Hi All, I have completed my first AG, first BIAB, first time away from a kit brew day

I have Graham Wheelers book and I am having a go at the Fullers London Pride recipe.

After some consideration i am doing 1 (imperial) gallon batch though in a 12 litre stockpot as it takes me ages to get through a 25L brew so with 1/5th the amount I should get to have more brew days and get to experiment more this way - i have a 50L kettle but for the meantime i think tiny 1 gallon batches will be a great way for me to learn faster with lots of styles and lots of brew days.

Anyhow, so my first AG/BIAB brew day, I believe, was a success - it took me way longer than I'd expected but some of that was frantically finding out things I had forgotten about - I am so glad I took the time to fill out the BIABacus at the last minute before I started because there was so many things I would have overlooked otherwise.

I get the feeling I could squeeze in a brew mid-week after work as 5 litres of wort boiled quickly and cooled quickly too.

Here is my brew day in pictures

Here are all the ingredients, all ready to go.


Heating up to strike temp of 66.4C (according to BIABacus)


Grains slowly added whilst stirring


Then plonked the pot in the oven


I chucked a thermometer on the top - it's not the same temperature as the mash but I figured it'd give me a visual on a relative temperature drop.


Mash completed, I drained of the rest of the mash liquor from the bag


Boiled with the first hops


Adding the late hops


Just Chilling - to under 27C


Poured through the sieve into a fermenter bucket


and then back into the pot - a few times to aerate


Siphoned the lot off into my demijohn - Perhaps siphoned off a little too much since it's quite warm so I expect the fermentation might be a bit violent


Siphoned a bit into my hydrometer too for a reading - It's under what I was aiming for (1.034 instead of 1.040 - hey ho)


Pitched the yeast and here we have it, my first ever AG brew day, first ever BIAB brew day.


Thanks,
Matt

Cheers

Yeah, I think my measurements were a little off at the start with a little too much water

Then I left the lid on for half the boil as for some reason I worried about the evaporation rate being too high but realised halfway through through I should really leave it off as this also helps burn off DMS and I figured that's that the BIABacus has calculated for.

I guess both these are contributing factors to my lower gravity - I did adjust for the temperature when using the hydrometer this time however.

All in all, I had a fun day, and I'm glad I have such a small batch of beer as right now I'm eager for my next brew day which will come around a lot quicker with such a small batch

I have a 50 litre kettle, which I haven't used yet but I think after a small brew I'm a lot more confident and plan to do a big batch or two for my next BBQ.