A typical BIAB brew day for me, any advice?

[Leard]

I've done four BIAB brews now and I'm looking for any hints or tips to improve.

I use Beersmith to create my recipes. I use the water calculations on there. I start with half a campden tablet. Then I do alkalinity and calcium tests. I use as much gypsum, table salt, and calcium chloride to match the closest water style for the beer on Beersmith. Finally I use the water treatment for beginners advice on here to calculate how much I need to adjust my alkalinity with using lactic acid.

Onto the mash. I heat up to the temperature suggested on Beersmith usually using a medium body BIAB mash. Whilst water heats up I give all my grain another grind through my corona mill.
Bag goes in and then I wait until I reach 69-79C (depending on the mash temp).
Grain goes in and then I use a big whisk and my plastic spoon to attack the clump of grain to really break it up. Then I wrap the kettle in a foil camping matt and leave it for the mash, between 60-90 mins. I'll only give the mash a stir once in that time, halfway through. I'm curious about the use of a pump here to recirculate the wort whilst keeping the heating element on to get a more stable temperature, any thoughts?

Once the mash is done I start mashing out and raise the temperature to 75-80C, this usually takes about 20 minutes. Once I reach that temperature I lift the bag up, let it mostly drain, and then dump it in another bucket. I then squeeze the bag in the bucket and leave it to drain a bit. What other techniques are available for this stage? A big colander to allow the bag to drain back into the kettle? What about brew in a basket? I'm also considering the use of a 'sparge' stage here to get an extra 4L into the boil, any tips for that?
After 5-10 minutes I'll pour the wort from that bucket into the kettle. Gravity reading taken and mash efficiency calculated, I usually hit at least 70%. My last brew was 75% efficiency.

Time to start the boil. Not much to say here, I usually boil for 60 minutes. Haven't tried a longer or shorter boil yet.

Once the boil is done my immersion cooler goes it. I'll cool down to about 80C for the whirlpool hops. My whirlpool technique involves spinning the wort and then throwing the hops in. I then wait 20 minutes occasionally giving it another spin. Curious about the use of a pump and a hop spider here. Recirculating the wort for 20 minutes while the hops site in a spider or similar filter vessel thing.

After the whirlpool I cool down to pitching temp, transfer to the FV, and pitch my rehydrated yeast. It then goes into a fridge with an Ink Bird controlling a heat tube to warm up and the fridge to cool down. After the krausen has subsided I throw in my dry hops. I don't use a secondary FV as this seems to have gone out of fashion. Is this the best way to dry hop?

Once fermentation is done I'll cold crash for a day or two and then bottle up using a bottling bucket.

Sorry for the wall of text, if you can be bothered to read it though some advice would be great! Thanks.

 

[chuffer]

In your opening paragraph you state "Finally I use the water treatment for beginners advice on here to calculate how much I need to adjust my alkalinity with using lactic acid".....now here's a question for the water treatment gurus (Strange Steve etc), I always thought you should reduce the alkalinity first (before adding things like Gypsum / CaCl to tailor the water mineral content to your desired style) - is that correct, or does it not matter which way round you do it?

 

[cushyno]

Good write up. This is a useful reference for anyone else considering BIAB.

While not technically BIAB my process is very similar. Instead of mashing in the kettle I transfer water at similar temperature (69-79) to a coolbox, ensuring that the first runnings will be about 12L, so no more than 17L mash water if my grain is 5kg. Meanwhile I heat the sparge water for a batch sparge. First runnings get poured into my 13L stockpot before sparging. While sparging the kettle is free to heat first runnings gently. Second runnings goes in after 20 mins.

I consider this process the similar to yours.

What is different:

• I stir the mash after 10 minutes and take a pH reading. Then stir mash at 20min intervals until done.
• I Sparge, which gets stirred after 10min

I don't use hop spider or a bazooka. Hops go straight in. However I do use a couple of sanitised fine mesh bags and a colander to drain wort through direct into FV which aerates it too. All the hop and break material ends up in the bags.

If you have some way if supporting it over your kettle, you could use a large bucket or FV with a few small holes in the base. Put your grain bag in it to drain into the kettle. You could perform a sparge by slowly adding hot (or cold) water to the top of the grain bag and letting it filter through. The holes would limit flow so it would end up like a poor mans fly sparge.

 

[Leard]

In your opening paragraph you state "Finally I use the water treatment for beginners advice on here to calculate how much I need to adjust my alkalinity with using lactic acid".....now here's a question for the water treatment gurus (Strange Steve etc), I always thought you should reduce the alkalinity first (before adding things like Gypsum / CaCl to tailor the water mineral content to your desired style) - is that correct, or does it not matter which way round you do it?

This is a good point actually. I don't specifically aim to adjust the alkalinity last, however my last brew just went that way. Generally all the water treatment gets dumped in around the same time though whilst the water is heating. I'll see about adding my lactic acid first next time.

