First real BIAB down. It was a 5kg grain bill, a bit smaller than my last two pot attempt, this time with my new 45L SS pot, 2400W over the side element and a gas stove as a booster to speed things up. I have to say, the OTS element works wonders for this size pot.
First things first, the pot is a lot bigger, so I now see why people get hoses going from their hot water taps, because to fill this I had to put it in my bath, and it's a heavy brute to get back to the kitchen, and onto the stove. It works well on the stove tough, sitting nicely over the wok burner, which together with the OTE element got 34L to strike temp quite quick. No problems with the grains and bag, wrapped in a sleeping back, dropped about 2C over 90 minutes for the mash. The grain bag is a pain to hold over the higher 45L pot, so I didn't do that for too long, holding it over my 19L pot on the ground is a lot easier. I imagined I'd be hanging from the door knob, but didn't get around to doing that, so drained for about 5 minutes over the 19L pot and called it quits on getting any more. Boil was about 20 minutes from 66C with gas and element, and the element alone did a very nice rolling boil after that, I was very happy to see this. I decided to cut the boil from 90 minutes to 75, because there was no early hops in this beer. I'm far from having a great chilling process, and didn't start this time either. It was actually fine at the start, using my new bigger chiller attached to a tap, got down to 35C in around 20 minutes, no dramas. I had a nice ice bath going in my 19L pot by then, so tried to get an aquarium pump to pump that water through, aiming at re-circulating. It didn't pump through, it's too weak I assume. It worked fine on my small chiller, but this one is 3x the size, so not too surprising. I moved the big pot to the ground and left the ice bath on the bench, with limited success, it only caused a trickle, and this really didn't effect the temperature quickly. After about 20 minutes of this, I finally found a way to get more throughput by tilting the pump more, but this just isn't up to the job, it took roughly 50 minutes to get down to 22C in total. When I pitched, I also didn't hold back any trub for some reason. I mean it was on purpose, because I've heard others put the trub in, but what I didn't expect was the final 26L in the fermenter. But I guess because I put the trub in, and also cut the boil shorter than expected, this is why I had too much. OG was 1.045, aiming at 1.048, not too upset at this.
So I guess while I still have work left to do to accurately know how my system works, I've definitely gotten rid of the need for a sparge with my new equipment, so the process of making excellent beer is at least one step closer to being easy.
I pitched this onto the previous batch's yeast cake, in fact I bottled my previous batch while doing this brew, so it was a pretty full on night. Anyway, by the morning, it was very active, so it's had a solid start.
Post #2 made 12 years ago
I usually don't read the electric thread titles sb as I'm not clued up on electric BIAB but I was really pleased to see that you have got your, "first real BIAB down."
Glad the electric stuff worked out (whatever that is
) and here's a few very fast thoughts...
1. Plan your bag drain to make it as easy as possible. Think through solving this problem sooner rather than later. It's amazing the annoying crap we put up with. We'll struggle with a bag for five minutes instead of stopping for five minutes and thinking, "How can I avoid that 5 minute struggle?"
2. Careful on pouring a heap of trub into the fermentor. What I'm seeing on this site is a known fact (cloudy wort going into the boil is fine) being combined with another fact (all-grain brews don't need yeast nutrients and as the 'goodness' in the all-grain wort feeds the yeast) then, with a little anecdotal evidence, gets personified into, cloudy wort is okay in the fermentor.
We actually don't know much at all about that. Some professional brewers I know would die reading that advice, especially on certain beer styles. I don't know what the answer is here but I don't want you to thin automatically that there is no problem at all in pouring all your trub into the fermentor. I certainly never do it.
3. Chilling is a PITA when your tap water temperature is 28 C / 82 F as mine is a lot of the time. I just chill to whatever I can get to on about 25 minutes. Slow your flow rate down after about 5 minutes as it will just waste water not speed the chilling down.
[EDIT: I had a fair bit of other stiff written here but just list it sorry. Someone really should start a new thread on, "How do you chill?" In that thread, they should state what equipment they have. Most brewers start with none.]
