I started lurking on this site well over a year ago, and started BIAB whole grain brewing right after getting a bunch of new equipment Christmas last year. Have to say, beer quality has went through the roof! My beer is really good now…
With Lager brewing, lacking a temperature controlled fermentation vessel, I brew with the seasons...which in Western Oregon (USA) that means lagers can be brewed in the winter only. Put the fermentation vessel inside a larger garbage can with water and keep it in my garage…and keeps my lagers between 51 and 53 degrees F depending on how cold things are…usually +/- 1 degree Fahrenheit. Good ale can be brewed in this manner in fall & spring, or in the winter if I use a fish tank heater in the garbage can water to warm temperature up. Pretty warm in the summer so I avoid brewing then.
Really like a lot of the European style pilsners, so brewed a German Pils and a Vienna the day after Christmas last year. (Made for a VERY long day). Added a Czech Pilsner at the end of February…and then a Dry Irish Stout in April. So that is just four BIABs under my belt. There were a lot of concerns over things that didn’t seem to go so perfectly at the time. And really there were concerns over pretty much everything that I’ve brewed. Nothing went exactly perfect, regardless. That said, overall the beers were VERY good.
German Pilsner, think I got a tad too much bittering hops and perhaps a tad too little aroma hops at the end. Should be easy to fix that for next time. That 5 gallon Corney keg was polished off in June. The Vienna was very good and will likely brew it again with the same recipe. It was gone in mid July. The Czech Pilsner, I tried to keep it lagering without drinking until the German Pilsner was gone (with limited success)… Have a kegerator with 3 taps but room for up to 6 Corneys. I had to connect the picnic faucet with short hose to the Czech Pilsner so I could do some sampling before it was put on regular tap… Initially I felt the Czech Pilsner was a tad too hoppy but a few months of lagering seems to have really helped and it is drinking just awesome now – over 5 months from when it was brewed. All of these lagers are just over 5% ABV, so for me that is a good thing, try to keep the alcohol content manageable so that beer is “session-able”.
With the Dry Irish Stout, I made a couple mistakes…undershot the planned 4.2 ABV, ended up with like 3.7% ABV or so… And the dark malt didn’t get ground up fine enough so the brew is not as dark as it should be. Still good. Recipe called for British Pale Ale Malt. My local home brew shop wasn’t sure exactly what that was and wanted to sell me American 2-Row Malt… I chose British Maris Otter Malt, figured it was likely closer. (Are they the same...? I don't know.) The MO grain tasted a little better, so went with that. Happy with this one and will try to fix my mistakes next time.
But even with some mistakes, whole grain beer I’ve brewed with BIAB is much better than Macro beers… Stacks up there with the better Micros. A couple nights ago I was drinking several glasses of the Czech Pilsner, and sampled one Coronita (7 ounce Corona my daughter’s boyfriend had left in the fridge). Corona was garbage in comparison to the BIAB homebrew! Also, my 18 year old son took a post high school graduation trip to Ireland & part of UK for 3 ½ weeks and brought back some macro brews from over there… One was a pretty decent Special Bitter from Scotland. Can't remember the middle two, decent but nothing super special. Polished off the last beer last night, an Irish Red…that was decent but not great. The homebrew is better; way better! Wonder if this is just the difference between having a “fresh” kegged beer, or if macro brews put things in their beer that they shouldn’t? Googled it and came up with an article from the “Food Babe”… http://foodbabe.com/2013/07/17/the-shoc ... s-in-beer/ Depending on brewer, lots of weird stuff is going in…and not the best flavor with most Macros, and I can attest to that. Maybe that’s why I tend not to like most of the Macro beer brewing company’s products...?
Most microbreweries have some good products, I think. Here in the USA’s Pacific Northwest, American style India Pale Ale is hugely popular, and I’m not a big fan. Many are unbalanced in my opinion with out of balance hops. Also they tend to be “bigger” beers, of 6.5 to 7.5% ABV normally. Which means I have to drink less beer… I normally shoot for 5 to 5 ½% ABV. It can be challenging to find good beer in this ABV range. To each his own. I sometimes can enjoy an IPA, if it is on the lighter side for the style and well balanced. (Some here might call this kind of product offering a British style IPA). With homebrewing, it should be that we drink less microbrewery beer. Right? But like the good home cook, it’s nice to sample other people’s cooking as well… So it might actually increase wanting to drink other’s beer. (Maybe I should find a homebrew group to join…).
Thoughts for the future:
It would be nice to speed up how long it takes to brew beer. I normally take close to 6 hours with setup, brewing and clean-up. I know it’s supposed to be less time consuming with BIAB (and maybe it is – I’ve never brewed conventional 3-vessel before)… At least it is much less equipment that I have to find room for in my garage, and clean when finishing brewing for the day. People on some sites still say BIAB’s efficiency is low. My efficiency is higher than what is estimated in the BCS book for their recipes. And my thought was if the BIAB process ends up being a little simpler with less “moving parts”, who cares if I end up needing to add a few percentage points more ingredients to get good beer…? Hasn’t happened yet, efficiency has been fine, but that’s the thought.
For the Kegerator, need to add a 4th tap, and expand my 4 Corneys by 2, so end up with 6 Corney kegs. (More room for lagering). Next brew up will likely be an APA (American Pale Ale) at end of September or first of October (hopefully my existing brews can last that long…may not) I’m thinking this winter to brew the same ones brewed last winter, and maybe add another Pilsner…with perhaps Santiam hops. I live next to the Santiam river and was raised in the Santiam canyon. Supposed to be much like Tettnanger hops but was bred here closer to home. Not sure on the malt for that brew, might need to keep with the European pilsner malt but maybe I would try a US pilsner malt on that if there was something good. I’m a little afraid of trying a non-German yeast, but maybe I would try something else, different from what I’ve been using for this Pilsner, see if it winds up as good as the others…
Would be fun to retire and take a drive across the country and visit tons of microbreweries like Old Goat and his wife are doing… Checked out his blog the other night and showed my wife a picture. She said “hey, he’s not old, he’s about my age”…
Me too. Now the wife thinks us buying a vehicle so we can travel the country sounds like fun. (Love to travel but am not sure that much driving is all that fun, have to do too much of it for my job. 
Thanks Old Goat! ). And thank you, for all of you that have given me as much help as you have over the past year!
You know who you all are… Pat, Joshua, Rick, Gooligan, JHough, Mad Scientist, Mally, and I’m missing a bunch of others so no offense if your name doesn't come to mind at the moment. Cheers, and keep brewing!
Hey Josh, to get great beer, that I only have to walk to my garage and the kegerator and pour it...beer that rivals the best Micros (not all of which are available in my area) - if that takes 6 hours a session and there's not a good way to cut it down, guess that is what it is. If I can find a way to cut an hour on the operation without sacrificing cleanliness or quality - I might be interested... 
