evening
My first error (of many) was thinking my urn looked like 30L. It's 20L. So there's a bit of a volume issue. At this point I probably should have stopped and scaled down the recipe, but I was dead set on brewing so I heated about 17L water to around 68C, added my grain, and added more ~60C water to brim the urn. An hour later, I removed the bag and grain, squeezed and sparged it to brim the urn again and got heat on ready for the boil. Some time later, at 97/98C, the urn stopped heating. After some time faffing and trying and trying and faffing, I realised my next error: an unmodified urn will not boil wort. I was considering rewiring the urn to bypass the thermostat, when a relative gave me some excellent advice: "only bad decisions are made at this time of night". 230V electrics in the dark certainly felt like it would fall into this category. I decided it is just sugar water and I would delay the boil until tomorrow, take another look at the problem with a fresh head and daylight, rather than burn my house down at midnight.

Day 2: Monday morning
I emptied the wort from the urn into my FV, popped the stats off the bottom of the tank and secured them to the side of the urn (colder surface) with tape. No rewiring! Put the wort back in the urn. Went to work.

Day 2: Monday evening
Successfully reached a rolling (violent?) boil. Urn didn't combust. Hop additions all good. Steam was quite a lot, may need to work on extraction. I don't currently have a cooler so had always intended to "no chill" this. I wondered if I should have removed the 80C post-boil hop addition after a bit? Advice welcome.

Which brings us to today, Day 3, Tuesday, when I will put the wort in the FV, dilute to the specified SG if necessary as it is probably 5L or so short of the recipe, I'll add Pure Brew and pitch the yeast. This will ferment in my shed with an inkbird and heater belt in an insulated box.

Next time I will scale the recipe to comfortably fit in the 20L urn. Maybe I should aim for 15L FV volume? And I'll of course be able to mash and boil on the same night which will speed things up!

Thanks for reading, happy days!

 

[Rwilts]

Well that all sounds like fun..

The boil doesn't need to be vigorous, just needs to be boiling.

Being a no chiller myself I don't normally make any adjustments, but weirdly just did last week to try and see if there is any difference (although I have not done the recipe before so how will I known!)

Here is the table of suggested adjustments

 

[happydays]

Well that all sounds like fun..

The boil doesn't need to be vigorous, just needs to be boiling.

Being a no chiller myself I don't normally make any adjustments, but weirdly just did last week to try and see if there is any difference (although I have not done the recipe before so how will I known!)

Here is the table of suggested adjustments

Such a helpful chart, I will try those adjustments next time, thank you.

There was some fun in there somewhere!

 

[Tanglefoot]

I suggest trying Brewfather or similar if you want to rescale your kit, once you've got the hang of it you can make your own recipes easily.
It will tell you what water volume you need to start and what the volume will be once grain is added.
I don't bother sparging and just use a little more grain to compensate, using a 36L pan for an 18L batch usually means 24L of water to start which is fairly near the limit once grain bag goes in.
How long you leave the post boil hopstand depends on the IBUs you're after.
After 80c bitterness is much reduced but still a factor to consider, put your recipe in Brewfather and have a play around and you'll see ( also interesting to tweak other ingredients and quantities to see the overall effect ).

 

[happydays]

Thanks @Tanglefoot , really useful!

So, the thing is finally in the FV and I will very much enjoy not seeing it for a few days.

I used to the tap on the turn to decant the wort into the FV, but ended up losing some wort at the end to the hoppy mess at the bottom of the boiler. Argh. The learning curve is steep on this one.

 

[happydays]

Ended up with 17L after a slight adjustment to reduce the gravity a touch. Maybe I'll need a bigger urn.

Oh, and I went to stick the airlock in and the bloody grommet decided to take a plunge to the bottom of the barrel