Biabicus Attempt

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How you doing Bill? Good to see you back.

Your files's great and in mine, the date actually displays correctly. The formatting for that field may not be copying through in OpenOffice (or Mac). Maybe someone can work out how to fix it.

Here's a few comments for you...

1. There is no need for you to be sparging. It doesn't give you any benefit. In fact, it just creates work. Read this post here and also my next post in that same thread.

Also consider just mashing in your kettle. You can then have control over the temperature. Coolers (eskys) result in hot spots and they do lose heat.

2. You need to mash for 90 minutes. See here.

3. A 60 minute boil is okay but is not really best practice. Go for 90 minutes. A 60 minute boil can actually cause problems in some waters, grains and or styles. See here.

You've done a really nice job on your file .

I realise you have done it in hindsight. Just make sure on your next brew, you fill out one of the first two lines of Section D otherwise your hop bill won't scale on the right.

Not that we can tell much form one brew but your numbers look fine. Bit more kettle trub than you wanted but on that hoppy bill, it is no wonder.

Oh, and OG goes on the left. Doesn't really matter though.

Good on you,
PP

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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Thanks PP... 90 min next time. Regarding both fields in Sect D. I only filled in one. Didn't read it, or understand it completely. I thought it was only if a change in IBU's was wanted. Next time I'll fill it in even if it's the same as my base recipe.

On this BIAB brew, I did NOT get anywhere near the gravity points I was expecting. Same recipe as I did previously.. non-BIAB.. where I hit all my numbers. I had to add 1.5 cups of DME to bring the gravity up to what I wanted. It could well be that had I mashed for 90 minutes I might have had more gravity points. However, with the small cooler I had, my temps dropped dramatically in the mash tun.. even after I preheated it with 165* water for about 20 minutes. As mentioned, I had to pull wort, reheat it a few times to get the mash to 154* Live/brew and learn. I'm definitely considering buying one of the induction table top 'burners' to control mash temps w/o having hotspots to burn bags and cause caramelization at the pot bottom. Or, simply mashing in my BK and putting it in the oven to keep the temp constant. Lot of things going thru my mind right now.. possibilities.

Finally, your last comment.. OG goes on the left. Doesn't really matter though. Is that in Section C??? Also, in Section C.. Original and Want.. in this case they are both the same. What does the Color Discrepancy of 7% mean???

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The difference between a 60 and 90 minute mash can make a large difference especially with some malts. YOur batch sizes are very small so this makes hitting goals a bit harder. Things are a bit harder to weigh, heat loss is greater etc.

Mashing in your kettle and putting it in the oven and giving it an occasional stir would be the way to go Bill.

In Section D,you have two options and you must use one or the other. If you are designing your own recipe, you would just type in the IBU's you want. If using an existing BIABacus recipe, you won't have to do anything as someone else will have already filled in one of the numbers. If you are copying an external recipe, it gets very tricky as rarely will you find a recipe that provides enough information to copy the hop bill correctly. In other words, the critical volume figure is missing (the volume at the end of the boil, once chilled) or how the IBU figure was determined not published clearly enough if at all. Read this thread.

And yep, I did mean Section C, The only time you would use that right hand OG field would be if you brewed a recipe and then thought the grain bill/gravity needed upping a bit. Ignore the 7% colour discrepancy. We've removed that field from later BIABaci as it is misleading.


PP

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From United States of America
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• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From United States of America
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It's a 5.2g(20L) SS Triclad heavy duty pot from Walmart with a glass lid. It's very nice. Has a grommet in the lid to allow for a thermometer while mashing if one likes. I'm close to being on the cusp of building a small RIMS device to recirculate the mash to keep the temp more constant.. but, that won't happen for a while.. if ever. I've also thought of going with an induction cooktop to keep the mash warmer. Didn't have any good success with my "fancy" Igloo ice chest as a MT despite preheating it with 170* water for 20 minutes. Argghh.

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