Lessons from a first BIAB

Well I finally got my act together to attempt a BIAB, and since I hadn't worked out how to download the helpful files on this site (until just now :oops: ) I used the ancient art of flying by the seat of my pants - although I tried to think things through in advance... Here's a bit of what I learnt, as it may help others. I chose (like a lot of others) Dr Smurto's GA as I new it to be tried and tested.

1. I assembled most of my gear the night before - i.e.:

• a second hand Crown Urn wrapped in old carpet
• rigged up a hoist
• stitched up a bag - 1.5 m diameter circle of voile with clips stitched around the top
• Temperature controller - cheap $20 job - calibrated !!!

2. On brew day packed wife, son, and dogs into the car and sent them on their way Then calibrated the urn volume, filled it up with 27 L of water (yes I know!) and turned it on via the temp controller, aiming for 66 C. Then started assembing other bits and pieces.

3. When the urn hit 66 C I put in the bag, gave the water a good stir, turned it off, threw a few more towels over it and left it for half an hour monitoring the temperature. Why? because I hadnt used any of the equipment yet and I had no idea how stable the mash would be etc - turned out to be pretty good (lost .5 C)

4. Pushed the temperature up to 68 C poured in the grain, gave it a good stir, whacked on the lid, checked temperature - 66 C perfect! threw towels on. Easy!

5. Started to construct a chiller. Oh yeah about that... Was going to no-chill but at the last minute thought it'd be better to chill (in my infinite lack of experience ). So I madly started to dash around scrounging up bits of 1 inch copper pipe. Bent them with the aid of a blow torch and a sledge hammer (yeah I know!), chucked on some plastic fittings, and connected the whole thing up to the fire pump. The idea was to build a crude coil chiller (I saw a photo of one once) and pump water out of a tank, through the copper coil and back into the tank - no water loss

6. While the above was happening, I nipped back to the mash every 15 minutes, gave it a good stir, took SG readings, adjusted the temperature (as necessary). Stable temperature, gravity increasing, mash going like clockwork - yay...

7. After 60 mins, cranked up the heat, to 78 degrees for mashout, stirring every minute or two.

8. Got to mash out, clipped the bag onto the hoist, hoisted it up, and ... where the F*"& am I meant to tie this thing off? didn't think of that. Luckily I can think on my toes and realised that I was far heavier than the bag so simply stood on the end of the hoist cord! This worked perfectly while I did another gravity reading. Then I walked over to crank up the temperature controller and there was a big splash, funny that

9. Luckily no harm done, albeit my nice clean work area was now a little sticky. Hoisted the bag out and into a bucket, gave it a good squeeze, swore, put gloves on and tried again. Sparged with a bit of hot water, then took the grain out to the chooks.

10. Added the liquid from the bucked back to the urn, got it up to a boil, checked the gravity, didn't think to check the volume

11. The boil was relatively un-eventful except that the second and subsequent hop additions were a bit tricky as I only had 1 hop bag so had to keep fishing it out, opening it, adding more hops etc. They should put a HOT sign on those bags. The uneventful boil also gave me a chance to finish my chiller, and finish getting the yeast ready etc.

12. Boil finished, pulled the plug out, carried the hot urn over to the chiller (I know!), chucked it in and cranked it up. Beautiful!, except water spraying everywhere and some other highly technical stuff that is far to complicated :oops: to expain here...

13. ripped out the chiller, and put the urn on a concrete slab with the lid half on, coiled up the garden hose and tossed that in. MUST CHILL! Once again I Know - should have just returned to the boil then no-chilled.

14. finally got the bloody beer into the fermenter, realised I only had 15 L, so by the time I topped up it was cool enough to pitch yeast.

15. did a final gravity reading and not sure how, but it was spot on!

Checked the brew this morning and it was happly bubbling away, tasted good (no evil signs of infection, but time will tell).

So in hindsight the brew day went exactly to plan (where I followed the plan) with only a few minor ergonomic annoyances which I will correct for next time. The bit that went pear shaped is when I radically changed the plan and decided to increase the complexity and use another method (new to me) without proofing it first! If you read the post carefully you can probably see where I went wrong...

