[center]BIAB Micro Mash Heresy - a partial[/center]

So I've got this tin of Coopers Mexican Cerveza kit. A keg of Corona style beer over the holidays impresses the relatives and drop-ins and isn't a bad lawnmower beer, but I decided that rather than do an all grain I would pimp up the can.

In the kit world you would add a kilo of "Brew Enhancer" or something but I decided to do my own enhancer to add some authenticity to the brew with a cereal mash, as well as adding some Galena hops and using a lager yeast to raise its quality as well. So I'm going to use BIAB to do a micro mash to make my "enhancer"

Ingredients:
Tin o Coopers Cerveza
250g Maize in the form of 3-minute Polenta
500g High diastatic Pilsener crushed Malt (Barrett Burston in this case, sub your local variety - six row American would be brilliant )

500g Dextrose

S-189 yeast slurry from a previous brew
20g Galena hops, the hop of Corona

10 litre cube of water at near freezing temperature that I prepared the night before. Equipment:
Two thats right two 10 litre stockpots, one of them is for boiling and the other for mashing, so really the second one could easily be a plastic bucket, just I had two handy. Stove electric ring. I'm using my stand-alone ring in the brewery. Great bit of kit that frees me from having to walk to the kitchen and back again to do small boils and cereal mashes.

Bag.. a grain bag from Craftbrewer that is great for use as a hop bag or lining a smaller pot as a BIAB bag.

Method:
Throw away the kit instructions and yeast.
Sharpen pitchforks and prepare torches for ignition

In 3 litres of liquor boil the 250g of polenta to a gruel.

Pour this gruel into the other container and wait till it cools to about 75 degrees. Won't take long. In the meantime clean up the main stockpot for its next role, and fit bag.

In the second container, stir in the 500g grain malt into the polenta mix and keep stirring until it "collapses" due the activity of the alpha amylase in the malt. You are now doing an American style cereal mash.

Wrap immediately in a ski jacket or quilt and let it rest for 20 minutes, when conversion should be complete.
Meantime prepare another 6 litres of liquor at 80 degrees Celsius in the main stockpot ready to accept the cereal mash product.

Confer with villagers about exact time of lighting torches and gathering up pitchforks.

Pour the cereal mash (cooker mash) into the liquor in the main bag-lined stockpot and stir to achieve mashout temperature. Hoist and drain bag into the stockpot whilst heating the collected wort to a boil
Add Galena hops and boil for 30 minutes or until break happens, add some floccing stuff if you like, cover stockpot and let it cool for a while and settle down.

In the fermenter add the hot hopped wort, leaving as much break as possible on the bottom of the stockpot. Add the contents of the kit can and the dextrose, then add the 10 litres of chilled water and top up with tap water and pitch the S-189 lager yeast slurry. Ferment at about 15 degrees and then lager for a week or so before kegging.

Results:
Rather than using a commercial "brew enhancer" with the kit, we have made our own superior version. The result of the BIAB micro mash / cereal mash is a dextrin rich malty wort that will add body and flavour to the Cerveza. Far better than the maltodextrin (work of the devil) that is in the "enhancers" The dextrose will give fermentables for alcohol in addition to what is provided by the can, and the smallish dose of Galena will give a definite Corona hit. Should lift the kit to a new level, especially with the lager yeast.

I Will report.

OK so we are not using one vessel and we are not mashing inside the bag, and in a sense adding the extra liquor to the main pot at the end of the mash is like a batch sparge. However if you consider here what BIAB really is:

• 3v = removing the wort from the grain
  BIAB = removing the grain from the wort

This provides BIAB based methods with enormous flexibilities.

The villagers have left their pitchforks leaning against the barn. Good sign.

This may be of interest to mini-biabbers using extracts or kits, and it's handy for cranking out a quick keg filler using a bland kit so you don't get the "kit twang". Takes less than two hours

Seems like a tempting way to use up those last few kits I've got hanging about

Yes when I went full-scale BIAB I did something similar on a more massive scale, I did a full BIAB and no-chilled the wort into four 5L little jerry can cubes - which I still use for all sorts of useful things around the brewery. Then over the course of about three months I did a quick kit and wort brew with a bit of dex to strengthen them up and they made really good lagers, but the trick is to use a kit that is very bland to start off with, so you don't get the dreadful kit twang.
The little cubes (pic above, they are great for making 5l ice blocks etc)kept for weeks and weeks perfectly fresh.

Looks like a lawnmower, tastes like a lawnmower
No complaints really, this has turned out not unlike one of those ubiquitous dry lo carb concoctions but surprisingly doesn't have a kit twang, and there is some nice grain in the aftertaste. The bittering hops combined with good carbonation and icy coldness give a refreshing bite.
APA or Yorkshire bitter she ain't but I'll consider this one again as a quick quaffing lager.