Ian, your plan sounds perfectly sensible. Hope the brew day goes / is going well. This recent thread on yeast rehydration was ineteresting too.

Homemade wrote:I'm not getting the "yellow" BIABacus comment

The main backgrounbd of the usual BIABacus appears as a very light green but yours has come through as a very pale yellow as follows...

Ok so we brewed yesterday and I am pleased to say it went quite smoothly.

I rang the supplier of the Braumeister and they said a full volume mash was fine to do and the guy I spoke to has a 20L version and that's what he does. So we went full volume and didnt sparge, just left the malt pipe to drain into a pot and added back those runnings. I think we collected about 2L.

We made a mistake putting the grain in, essentially we left the pumps running so we ended up with a lot of grain outside the malt pipe, we ended up with maybe 2kg of grain as trub, this was present during the boil as we didnt realise just how much was there until we drained into the fermentors. Not sure if this will affect anything?

The plate chiller worked a charm getting the wort down to 20c very quickly, basically I gravity fed the wort through it as fast as we could and ended up with 2 x fermentors @ 20c which I was happy with but it took my fidge until midnight (7hrs) to get it down to 11.5c which is what I pitched at. I didnt rehydrate the yeast because I didnt want it sitting around for too long while I waited for it to cool and I couldnt be bothered at 11.30pm.

After MS comments I decided to get two more packs of yeast so we added two packs (23g total) per fermentor and I decided it was a perfect time to try two yeasts so we used Saflager 34/70 in one and S23 in the other.

I have attached the file, I filled in the numbers in BIABacus as best we could, but we forgot to measure the mash volume so I have entered what was predicted and we didnt measure the VFO so I have estimated what this was.

Some of our numbers we off, we didnt hit GIB or GAW not sure why but I think the efficiencies are still reasonable?

I didnt actually weight the grain, I am sure it was right but.....

We had a couple of other minor issues/learnings, the Braumeister stops the clock if the temp falls too low, which we didnt realise. we were outside and it got windy and wet at one point (unit was under cover) so it was hard to maintain the rolling boil, when the temp drops the clock stopped until it came up again so our boil was longer on a manual assessment it was more like 90mins instead of the planned 60mins.

One question re: the BIABacus, in section K the TWN is less than the SWN, is this right?

Funny about the yellow colour it is green on my PC. I am using openoffice maybe that has something to do with it when it is saved?

Thanks again for assistance on this one. Looking foward to the end result

Ian

Well done homemade

TWN & SWN are the same mass of water, just at different temps. So hot water displaces more volume (useful if you only meaasure one of them).

Righto MS, I didn't realize that, I added 65L cool water so effectively I prob added 2L extra which I am guessing would affect efficiency but maybe not as much as we were down?

PP I can't access the link you attached on yeast hydration in your last post, it comes up saying I don't have permission to view it.

It has been 18hrs since pitching and no air lock activity, I usually get activity in the airlock and I can't see much happening on surface when I shine a torch on it, should I be concerned or is this due to the lower temp?

Congratulations Ian ,

Have fixed the link in that last post so it should be working now. Thanks for the heads up .

Sounds like a fun first brew day . The 2 kg of grain in the boil is only likely to be a problem if your water was high in pH. Even then, the quantity of grain isn't that huge so I wouldn't be worried about it. I also wouldn't be worried about analysing your numbers on this brew as it is only one brew. With a couple more, we will see if any patterns start to develop. (In the BIABacus, I would leave any measurements you don't take blank. That way, in the future, you'll know that any measurements recorded were real ones.)

It could be worth sending a PM to lylo as he has a Braumeister. Ask him if he has a thread going on it and whether he had any boil problems. Maybe also ask the manufacturer why the machine isn't boiling that amount of wort? Maybe it was just because that grain was stuck in the boil? It would be nice to see that problem resolved before your next brew though as you really want a good rolling boil.

Congrats again Ian and I hope you had fun ,
PP

Lylo started his Braumeister thread here

Not sure how relevant though

Thks Mally I have actually read that thread before but thks all the same.

Thks for the tips PP much appreciated.

Thks for all advice and encouragement look forward to more brews.

Ian

Ian, I have never run into that clock stopping problem( probably because I brew inside)however I found that to keep a good vigourous boil going, I put a double layer of tin foil over 1/2 the kettle and push it down a bit in the center so that condensation drips back into the pot rather than down the sides of the BM. I also use the insulation jacket.
I am really liking the system and the flexiblilty it gives me. Have you found any other good BM sites?
I like these http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/57118 ... cks/page-1
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/speidel ... er-229225/BIABrewer.info is still my go to site for accurate and well presented info.
I think that the BM system is so similar to BIAB that most infor and ideas are very applicable to us.
Have fun with it and welcome to the best beer site going.
Lylo

Hi Lylo

Thks for the response

As this thread is for recipes I might answer your post in another thread. Maybe time to start something under equipment I am sure there are others that use this forum with a BM.