All in all, I had fun and will be adjusting my next brew to account for what I have learnt... Now to go and have a beer :D

cheers

Widdley

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UPDATE:
Had a taste last night...
... and while still very young the flavours are starting to settle down and there are no real signs of anything nasty in there. Which is quite amazing given my complete lack of attention to hygene (I even found a little garden soil in the bottom of the fermenter ).

Fermented at 22C rather than 18C - essentially because I don't have any regulation set up yet - still negotiating the acquisition of a secondhand fridge with the Leader of the Opposition

Gravity finished a little high - will re-check my temperature probe... Interestingly, when I tapped off a sample to do the gravity reading, the wife was able to smell the aroma from about 10 m away, and suddenly became very interested - must remember to purchase lock for the shed!

So... now I think I have my sh*t together I've decided to invest in some cool gadgets. I know you guys say to keep it simple and don't get sucked into buying toys, but I couldn't resist the bling value of this for a whopping $6: Start of a slippery slope I reckon, next I'll want an new bucket :D

Admittedly, I was originally going to get a paint stirrer but had a bad experience: I trundled down to the local supplier (where all the pro's shop) and asked for a 'food grade' paint stirrer, and suffice to say the dude behind the counter was less than understanding. I think next week I'll go back there and try to purchase an EBC colour chart

271TGS-3005_Get_Set_Potato_Masher.jpg

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Ok, here are some tasting notes. - annotated with more dumb things I did on my first batch

Day 7 - aroma slightly citrus and a bit earthy, initial flavour lightly sweet, followed by a bit of a sour finish that was short and moderately astringent.

Gravity stabilised on about day 5 and didn't drop further so I chucked into a secondary. Only left it there for a few days and got impatient and decided to crash chill - only recently read up on all this so did not know what I was doing at the time... :oops:

Chucked it into the keg on about day 8 from memory, before the yeast had settled out and straight into the keg fridge in a sudden flush of optimism

Day 14 - aroma slightly citrus but now a hint of caramel and no longer earthy. Flavour as above.

Went into the shed on about day 15 or 16 to discover the fermenter sitting uncleaned in the corner. The yeast had settled leaving some nice clear beer above. Had a taste of that and the flavour was better than what is described above [insert whack self in head icon]

Day 21 - aroma as above. Palate body is light to medium and the finish is still short but the astringency is almost gone. Initial flavour is still slightly sweet but pleasantly so and the finish flavour is now lightly bitter rather than sour.

I think its taking longer to settle down because I chilled it so quickly. Nevertheless, its amazing how much more complex the flavour development has been (relative to kits).

After the Day 21 taste I pulled it out of the fridge and let it sit at ambient temperature - about 13 deg C. Tasted it again last night (day 25)and its improved further, so I'm confident it will settle down ok eventually, it just may take a little longer.

I think this just goes to show that even with the number of mistakes I have made, I'll still end up with a drinkable brew

and to the organisers of this site, I know your've tried to make the BIAB process idiot proof, but that has just inspired me to become a better idiot

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@ Hashie,
The current batch is force carbonated as I am impatient and natural conditioning demands a level of self control I've got a couple of weeks off at the end of September so hopefully I can brew enough to actually allow a decent amount of conditioning. Well at least let the primary fermentation finish before drinking it

@ PP
In terms of describing beer taste etc, I was inspired by one of SacSouls posts to try and describe my beer a little more accurately than good or crap. So I did some searching on the interwebs and found this site http://www.ratebeer.com/Beer.asp, which (among other things) has a bunch of info on how to taste and rate beer, including developing your palate and a handy score sheet... So now I can describe my crappy beer using fancy words

As for the mash paddle - you were right about it being to short (But dont get cocky ). In a moment of sheer brilliance I decided to rip off the handle and braise some copper pipe onto it, so now its bitchin' :D . The wife thought it was quite innovative but wondered why I didn't 'butcher' our old potato masher and put the shiny new one in the kitchen. Some times her priorities are pretty whacko

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