First BIAB

Hi Folks,

After the advice and recipe calculation feedback I kindly received, I thought I'd report back on my first BIAB day, with a few photos for evidence .

I was really excited to finally do this, and it was a great experience. Everything went well, but of course there was one 'mishap' which momentarily had me thinking I'd ruined the wort. I was mashing out, and did a final temp check before pulling the bag, when I noticed wort floating inside my thermometer. It was one of those floating glass tube thermometers, with the emphasis on 'was'. I did a quick inspection, could not see any visible crack or blue liquid leaking out, so decided to press on and think about it later. At the end of the day after cleanup, I discovered that the very top dome of the tube had been compromised like a boiled egg prepped eating. The top of the glass had all but disappeared, and I was quite shocked by the paper thin fragility of the thing. I can only think that I must have caused it to bang up against the lid of the kettle while stirring up the wort. I believe that any glass would have been removed with the grains, and any possibly escaped shards left behind in the trub after siphoning. Fortunately I had a backup digital thermometer for the chilling, etc. stages. Thank goodness for redundancy .

Raising the temperature up from the acid rest took about 40 minutes. Should one include this as part of the mash duration? I did not, so the grains mashed for a total of 20+40+70=130min, plus 10 to 15 min to get to mash out.

The boil was not as vigorous as I would have liked, and I guess my 65000 BTU is not quite up to the job. I think this accounts for the lower than expected evaporation. Using the BIABacus, how should I account for this in future brew sessions?

The GIB reading was taken at 110F, and measured 1.028. The adjusted reading is 1.036, similar to 'estimated'. But then the GAW was 1.042 measured at 63F, much lower than the estimated 1.050 (hydrometer is calibrated to 60F, so I did not adjust this reading). At first I found this very puzzling, but then read some more posts on this forum. I'm now more inclined to trust the GAW. I did not measure mash volume or KFL, so have left those blank in the attached BIABacus.

Thanks again to the members of this forum who provided many useful tips and info.

BIABacus PR1.3K - Weizen - BCS Harold-is-weizen - Batch 1.xls

The acid rest:

IMG_3271.jpg

The boil:

IMG_3273.jpg

The chill:

IMG_3279.jpg

Cheers!

• • From Canada
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Thanks JR for making me feel a bit better about my broken thermometer . I need to look into a better system for that. Regarding carbonation, I was concerned that anything higher might be too much for the standard 340ml capped bottles I'm going to use. Do you know what a 'safe' limit is?

Hi PistolPatch, I was basing my mash schedule off of this article to try and increase the ferulic acid for a more pronounced clove character:
http://beerandwinejournal.com/german-wheat-beer-iii/

All good points you mentioned about the burner, and I think I have them all covered. I'm going to try your stainless steel bowl trick next time, and hopefully upgrade my burner sometime in the future. I just bought this one, thinking it would be adequate. I suppose you get what you pay for . Fortunately I did not leave the lid on at all, as I read somewhere that this defeats the aim of boiling off the unwanted thingamajiggums (DMS?).

By 'fancy stuff', do you mean my sheepskin slippers or all the piping? I laid my immersion chiller on its side, since it wasn't resting deep enough in the wort when standing upright. And next time I aim to take some more measurements!

Cheers, and thanks again for the responses.

PS: Lovely ferment going, and I did some top-cropping this morning. It has a doughy, fruity, & slight banana aroma

• • From Canada
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I think I'll go with 3 CO2 volumes, based on the input.

dexter.rose, point noted about the chiller, thank you. I had my beady eye on it for that very reason. This position just seemed like the best compromise. It's a homemade one, sized for a smaller 4g pot so that the inlet and outlet connections hang over the rim of the pot facing downward. Didn't want to start re-bending it, as there are already a few kinks in the tubing that I didn't want to exacerbate. Why is there always something more that needs upgrading, eh?

• • From Canada
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Quick update ... I bottled the beer on the 16th May. I had about 5.8 gallons, so did not lose much volume when racking into the bottling bucket. I was expecting a lot more trub compared to my previous experience with extract brews, but most of it seemed to be yeast cake. The beer was very clear and light in colour, and it seems that most of the yeast had settled out. I was expecting more yeast in suspension, as per the style. Tasting the gravity sample: very thin and light bodied, and no pronounced hefeweizen character to speak of.

I'm guessing, and would be interested in other opinions, that the extended period of heating the wort to the second rest temperature resulted in more conversion ( ?). I believe the recipe called for a more malt forward wort profile. The FG was 1.008, and I was expecting 1.013.

In retrospect, being my first brew with a new setup, I should have done a single temp rest. I will adhere to this advice for my future brews, until such time as I can upgrade my burner.

Cheers

• • From Canada
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