I had done a bunch of reading on BIAB and thought I was ready to go. Rather I had done reading on the process and had little to no exposure to recipe selection and tweaking. Yesterday I was bottling my last extract kit so I may as well mash and boil my first BIAB at the same time. Thirty minutes before I had time to go to the local home brew store I realized I still didn't have a recipe. I grabbed Papazian's Joy of Home Brewing book (third ed.) and cut the Good Life Pale Ale recipe in half to a 3 gallon version. While at the store I consolidated two malts (Munich and crystal) to just a one pound bag of crystal malt. Another big question I hit was how much water to use. In a few places I read about starting with as much as 1.5 times the desired final volume so having no better idea or experience I did that.

Here's what I did for a 3 gallon batch:
4.5 US-gallons tap water
1930 grams 2-Row malt
450 grams TF&S Crystal
24 g Fuggles pellets (60 min boil)
14 g Kent Goldings pellets (30 min boil)
~1 g Irish moss (7 min boil)
14 g Kent Goldings pellets (5 min boil)
Wyeast Special London ESB Ale yeast packet

Steeped / mashed for 100 minutes. Grain went in at 152 F with the electric burner just being turned off from high. After 20 minutes (80 minutes left on timer) lidded and wrapped in a large towel it was at 154 F. Still at 154 F when checked with 60 minutes remaining on timer - started the burner on high for 3 minutes and spiked up to 156 F. With the burner off I re-wrapped the towel and it coasted up to 158 F when I checked it at 20 minutes left on the timer. I took these with a candy maker's style red-alcohol thermometer and used the thermometer as a stirring stick.

When I pulled the bag I drained it then dunked it back in the pot, stirred, and removed again. My arms were tired after this.

During the boil I had the burner set to high the whole time, unlidded, and had almost none of the foam and boil up I am used to seeing with extract kits. I don't know if I should worry about this or not.

Here's on place I know where I went wrong. I am using my 5 gallon carboy as my primary for the 3-ish gallon batch. I am sure I risk or will have oxidation but I am using what I have.

I measured the OG at 1.045. The expected OG listed in the book is 1.052 - 1.56. I probably didn't measure too accurately as I only did one sample and don't know how much star-san was still in the thief. Live and learn, and it was about 4 hours after bedtime.

This went into the carboy at about 2 am today and it is now noon and it is bubbling away in the closet. So within ten hours fermentation is going strong.

Now to dig up the old thread and post results. I've gone silent on here waiting to taste my batch. I also have not brewed another batch yet.

I gave it a week in the primary, about three weeks in the secondary, and 20 days in bottles.

As I mentioned I started with 4.5 gallons of water and this resulted in 25 twelve oz bottles.

I've made 4 or 5 batches using extract from a boxed kit and this the first time I've had to think about more than direction following. Of the 5 or 6 batches I've made this first BIAB is by far the best I have brewed. This beer is darker in colour with some red hues and very clear. Not heavy on hops which I forgot to add when it went to the secondary. The bottle I had poured a nice head almost 10 mm thick which dissipated to about 5 mm thick when I finished the glass. The other bottle had about half the head and it dissipated to nothing in less than 10 minutes.

I still have a lot to learn on this. I grabbed the March / April issue of Brew magazine where BIAB is a cover article but have not had time to read it yet. I'll go digging on here but does anyone have opinions on either Designing Great Beers by Daniels or Brewing Classic Styles by Zainasheff? I have not found any hard copies for sale at my local bookstore and my library does not have them to leaf through before buying.

PistolPatch wrote: You mentioned that you need to learn more. A lot of that will depend on what and how much you have read elsewhere.

Brewing is actually pretty easy. Most of the important brewing learning I have done has been "un-learning."

Be very careful what you read whether it be in a magazine, a forum or an article published by a home-brewing association. Similiarly, be careful of podcasts and software.

This place is the home of the original biab brewers and all knowledge developed since on BIAB and a few other subjects as well so best to ask your questions here first.

Thanks PP,

I guess I need to learn to type what I am thinking. Most of the BIAB process and recipe conversion I'll lurk hear to learn. The place I really get lost with are the grains. What imparts the flavors or colour I want with each batch?

For this batch I just opened I went into my local shop with recipe in hand calling for pale ale type malt, crystal (20 deg L), and Munich (7 deg L). While standing there I made guesses and substituted on the fly and ended up with 2-row (typical colour 1.5-2.5 L) and TF&S Crystal II (typical colour 62-68 L). Even after brewing, more reading, and drinking this I still don't really know what this means.