JulieRush wrote:bit of an epic bump and I'm a noob so please be gentle.
Looking at doing my first BIAB this weekend and am reading up on it as much as I can. I too got diverted from the thread on lifting the bag to this one!
My understanding is that the mashout helps you to get the best out of the grains. Warming it up makes the sweet liquid thinner and you get more of the sugars out of the grains which in turn means you end up with a higher OG and more colour in the resultant wort.
That would mean the mashout increases my efficiency? I get more sugar out of my grain, so the benefit of the mashout would therefore be an increase of efficiency and a decrease (slight, I guess) in the grain bill required?
Technically no a mashout doesn't increase your mash efficiency... the mashout increases efficiency only by allowing the sugars to "slip away from the grain", so to speak. The saccharification rest has already liberated the starches and converted them to fermentable wort. The mashout does 2 things;
1. it denatures the enzymes at work in the mash, and
2. allows you to harvest those fermentables a tad easier. Effectively making your lautering more efficient, thus giving you a higher efficiency number into the kettle.
JulieRush wrote:meaning too that it's easier to lift the bag by hand and costs a little less per brew to boot?
the cons of doing the mashout would therefore be that the grain bill is higher and it takes longer.
I think?
The great thing about adding a mashout step to BIAB is that it doesn't take longer. It should take you the same amount of time as if you weren't doing a mashout. How you say? Well... in traditional systems a mashout is to denature enzymes and to assist in lautering (as above). The grain bed is raised to mashout temps, by infusion, direct heat decoction... whatever. With the grain bed being stirred to even out temps. The rest period at mashout is simply to allow the grain bed to settle again so that clear wort may be drawn out of the mash tun.
Now, with BIAB, lautering is as simple as pulling the bag out. You don't need to wait for the bed to settle. Mashing out with a BIAB bag can be done like this (assuming single vessel direct heat);
- adding heat to the mash tun while stirring the grain to get even temps,
- when the entire grain bed is at mashout temp (76C), pull the bag out,
- continue to apply heat to get to boil... no need to rest at mashout, cause you've denatured the enzymes and made the sugars "slippery" all on the way to the boil.
Takes same amount of time as if you'd pulled the bag at the end of sach rest and applied heat to get to boil.
Hope this helps... good luck with your first BIAB.
So from this the bigger the brew the bigger saving. However I think that (please correct me if wrong) as your brews get bigger your efficiency gets worse so this would cancel each other out.
