For my first foray into the world of Biab I went for a Belgian wit which is one of my favourite beer styles (and luckily also quite easy apparently) I started at 9am by filling the pot with water and heating to 70', added the grain which dropped it to 65' which was spot on, it had 30 minutes at that temperature and only dropped 1.5' during that time, I then raised the temperature to 68' for a further hour before finally mashing out at 72' over 10 minutes.
Home made insulation jacket
Mashing in
Hops and orange and coriander, though I also added some sweet peel which was drying in the oven when I took the photo.
Grains prior to dunk sparging with 8 litres of water.
Boiling the wort, I initially had the lid half on to maintain temperature as it was a bit of a struggle on the domestic hob, I then moved it across so it was over two of the burners which worked well.
Boil is over.
Ice bath.
Wort nicely aerated after cooling in a ice bath, it only took an hour which I was happy with as I was expecting it to take a lot longer.
Post boil sample.
Now some facts and figures if anyone's interested!
Batch size 20 litres
Water into pot was 18 litres
Lost 4 litres to the grain
Sparge with 8 litres at 78'
Pre boil amount was 22.5 litres with a gentle squeeze on the bag
Pre boil vol was 1042
Post boil amount of liquor was 20 litres (spot on hooray)
Post boil vol was 1048 (should have been 1046 according to the recipe)
I used the brewferm Blanche yeast which was rehydrated before pitching ( I'd ordered the wrong yeast and this was the only one I could source in driving distance)
Recipe-
2kg pale belgian malt
2kg flaked wheat
25g hallertauer heersbrucker hops at 60 minutes
10g of the same at 15 minutes (along with a third of a protofloc tablet)
16g of coriander seed cracked, 25 g dried curaçao and 11g of sweet orange peel at 10 minutes.
The only thing I forgot was the campden tablet but I added it after about 10 minutes
Home made insulation jacket
Mashing in
Hops and orange and coriander, though I also added some sweet peel which was drying in the oven when I took the photo.
Grains prior to dunk sparging with 8 litres of water.
Boiling the wort, I initially had the lid half on to maintain temperature as it was a bit of a struggle on the domestic hob, I then moved it across so it was over two of the burners which worked well.
Boil is over.
Ice bath.
Wort nicely aerated after cooling in a ice bath, it only took an hour which I was happy with as I was expecting it to take a lot longer.
Post boil sample.
Now some facts and figures if anyone's interested!
Batch size 20 litres
Water into pot was 18 litres
Lost 4 litres to the grain
Sparge with 8 litres at 78'
Pre boil amount was 22.5 litres with a gentle squeeze on the bag
Pre boil vol was 1042
Post boil amount of liquor was 20 litres (spot on hooray)
Post boil vol was 1048 (should have been 1046 according to the recipe)
I used the brewferm Blanche yeast which was rehydrated before pitching ( I'd ordered the wrong yeast and this was the only one I could source in driving distance)
Recipe-
2kg pale belgian malt
2kg flaked wheat
25g hallertauer heersbrucker hops at 60 minutes
10g of the same at 15 minutes (along with a third of a protofloc tablet)
16g of coriander seed cracked, 25 g dried curaçao and 11g of sweet orange peel at 10 minutes.
The only thing I forgot was the campden tablet but I added it after about 10 minutes
