So I took the plunge with a 1 gallon AG brew...

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Lukesteroo

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I've done 3 kit brews so decided to go for it with a simple 1 gallon BIAB batch. My wife has a 10 litre stockpot which is the perfect size for boiling on the hob, and I knocked myself up a grain bag made from a piece of voile net curtain. I was all set! Bearing in mind I had never even seen the ingredients before let alone brewed with them it was an enlightening experience to say the least, so much so, that I thought it worth sharing.

So, firstly here's the recipe:

Pale Malt: 1kg
Crystal Malt: 110g

8 litre mash for 90 mins @ 66C

Boil: 60 mins
East Kent Goldings: 7g 60 mins
East Kent Goldings: 5g 20 mins
East Kent Goldings: 4g 7 mins

1/4 Protofloc tablet @ 15 mins.

Yeast: Neale's Ale Yeast: 4g

O.G. 1048
Target F.G. 1011
Target ABV 4.9%

So... how did it go?

I heated 7 litres of water to 72C and doughed in the grain. After dumping it in a bit too quickly I had a hard job breaking it all up... still, I'll know better next time! The temperature only dipped a couple of degrees so I rather nervously tipped in a further litre of water, and, guess what! Temperature dropped to about 62C. Back on with the heat and as soon as it hit 66 it was slid off the hob and into the oven.

It held almost perfectly steady at 66C and 90 minutes later out it came, smelling quite interesting (a sort of farmyard/grassy sort of smell) and tasting (yes I admit it) like weak sugary water. The colour was somewhat akin to Coca-cola.

I warmed it back up again to about 80C and then lifted out the bag, gave it a gentle squeeze (burnt my hands a bit!) then deposited it into a large colander to drain. I then tipped 500ml of water at approx 80C over the grain and tipped the resultant runnings into the stockpot. At this point I was left with approximately 8 litres of wort for the boil.

I had no trouble achieving a good strong boil so in went the first lot of hops and I sat back and took stock. Never having seen or smelt hops either, naturally I found the weighing out and subsequent additions quite fascinating. Once the first lot of hops were in and had spent a few minutes boiling, the smell changed quite markedly, and it was then reminiscent of the tins of hopped extract from kit brews. It tasted different too - much more bitter.

The boil continued fairly uneventfully and, at the requisite times, in went the second and third hop additions along with the Protofloc. The smell was amazing, really appetising and tantalisingly floral without being sickly. I did notice that the volume was diminishing rather alarmingly, but I knew it was important both to maintain a rolling boil, and not cover the pot, so I let it continue boiling away.

At the end of boil, I cooled as rapidly as possible in several sink-fulls of cold water. It only took about 7 mins to get the temperature down to 28C, at which point I could see the wort visibly separate out - I believe this is the "cold break" - with a cloudy layer developing below the top layer which was a beautiful clear amber brown.

I took a gravity reading and have never seen my hydrometer bob so high - it was about 1067! Then I tried to syphon it off the cold break layer into a separate fermentation vessel (actually a large tupperware container) but I soon gave this up as a bad job after the syphon immediately clogged with hop leaves. In the end, I strained it through my grain bag into a 1 litre jug and from there into the fermentation vessel, and measured just shy of 4 litres. This meant I lost over half to evaporation during the course of the boil, a staggering amount I thought!

Obviously at this point I was well down on volume but sky-high on gravity, so I watered it down with 1.5 litres of water to give an overall volume of about 5.5 litres (including the majority of the cold break material). I sprinkled on my yeast and tucked it up in my brewfridge @ 19C.

24 hours later and fermentation is well underway. My intention is to allow it to die down and then tip/syphon into a demijohn safely under airlock until 3 weeks has elapsed.

I am feeling fairly positive about this first experience. Yes, it was a fairly drawn out process and one which will ultimately yield only about 8 bottles of beer, but still a hugely enjoyable lesson to have learnt. I bought 3kg of the Pale malt so am planning my next two brews, using some different hops and possibly some other grains in small quantities, to experiment with different styles and flavours. As you can imagine I am building up to a more sensible volume and see this as a good opportunity to explore a few recipes.

I would be interested to hear if anyone thinks I made any major howlers or has any suggestions for the next couple of batches. I am predominantly a traditional bitter drinker with a leaning towards the lighter, hoppier end of spectrum.

Thanks for reading!
 
I will be getting into BIAB very soon too and also intend to start off with a 1 gallon batch. I notice you say you topped up with 1.5 litre to make 5.5 litre overall volume. Isn't 1 gallon 4.5 litre? Am I missing something here.

I only ask because your walk through is a very good guide to doing a 1 gallon batch. One that I intend to use (along with other stuff i've found on the web) to help me when I come to do my first BIAB
 
Well done :thumb: All you need now is a big stockpot, like 32l, and you could do a full 5 gallons with a little fiddling. You CAN boil lid on. Maris Otter doesn't dive you an issue with DMS precursors so lid on is not a problem. I also use a second sheet of voile for a hop filter, strapping it over my FV and putting the wort in hot to help sterilise the voile. I've never had a problem with infection.
A boiler won't cost a fortune, so I've read on the forum, so that is another possible route. If your mash tun (stockpot) is too big for the oven you can insulate with a sleeping bag, duvet, blankets etc. I'm sure you can guess, I like to brew when SWMBO is out :cheers:
 
Well done :thumb:

In both my two all grain brews so far (not BIAB) I have siphoned off the cooled wort too. Using a siphon cup on the end of a siphon cane, and putting it in hop sock helped a little, to avoid blockages, but still not ideal. I posted about it here the other day and got some helpful responses which may be of interest to you too.