The other thing I lost here related to your comment on, "...I guess I still have work left to do to accurately know how my system works..."
No you don't.
If commercial breweries and microbreweries have to adjust and blend every single batch they do, how can we home brewers possibly expect to make consistent beers fromn the pisy little batch sizes we do? Producing a consistent beer is just another one of these myths that get spread on every home brewing forum, every day of the week. You won't read that here though.
These guys can control things like evaporation and they have grain specs and accurate hop specs but still they have to manipulate every batch.
So, relax sb and just look for great recipes. Forget the making of sweet liquor and boil. You know what to do there. Can you really improve anything?
Instead, be like a pro brewer. Be comfortable with the variations and learn what grains and hops you like and how to massage them. But hold on, you actually can't do that. Here's the go...
1. Pro-Brewers have the advantage that they are brewing the same beer over and over again every day of the week. This means they learn that one beer and know how to adjust it easily.
2. The home brewer, from the education given elsewhere on other sites and through commercial software, is lead into a world of make-believe where we can easily make a beer if we are given a recipe. And if it doesn't taste like you expected, there'll be a thousand one or two sentence posts saying you probably didn't do this or you probably didn't do that. You get the blame when you probably did everything right!!! No one will tell you that it is actually impossible to clone a beer. (This site is about as close as you will get to showing you how to.)
So, main point is not to keep searching for accuracy from your system. It is not an important goal. If you are in the ball-park on volumes, gravities and temperatures, great. What more can you possibly do? Instead concentrate on finding great recipes that are as accurately conveyed as they can be.
Anyway, congrats again sb
,
PP
Glad the electric stuff worked out (whatever that is
) and here's a few very fast thoughts...1. Plan your bag drain to make it as easy as possible. Think through solving this problem sooner rather than later. It's amazing the annoying crap we put up with. We'll struggle with a bag for five minutes instead of stopping for five minutes and thinking, "How can I avoid that 5 minute struggle?"
2. Careful on pouring a heap of trub into the fermentor. What I'm seeing on this site is a known fact (cloudy wort going into the boil is fine) being combined with another fact (all-grain brews don't need yeast nutrients and as the 'goodness' in the all-grain wort feeds the yeast) then, with a little anecdotal evidence, gets personified into, cloudy wort is okay in the fermentor.
We actually don't know much at all about that. Some professional brewers I know would die reading that advice, especially on certain beer styles. I don't know what the answer is here but I don't want you to thin automatically that there is no problem at all in pouring all your trub into the fermentor. I certainly never do it.
3. Chilling is a PITA when your tap water temperature is 28 C / 82 F as mine is a lot of the time. I just chill to whatever I can get to on about 25 minutes. Slow your flow rate down after about 5 minutes as it will just waste water not speed the chilling down.
[EDIT: I had a fair bit of other stiff written here but just list it sorry. Someone really should start a new thread on, "How do you chill?" In that thread, they should state what equipment they have. Most brewers start with none.]
The other thing I lost here related to your comment on, "...I guess I still have work left to do to accurately know how my system works..."
No you don't.
If commercial breweries and microbreweries have to adjust and blend every single batch they do, how can we home brewers possibly expect to make consistent beers fromn the pisy little batch sizes we do? Producing a consistent beer is just another one of these myths that get spread on every home brewing forum, every day of the week. You won't read that here though.
These guys can control things like evaporation and they have grain specs and accurate hop specs but still they have to manipulate every batch.
So, relax sb and just look for great recipes. Forget the making of sweet liquor and boil. You know what to do there. Can you really improve anything?
Instead, be like a pro brewer. Be comfortable with the variations and learn what grains and hops you like and how to massage them. But hold on, you actually can't do that. Here's the go...
1. Pro-Brewers have the advantage that they are brewing the same beer over and over again every day of the week. This means they learn that one beer and know how to adjust it easily.