 

[Leard]

I don't use hop spider or a bazooka. Hops go straight in. However I do use a couple of sanitised fine mesh bags and a colander to drain wort through direct into FV which aerates it too. All the hop and break material ends up in the bags.

Forgot to mention actually that I do transfer from the kettle into the FV through a sieve to catch all the hop gunk.

 

[PhilBrew]

Hi Leard

I'm curious about the use of a pump here to recirculate the wort whilst keeping the heating element on to get a more stable temperature, any thoughts?

... have you been having any problems that might indicate poor control of mash temps? Have your Final Gravities (FGs) been higher/lower than you would anticipate? ... if not, the only other reason to recirculate would be to (try to) improve your efficiency, but you seem to be getting reasonable efficiencies already ... I'm not sure why you would want to add this complexity in.

What other techniques are available for this stage? A big colander to allow the bag to drain back into the kettle? What about brew in a basket?

... since the grain is already contained in a bag, you don't particularly need a sieve/colander, anything you can rig up that'll hold the bag over the pot and can be left to drain will do it ... from 3 or 4 metal skewers resting on the rim, across the pot, to a grill/cooling rack repurposed from the kitchen or an old barbecue, or even a rope and pulley fixed to a frame/joist ... I'm sure you'll work something out, but as you've already found, mostly it's only to reduce the amount of drips ending up on your shoes

I'm also considering the use of a 'sparge' stage here to get an extra 4L into the boil, any tips for that?

... put the extra "sparge" water into the bucket that you're going to move the drained grain bag to ... for just 4lts you could just boil the kettle 3-4 times (however many times it takes to get 4 lts out of your kettle), by the time you've emptied, refilled, reboiled and re-emptied the kettle a few times the water in the bucket will probably have settled in the mid-80s centigrade, and at that point you can add your grain-bag and the whole will settle in the mid-high-70s C ... then just dunk the grain bag in the water and slosh it around a bit for a few mins ... and set it back up to drain over the bucket ... when it's drained, and before the main body of wort has come up to boil, add the wort in the bucket to the boiler. Presto, you've done a "dunk sparge"

Cheers, PhilB

 

[Leard]

... have you been having any problems that might indicate poor control of mash temps? Have your Final Gravities (FGs) been higher/lower than you would anticipate? ... if not, the only other reason to recirculate would be to (try to) improve your efficiency, but you seem to be getting reasonable efficiencies already ... I'm not sure why you would want to add this complexity in.
Cheers, PhilB

Yes I have been getting lower OGs. However Beersmith seems bent on estimating my mash efficiency at 80% when I usually get 70-75%. I would like to try and achieve 80%. However it seems there are better things I can be doing than recirculating.

 

[DavidHatton]

Nice write up, I add the grain in small amounts and make sure I wet it well, seen some youtube vids where the dump it in and stir, as I use a basket I like to make sure there isn't any small clumps of grain stuck in the basket base. Not a tip but just what I do.

 

[PhilBrew]

However Beersmith seems bent on estimating my mash efficiency at 80% when I usually get 70-75%

... I believe in Beersmith, what you get to enter is your "brewhouse efficiency", if you calculate that (I believe Beersmith has calculators built into it where you can feed in details of the volume you got in your fermenter, at what gravity, and it will calculate your "brewhouse efficiency") and you enter that, then it'll re-estimate your mash efficiency for you ... mash efficiency will always be higher than brewhouse efficiency, because you'll always lose some of the sugars extracted from the grain between the end of the mash and transferring it to your FV (they'll be left in the wort soaked up in the grain or in the hops/trub at the end of boil). Sparging is one method of reducing post mash losses.

Yes I have been getting lower OGs.

... if that's been happening, I'd suggest you spend some time reviewing how you're measure the temperature of the mash ... when I was BIABing, I found the mash inside the bag consistently remained 2C lower than the water outside the bag, around the mash ... never got to the bottom of that, I just started adding 2C to my mash and "strike temperature" calculations to allow for that, solved my low OG problems

Cheers, PhilB

 

[chuffer]

I always assumed 75% is pretty good going, no?

 

[Leard]

I always assumed 75% is pretty good going, no?

Yeah I'm not unhappy about 75%. However I've read of people achieving 80% with BIAB so it would be nice to get the highest I can.

 

[emerson909]

I have a pump and recirculate during the mash, also have a PID controller for the element, keeps very consistent mash temp.
I’ve rigged up a pulley system using these Rope Ratchet Hangers and a bike hook to strain the bag, it’s great because you just suspend the bag over the kettle while heating for the boil. I don’t do any kind of sparge and get just short of 70% mash efficiency. I don’t think it’s worth the effort to try and increase it, just use a bit more grain.
I use the pump to recirculate while chilling which massively improves the cooling time then take the chiller out and leave to whirlpool for 15 mins or so, then turn the pump off and leave for another 20 mins or so for the hops and trub to settle out. I just use pellet hops and throw them straight in. I don’t have any kind of filter and just run off into the fermenter, the whirlpool does a pretty good job of moving everything into the middle away from the outlet valve.