First BIAB Attempt

Tried my first BIAB last night. The recipe was a brown ale recipe that I tweaked to bring into the robust porter range:

8.65lbs 2 Row base
1.3lbs CaraPils
1.25lbs Crystal 40L
0.6lbs Chocolate
0.5lbs Flaked Barley

1oz Norther Brewer 60min
1oz Cascade 30min
0.5oz Cascade 10min
0.5oz Cascade 0min

I ended up going with Thames Valley yeast... not really sure how that will turn out but I have high hopes

This being my first all grain run, I ran into the temperature control problems that it sounds like alot of newbies run into. I brought the 7.2 gal water up to ~156 °F and after grain addition it dropped to ~149-150 (seems around 0.5 °F per lbs of grain; I'll get it right in future brews). I applied some heat to bring it back up, but due to the thermal capacity of everything in there I overshot (around 30-45 mins in I hit 160 °F). My pot was near capacity at that point, so I couldn't really add any frozen water bottles to help cool it, just had to take what I would get. After the requisite 90 minutes, I brought it up to mash out and dripped the grains for around 15 minutes. I had somewhere near 6 galons go into the boil.

Post boil I ended up with just under 5 galons (~4.9), so my water calculations seemed just about right. OG ended up 1.055, a little under the predicted 1.06 but not horrible. According to my brewpal iphone app, my estimated efficiency at this point is ~65%, which didn't really suprise me due to all my temperature control issues and the fact that I didn't have my grains double milled.

The flavor of the wort seemed pretty decent. Good bittering from the Northerns, excellent aroma from the cascades, and a mildly sweet and grainy taste. I'm curious how well the flavors will start to blend after the traditional English Bitter yeast finishes with it.

Cheers, and I'll update as I sample in the coming weeks

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Sorry, tildes (~) are my geeky science side coming out and saying "Approximate value." Can't very well give a hard value when it is unknown, now can I

I gave the efficency value I did based on the actual OG and the calculated FG. I'll know the real efficency post-fermentation.

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Update 7/13/2010 - I'm pretty sure my beer is close to ruined. My AC broke and we are having a ridiculous heat wave right now (in Colorado terms) and my town home has been sitting between 85 - 95 F. I've kept a fan blowing directly on my fermenter, but to no avail. Really wish I had a basement right now I sampled a bit today and am already starting to get some very strong yeast and apple-like flavors. I'm going to attempt to make it somewhat drinkable by dry-hopping the crap out of it this weekend when I transfer to the secondary. Oh well, at least I have a quite tasty orange blossom honey and clove cream ale (with a few cinnamon undertones) just about done carbonating.

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Got my AC fixed last night, so hopefully it will survive.

And I just realized that you have a CFSM avatar as well Hashie. Brings a joyful tear to my eye

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PistolPatch wrote:Don't worry SacSoul, you have forgotten the major ingredient of your first AG. No matter what it tastes like, there is always a little pleasure there .

Thanks for the tilde (~) explanation. Haven't seen that for a while and had forgotten it!

I have never heard of Thames Valley yeast but let's hope it is a hardy bugger . If it tastes like crap, bottle some and enter it in a comp under Fruit beer. My mate, churchy, did that and got a gold. We never got to taste it as he threw the rest out - lol.

Controlling fermentation temperature is a PITA. I remember struggling with this. Have a read here

Cheers and fingers crossed,
PP

Thanks PP. I didn't know they had a catagory for entering mistakes Fermentation temperature wouldn't have been an issue if my AC wouldn't have broke. I attempted to wrap some reusable ice blocks around it and cover everything with a towel, but that didn't really work (at least according to taste; I didn't take an actual temperature reading beyond what my themostat said). At least the AC is back on now, so I can once again sleep. And it is true, I almost enjoy brewing and building brewing equipment more than I do drinking the final outcome (emphasis on almost ).

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Update 7/15/10 - The beer has an overpowering acetaldehyde taste to it, though the finish is not bad at all. As such, I'm still going to attempt to save it... or at the very least make it drinkable. So input is welcome

My idea is to use oak in the secondary for two weeks. I've decided not to dryhop it as I like the hoppiness of the finish that it currently has. I will then try bottleing by using maple syrup as the priming sugar. I'm hoping that the sweet/smoky/woody flavors I can get will help balance out the green-apple sweetness of the acetaldehyde.

I'm expecting to need at least a month of bottle aging to mellow the flavors, but it will be worth it if I can save it yet.

Thanks for any input given, and cheers! Can't wait to free up my fermenter and some TAD bottles to give BIAB another go!