2. The home brewer, from the education given elsewhere on other sites and through commercial software, is lead into a world of make-believe where we can easily make a beer if we are given a recipe. And if it doesn't taste like you expected, there'll be a thousand one or two sentence posts saying you probably didn't do this or you probably didn't do that. You get the blame when you probably did everything right!!! No one will tell you that it is actually impossible to clone a beer. (This site is about as close as you will get to showing you how to.)
So, main point is not to keep searching for accuracy from your system. It is not an important goal. If you are in the ball-park on volumes, gravities and temperatures, great. What more can you possibly do? Instead concentrate on finding great recipes that are as accurately conveyed as they can be.
Anyway, congrats again sb
, PP
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Post #3 made 12 years ago
I guess when I said work on accuracy, I meant like knowing how much water I'll lose with my element and my pot, with my tap water, in my brew area, as it would differ to other setups by quite a bit I'm sure. I had more water than I thought I'd have last time, so I planned to use just a little bit less this time, and not pour the trub in.
And so I had a 2nd go at it this week. Looking at your 3 points, I improved on each of these points. I realised the bag is easier to hold over a pot on the ground rather than up high over the pot on the bench, so had that sorted. I also tied it to a bungee cord over the 19L pot, worked well, easy to do to get a little more wort.
This time the chiller was finally a win. Tap water is often 28C here too, but might have been a touch cooler, as we've had a milder week. I got it down to well under 30C in 20 minutes, then moved onto idea #2 for final chilling. I had tried putting a small aquarium pump in my 19L pot filled with ice water last week, but it wasn't effective with my bigger chiller. This time, I filled a Coopers kit fermenter with ice water as the boil was finishing, and attached the tap to the chiller, fermenter on bench, pot and runoff pot on ground. It worked so well. Got a nice flow of really cold water through the chiller, and got right down to 17C in about 5 minutes, still plenty of water in the fermenter when I finished. So took around 25 minutes total, and got it right down to 17C.
Finally, I didn't put the trub in this time. I'd started with a little less water, held back the trub, and got about 22L, so pleased with that. It measured 1.046, supposed to be 1.050, I'm fine with that for now. If it consistently comes out low, I'll probably just order a bit more grain in the future.
One other thing I was really pleased with, had everything cleaned before midnight (started after 7pm), and took 5 minutes this morning to pack everything away, so the house has no signs that I did a brew last night, where as it usually has pots and spoons and elements etc lying around everywhere draining/soaking for 2-3 days after a brew. Nice to know I don't have any more work to do between now and bottling next week.
Thanks for your help, it all seems to be coming along very nicely now.
And so I had a 2nd go at it this week. Looking at your 3 points, I improved on each of these points. I realised the bag is easier to hold over a pot on the ground rather than up high over the pot on the bench, so had that sorted. I also tied it to a bungee cord over the 19L pot, worked well, easy to do to get a little more wort.
This time the chiller was finally a win. Tap water is often 28C here too, but might have been a touch cooler, as we've had a milder week. I got it down to well under 30C in 20 minutes, then moved onto idea #2 for final chilling. I had tried putting a small aquarium pump in my 19L pot filled with ice water last week, but it wasn't effective with my bigger chiller. This time, I filled a Coopers kit fermenter with ice water as the boil was finishing, and attached the tap to the chiller, fermenter on bench, pot and runoff pot on ground. It worked so well. Got a nice flow of really cold water through the chiller, and got right down to 17C in about 5 minutes, still plenty of water in the fermenter when I finished. So took around 25 minutes total, and got it right down to 17C.
Finally, I didn't put the trub in this time. I'd started with a little less water, held back the trub, and got about 22L, so pleased with that. It measured 1.046, supposed to be 1.050, I'm fine with that for now. If it consistently comes out low, I'll probably just order a bit more grain in the future.
One other thing I was really pleased with, had everything cleaned before midnight (started after 7pm), and took 5 minutes this morning to pack everything away, so the house has no signs that I did a brew last night, where as it usually has pots and spoons and elements etc lying around everywhere draining/soaking for 2-3 days after a brew. Nice to know I don't have any more work to do between now and bottling next week.
Thanks for your help, it all seems to be coming along very nicely now.