Ian

seanbond10

Biabacus attached. You will need to enter your hop AA% and some other bits. also note the volumes in section W which is water held back for a sparge and a top up during the boil. The trick is to add as much water to your kettle as soon as possible. So sparge and add the runnings then if you have space top up to almost full ( after 1st hops added) then keep it topped up until all the held back water is used.



Yeasty

Sorry Sean I should have explained it better in my last post.
Yes you are maxi-biabing. As you are restricted by pot size and your total mash volume in "K" would be over your pot limits for a VIF of 12L you need to hold water back to get within the limits of your pot. This is handled by entering your "adjustments" in section "W".
If you look at the Bluebird sheet it has 2L for a sparge and 3L added during the boil, this reduces your mash volume by 5L so that your mash will fit in your pot. You could forget the sparge and just add 2L before the boil and 3L during the boil if you want but it makes more sense to use some water to rinse your grains.

You can use boiling water straight from a kettle as long as you keep a record of the volumes at ambient temps going in to the kettle.

Have a play around with the volumes and see what happens

Yeasty

Hi Sean,

Lets concentrate on section "K"

Your total water needed is 19.62L, take off your 5L and you have 14.62L. Put this in your pot and heat this to mash temps and the volume will increase to 14.91L (SWN).

Add your grain bill and your "Mash volume" will be 16.41L which will give you a bit of space from the top of your pot.

After the mash and after pulling the bag you will have 13.98L adding your 2L sparge water will give you 15.98L VIK.

Top up with the remaining 3L as an when boil off allows and after your boil time you will have 14.56L EOBV (Hot)

Does this make sense ?

Yeasty

Just a quicky Sean.

As your pot is small and you are pushing the limits to maximise your VIF take care when pulling the bag as it will want to lift any wort trapped above it as you pull it out, "slowly" is the key. Also watch for boil overs when the wort starts to come to the boil. Keep a spray bottle of water close at hand and if it looks like getting away from you give it a spray and reduce the heat to keep it under control.

Yeasty

Hi again Al ,

Glad to see you found your way here. Getting you under way properly with this recipe is going to take a few posts. In this post, I have created a master file for Dr Smurto's Golden Ale (see end of post). The good news is that I have worked off a file that we created directly with Mark (Dr Smurto) for BIABrewer a few years ago. This means we can 'undistort' any distortions that have occurred since you came across your file.

...

There are actually very few distortions that have occurred which is pretty amazing. I'm going to change some things though for this master file...

1. I am changing the mash time to 90 minutes. 90 minutes should be the minimum for a BIAB brew. (Traditional brewers are mucking around with sparging after a 60 min mash. This extra mucking around means the grain is being exposed to 'soaking' for at least another 30 minutes. We need to emphasise this more.)

2. I have changed the boil time to 90 minutes. This is a safer and slightly more efficient boil time than 60 minutes.

3. I wasn't quite sure but I think the amarillo hops you have are 10.1%. You'll see I have put this 10.1 on the right hand side of Section D.

4. You were worried about your evaporation rate. The BIABacus auto-estimates it for you. Be aware though that evaporation rates are very inconsistent and change day to day depending on weather conditions, even indoors.

5. A few other small things I have changed that aren't worth a mention.

What You Need to Do...

A. You need to have a beer and just take a look at Sections A, B, C, D and K only. Ask any questions you have. You might have a few.

After we hear back from you on A, then....

B. We will look at Section W. We will be using that section to see if we can get rid of some of those red volume warnings you currently see.

C. And, we will consider if adjusting for no-chill is needed on this recipe.


PP

No problems Al . Here are some explanations or answers to your questions above...

Section C - Grains

5005 grams would be very high for a 15 litre brew but have a look at the right hand side of Section C, the section that says, "What you will use..." Under that you'll see some weights and they all add up to 3103 grams, pretty close to what you had in BrewMate. The right hand side weights are the ones you need to use. They have been scaled/adjusted to suit your equipment and desired Volume into Fermentor.

So, what's the left hand side for? The left hand side has two uses. If you are copying a recipe, you can type the weights in of the original recipe (like I did) and the BIABAcus will convert that to a percentage. You can see that there. For example, DSGA has 56.4% of pilsner malt. The other use of the left hand side is if you were desiging a recipe from scratch, you could choose to type in the percentage of grains you want to use in your recipe to give the desired blend.

Regardless of what you use the left hand side for, the right hand side is always the side you should look at when ordering or weighing out your grain.

Does that make more sense? If not, let me know.

Section D - Hops

Don't be worried that your hops are 10.1 instead of 8.5. This will happen to you all the time as every year/season, the same variety of hop will yield a different alpha acid percentage depending on weather conditions etc. 10.1% is fine and no problem at all. The BIABacus adjusts this for you...