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Update: 7/17/10

The heat slowed down the yeast which was why it had such a strong acetaldehyde taste, but it is slowly disappearing now that I change ice packs surrounding it every 12 hours. It has hit FG, but I think I'm going to give it a few more days before secondary to consume as much of the acetaldehyde as possible. However, now that the acetaldehyde is disappearing, a new problem has emerged. The high mash temperatures that I hit extracted some noticeable tannins. The hoppiness covers it a little, but it is definitely there. Hopefully between a couple weeks of secondary and a month of bottle aging it will blend a little better. I'm think I'll rack on Wednesday, 2-3 oz. heavy toast oak chips on Saturday (soaked in Jack), and daily taste tests to see when to pull the chips out. Then another week in secondary post-oak, followed by bottling with 1 1/4 cup pure maple syrup.

On the other front, my Cream Ale has finished carbonating. It is rather refreshing. Bubbly bite up front (from cloves - bit strong but not bad; next time I'll use them in secondary rather than infusion at wort cool-down) with a bright, smooth, warming finish (honey, alcohol, cinnamon). It has a wonderful orange honey aroma with a few floral hints from the hops. It is young, and could do with a few weeks of bottle aging, but it is more than drinkable and the lightness of it makes it good on a hot day. Plus, at 7.5% ABV, it makes a hot day that much more fun

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hashie wrote:I think we all need to relax a little and trust in his noodliness to make the beer right

+1

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Update: 7/21/2010

I racked to secondary last night as I have been sitting at the FG of 1.016 for 4 days now and the yeast has gone and done an amazing job of cleaning up many of the off flavors. Screw his noodlieness, yeast is my new god The acetaldehyde is gone (perhaps slightest of taste left, but smell is gone), and a better hoppy/grainy bitterness has come out stronger which covers much of the tannins. I could have drank a luke-warm glass without carbination last night and been happy.

Now comes the experimenting part. I added 2 oz. of medium-dark oak chips that have been soaking in Jack Daniel's for 5 days after racking. From what I've read, oak is a game of daily tastings (and who can complain about that) to make sure you don't over do it with the flavor.

Overall, my hopes have been renewed as I was pleasantly suprised while tasting before racking last night. I will also be using the Thames Valley strain of yeast in the future for darker brews as I've never seen a yeast ferment at 80 to 85 F for a week, but be able to clean up after the temp. was dropped into the correct range for 4 to 5 days.

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PistolPatch wrote:I am always amazed at the different skills we brewers have. I have no skill at describing flavours or the characteristics of beer. I also have no skills in recipe formulation.

SacSoul, after reading your last few posts here, I think you have a real skill in these areas. I can't believe you are able to explain your beers so well!

I suspect you are going to become a very skilled "beer judge" with lots to offer us all. I'll look forward to reading more of your posts and hopefully learning how to describe beer better. For me, if someone asked me to describe (paint a picture in words) of a beer, all I can draw is a stick figure .

Good on you and thanks SS,
PP

Wow, I am utterly amazed by the mature audience on this forum. People give compliments and helpful suggestions. A big applause and thank you goes out to everyone on this site, and the Admins especially (for not letting trolls in ).

Thanks for the compliment PP. I'm a total nerd in that I have read (in full) The Joy of Homebrewing once (currently on second read-through) and Brewing for Dummies twice, as well as numerous articles here and there online which have allowed me to expand my "beer vocabulary" (though who knows if I'm using descriptions correctly ).

While I am still fairly new to homebrewing myself (~1 year experience), I have been appreciating good beer since the early 2000s (roughly around the time I went to college and got a fake ID). I could never stand the run-of-the-mill crap that most people drank (yellow fizzy piss like Coors - sad story since unfiltered it actually tastes ok), so looked for things I liked. New Belgium's 1554 became my favorite for many years during undergrad, but that changed when I moved to Fort Collins, CO for graduate school. For those of you not from the States, Colorado is one of the leading states in terms of quantity of microbrews, and it was in Fort Collins that I was finally introduced to both homebrewing and a plethora of tasty microbrews. These two combined cemented my love for beer (especially a complex porter on a nitro tap ). It took about 3 years from seeing the homebrewing possibilities to me actually diving in myself, but most of that was from the 60-80 hour work weeks that graduate school entails. It is now tied with computer gaming as my favorite hobby... and if I had more money to tinker with set-ups and toys it would probably be my number one time consumer. Now, I only need to figure out how to start a brewery so I can quit my job

edit 7/22/2010 - I pulled the oak chips. They did their job quickly; just a hint of oak and smoke to compliment the bitter grain and hop taste. I can't wait to bottle this thing with the maple in a week or two. Should be a slightly sweet maple start with a oak, smoke middle and bitter grain/hop finish.

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