Your hops would have soaked up a little of the wort too, by the way, not just the boil (though mainly). All part of next time's calcs.

As for avoiding malty smells on duvets, I put a bin bag over my sealed mash tun before they go on, and our marriage has survived so far. ;)
 
Looks good!

I got a 50L stockpot from burgland (spelling?) for my birthday to do BIAB and give me plenty of head space.
Then got a mash tun as well! :thumb:

Good luck with the brew.

R
 
Hmmm... interesting... and great timing.

I have some little 1oz bags of hops that my parents brought back from Portland and I'm just about to put an order in to Rob for three big brews.

If instead of getting the malts milled as recipes I just get a 25kg sack of MO milled and all the other grains rounded up to the kilo then I'll have a good selection of stuff to do some of these little BIABs to experiment with the hops...

...and new styles too. Yeasts are going to be tricky though... :hmm:
 
Yeast is the main issue with small batches as it usually comes packaged for 19L or 23L. I currently use dried yeast only, 1/3 to 1/2 packet. I'm trying to get set up to slant or freeze liquid yeast, then I will have more choice - liquid yeast is too expensive to waste!

Dennis
 
Thanks for the feedback and encouragement. Just to answer a few questions:

Yes, I watered down to 5.5 litres as this brought my O.G. to 1.049 which is what I wanted. It is a bit more than a gallon (which is 4.54 litres) but when I designed my recipe (using Brewtoad - I can't paste the URL but if you search for Winterbourne Ales Best Bitter you can see the recipe) I deliberately set the batch size to 5.5 litres allowing for the trub at the bottom, aiming for somewhere between 4.5 and 5 litres of actual beer at the end. Had I left it at 1067 and a 4 litre size my ABV was projected to be 7.35% which would be a touch strong for a lightweight like me!

The good news is that my efficiency exactly matched what went into Brewtoad, it's just the evaporation rate was way off! But now I know I can cover the boil, I will hopefully not need to water down next time.

My plan is to get a 40 litre Buffalo boiler and BIAB in that (at least to start) before I think about a separate mash tun. The main benefit, as I see it, of the Buffalo over a stock pot with an element, is that in the Buffalo the element is completely concealed making cleaning a cinch. Also, without the element in the way, it is surely going to make fitting a hop filter that bit easier. Happy to hear alternative advice on this though.

I will make a PID controller for the temperature meaning I won't need to wrap up the boiler during the mash, so no malty bedsheets!

For the yeast I simply tipped in about 1/3 of a 11g sachet and then carefully sealed it back up again with a hot iron, so hopefully the rest won't go to waste. Yes, it was cheap yeast - I may yet experiment with liquid yeast in the future (breeding and freezing) but for now I'm keeping things simple.

Brew is still looking good and fermenting happily!
 
dennisdk2000 said:
Yeast is the main issue with small batches as it usually comes packaged for 19L or 23L. I currently use dried yeast only, 1/3 to 1/2 packet. I'm trying to get set up to slant or freeze liquid yeast, then I will have more choice - liquid yeast is too expensive to waste!

Dennis

I'm thinking that I might plan for a week of brewing into the new year.

Between now and then I could culture up some interesting yeasts, either from existing beers (I've got WLP004 in one for example and it's lovely) or bottles (if I fancy a Belgian something perhaps) and fridge them.

Luke, what were the times like for your brew? How long to hit strike temp? How long to the boil etc?

I'm wondering if I could fit in one of these in an evening... I could certainly split it between two - mash and a cursory ten minute sterilisation boil one evening and the boil proper the following evening. :hmm:
 
The schedule was as follows:
7:05pm: Water put on to heat in pan. I also used 2 * 1.7 litre kettles to reach strike temperature quickly, so...
7:20pm: Strike temperature (72C reached) and grain doughed in.
7:25pm: Achieved temperature of 66C and pot goes in oven.
~ Children then put to bed ~
8:55pm: Pot back on hob and heated to 80C. I didn't leave it at this temperature for any length of time (possibly I should have) and instead hoisted out the bag and switched hob up to full. Put lid on at this point.
9:15pm: Boil reached, lid off and in with the first lot of hops.
10:15pm: All hops etc added and boil finished. Straight into the sink with the pot, cooling commences.
10:40pm (Approx): Finishing faffing about cooling and watering down wort to 5.5 litres and ABV of 1048. Yeast in.
11:00pm: All clearing up done, kitchen tidy, beer tucked up in brew fridge and me tucked up in bed!

If you have time, my suggestion would be to squeeze it into a single evening - as you can see it takes about 4 hours, but 90 mins of that you're free to do what you want.

It was nice to be able to get all cleared up and have the job finished by the end of the evening.

Luke
 
Your times are very good. I can brew 23l in 5 and a half hours but I'm heating on a domestic stove so getting a rolling boil after I've drained the bag takes over an hour. That's the only problem with a 1 gallon batch, the time needed per litre of beer is longer. I once got a 5 litre container of water for about £1.20. It took about 15 minutes to make 4 litres of ginger beer, which I fermented in the container. It was very nice! I'd read about people doing the same with beer. No need for a campden tab or anything. :hmm:
 
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