Just like Section C has a right and left hand side, so does Section D. Once again, the left hand side relates to the original recipe whilst the right hand side relates to what you will be using. See how I typed in 10.1 on the right hand side? This tells the BIABacus that you don't have any 8.5% hops, you will be using 10.1% hops instead. The BIABacus works out that with 10.1% hops, you are going to need 37.6 grams all up for your brew.

Section E - Mash Temps etc

Mash temps are a bit harder to maintain in a smaller pot. There are a few ways around this. You might be able to put your pot in the oven to save mucking around with blankets. Or, you can do as you say. Or you can stir/check the temp and apply heat every 20 minutes. The latter never hurts, it's just a bit of labour. Even a big cardboard box over the whole lot when you are not applying heat would probably go a long way to avoiding temp loss .

Section E - Grain Temperature

n the second line of Section E, change that 20.0 C to 13.0 C. Now, go over to Section X. On the third line down, I want you to type in 0.4. So, that line will now read... "Change Strike Water Temp. Adjustment Factor to: 0.4".

This is another unique factor to the BIABacus which allows you to manipulate and fine tune your strike water temperature. Play around with these numbers and you will see the 'strike at' temperature change in Section E. 0.4 is a good starting point for small or thin-walled kettles. 0.2 is a good starting point for thick, heavy equipment.

Nutting out your mash procedure...

It's important to make sure the above is clear before we delve into the next stage so ask any questions you have. If/when the above is all clear, can you please have a read of the Sweet Liquor Shop series of posts...

Sweet Liquor Shop 1
Sweet Liquor Shop 2
Sweet Liquor Shop 3

Those three posts will hopefully help you understand how the decisions we make from now on with your recipe will affect the brew's quality, labour requirements and/or ingredient cost.

Let us know of any questions on any of the above and/or when you want to jump into the next stage.


PP

Good stuff Al . Glad the last post made some sense and sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner.

It's also great that the 'shop' posts made some sense and that you now have a second 19 L pot. I am assuming that this second kettle is exactly the same as the first? If so, the next question is can you fit both these 19 L kettles on your stove and bring them to the boil? If so, this actually opens up several more possibilities.

For example, if you make a second bag, you can actually just do a 'full volume shop' brew with the only difference being that you are using your kettle 'split in half' if that makes sense. To set the BIABacus up to do this, we would double the existing evaporation rate estimate of 3.03 L/hr to 6.06 L/Hr and set this in Section X. In section B, we just need to double the Kettle Height. The other alternative is to just leave it as is and just remember to double the relevant numbers/weights in your head. (Hope I haven't made that too confusing.)

The end result is that, with your two 19 L kettles, you can actually brew enough DSGA to get 19 L into a fermentor using no dilutions.

You actually don't even need a second bag to do the above. You could mash in your first kettle for say 20 minutes and then move the bag to your second kettle for the next 60 minutes. Boil the first kettle for 90 minutes with your bittering hops. Boil the second one for just 60 minutes and do your flavour and aroma hops in that one. But, this sort of mucking around is tending on the silly side

...

There are hundreds of variations but as soon as they vary from full volume, they all get tricky in some way. So, I think the first choice to make is, "Do you want to make a second bag and just do two simultaneous smaller batches to make a standard batch or would you only like to use one kettle and bag for the actual boil?"

...

I'm not sure whether to write more now as I might just make things more confusing. Probably one of the most important points to get for now is that the second pot you bought, can gain you a lot of volume if it is actually used as a second BIAB kettle. In other words, if you have a second burner and bag for it.

Imagine though if you don't... The second pot can only be used to gain the amount of liquor retained by the grain when the bag is pulled from the first kettle which is never that much unless you are doing a really high gravity brew.

To see what I mean here Al, in Section W, type 5 L into 'Water Used in a Sparge' and 5 L to 'Water Added During the Boil'. We have no serious red warnings appearing. Look at your total grain bill requirement (2950 g) and then move that 5 L from 'Water Used in a Sparge' to 'Water Added Before the Boil'. All that changes is you will now need 3299 grams of grain. So, is the mucking around with sparging using the second pot worth the savings of that approx 10% of grain?

...

In contrast to the above, as I mentioned above, if you use the second pot as a kettle, you can actually do no dilutions and get 19 L into a fermentor rather than the 15 L above that requires a lot of dilution. In fact, using the same dilution amounts as above would actually allow you to get about 30 L into a fermentor using the two 'mini' kettles.

To check this, you can also use your existing BIABacus file. In Section B, to check the no dilutions, type in 9.5 L for VIF (half of 19 L). For the dilutions, type in the 5 and 5 into Section W and then in Section B, type in 15 L (half of 30 L).

...

Sorry there is so much to take in above. I think I have actually wrecked this post by not posting it in stages. That's the problem with any full-volume variation (maxi-BIAB). The possibilities are really infinite.

The main point to get across though in this post was hopefully getting you to see that using your second pot as a sparging pot versus using it as an actual kettle really is a massive difference.


PP