BIAB vs Conventional AG Method

[StrangeBrew]

BIAB is AG ! Just an alternate method requiring less equipment / initial outlay compared to a traditional 3 vessel setup. Capable of producing just as good results born out by blind tasting tests. I don't vew BIAB as a stepping stone on the way to 3 vessel systems. They're both All Grain and down to the individuals preferences which way they want to go...

Either way have fun brewing your beer :-)

 

[Motorhomebrew]

5kg of wet grain is very heavy. But nothing for my home made pulley system

You see. How manly of a craft do we have. You can even include cranes if you want. ROAR !!!! MAN STUFF

 

[ManseMasher]

BIAB is AG ! Just an alternate method requiring less equipment / initial outlay compared to a traditional 3 vessel setup. Capable of producing just as good results born out by blind tasting tests. I don't vew BIAB as a stepping stone on the way to 3 vessel systems. They're both All Grain and down to the individuals preferences which way they want to go...

Either way have fun brewing your beer :-)

Yes you are correct. But as the title says, BIAB v 'conventional' AG - I simply took this as a means of differentiating between these two techniques of AG brewing....

 

[dan125]

Perhaps I do it wrong but it adds 10 mins on my brew day..

Since I am full volume.. after my mash time is finished I just relight the burner..(grains and bag still in pot) on its way to teh boil I stop at around 75 and rest for 10 mins.. stir and remove grain bag squeeze and drain ect whilst coming to the boil.. Assuming I am doing it correct it adds very little time in fact I would say it actually is quicker than sparging seperatly then topping up.

No I'm sure that its me not doing it right.
I've never left the bag/grains in the pot when heating up to mashout as I was worried it might melt on the bottom of the pan.
So by the time I drained the grains, and monitored the temp rising up, and then drained the grains again after mashout, it felt like a lot of time spent.
I haven't noticed any difference or problems with the beer since leaving it out.

 

[Leon103]

You see. How manly of a craft do we have. You can even include cranes if you want. ROAR !!!! MAN STUFF

It's all about ease. I don't have to worry about where I am going to put it. I can easily dunk sparge and then drain over the boiler with no mess.

 

[Covrich]

No I'm sure that its me not doing it right.
I've never left the bag/grains in the pot when heating up to mashout as I was worried it might melt on the bottom of the pan.
So by the time I drained the grains, and monitored the temp rising up, and then drained the grains again after mashout, it felt like a lot of time spent.
I haven't noticed any difference or problems with the beer since leaving it out.

I used a stand which goes in the bottom of my pot before I put the water in.. When the full volume of water is at strike temp, add the bag add the grains.. the bag is perm off the bottom, Since I heat up to boil anyway having the grains in there makes little difference and the mash out is to replace the sparge, but like you say a lot of full BIAB don't even bother with it. I found it very little hassle at all, far easier than when I do a seperate sparge when I do smaller batches in my kitchen..

But everyone does it their own way and what works for them:thumb:

 

[Cwrw666]

I'll second the pulley system for BIAB. It's not so much that the wet grain is heavy, but quite often the bag simply doesn't want to drain (especially when using roast barley) at all so you're not only lifting the wet grain but also about 3 gallons of wort as well.
By the way, if you're doing a 10 gallon brew I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to use 2 BIAB bags in the same brew so you're not trying to lift the full grain bill at once.
I do the hybrid BIAB in that I mash in about 4 gallons of water then dunk sparge so that I end up with 5 gallons of wort which I keep topped up with kettlefulls of boiling water during the boil so I end up with 5 gallons in the FV. Works for me.

 

[clarkeuk]

Not sure I should put my experience on here as iv only been brewing a few months and only done one BIAB but I was not sure I could fit all off my grain bill in the boiler with the strike water so did a dunk sparge at 75 degrees for 15 minutes n squeezed to bag a bit my sg came out at 1060 making a 7 % beer instead of 1051 (5.1% ) but I was a.gallon short so topped up with 4 liters of water to give me approx a 5%

 

[Tony1951]

Not sure I should put my experience on here as iv only been brewing a few months and only done one BIAB but I was not sure I could fit all off my grain bill in the boiler with the strike water so did a dunk sparge at 75 degrees for 15 minutes n squeezed to bag a bit my sg came out at 1060 making a 7 % beer instead of 1051 (5.1% ) but I was a.gallon short so topped up with 4 liters of water to give me approx a 5%

I remember all that kind of caper when I started, and guess what? I'm still making random decisions on the fly when things come out unexpectedly 16 AG brews later. I doubt I ever did a brew yet where it all went exactly to plan.

Two weeks ago I was all set to use what I thought was a fantastic new method of brewing in my single vessel boiler system. I had found a wire mesh waste bin that fitted neatly into my boiler and looked like I could get rid of my messy bag system. I filled the boiler with my 15 litres and set it to heat to the mash temperature, put the waste bin into the boiler and realised that unless I had at least another eight or so litres, I would have dry grains at the top. I also wondered how I would extract the neat fitting bin out of the boiler because it fitted so snugly. I abandoned the whole idea and just dumped the grains right in the boiler without a bag.......

Random impulsive decision leads to a brewing disaster? ...... No - turned out great. Upped my efficiency to about 5% higher than when I used the bag. I did it again last week and got the same result 78% brew house efficiency.

Thinking on the spot and acting on gut instinct can turn out great. :)

Having said that - if I worked in a brewery where everything MUST happen exactly to plan, I'd be a nightmare employee and would get the sack within two weeks.

 

[Simonh82]

One thing in favour of BIAB that I don't think I've seen noted yet is that you can't really get a stuck mash with BIAB. I've never tried 3 vessel AG and I'm very new to BIAB so I don't know how much of an issue this is but the ability to just squeeze the wort out of the grains seems like a real advantage.

I've seen that some people have been putting BIAB bags in their traditional mash tuns so that they can do this too.

Not having to worry about a stuck mash also means you can grind your grain really fine which also increases efficiency.

 

[Covrich]

Not sure I should put my experience on here as iv only been brewing a few months and only done one BIAB but I was not sure I could fit all off my grain bill in the boiler with the strike water so did a dunk sparge at 75 degrees for 15 minutes n squeezed to bag a bit my sg came out at 1060 making a 7 % beer instead of 1051 (5.1% ) but I was a.gallon short so topped up with 4 liters of water to give me approx a 5%

Yeah just a case of getting your water calculations right it will be trial and error. I still don't get it always right now but I am closer. If you use software like brewmate it can help you try to predict your water requirements.

as for lifting the bag Cwrw makes a really good point actually, when you lift the bag with 5kg +/- grain, you don't lift 5kg it is closer to 10kg and diminishing as its absorbed and its full of wort.

 

[Larz]

Hi,

I'm about to move up to AG brewing from kit brewing and wanted to give BIAB a try just for the simplicity of equipment (ultimately my dream kit would be a Grainfather, but I wanted to take one step at a time...)

I got myself a 30l Cygnet boiler and wanted to try a Brupak London Bitter Mash kit, which I was going to split in half in order to not run out of space with a full volume/no sparge BIAB brew.

But now I struggle to figure out the total volume of water needed. The full kit is for 23l, so I'm shooting for a final volume of 11.5l. I've not weighed the grain yet (The kit doesn't give any weight information for the ingredients, probably as the whole point of a kit is not worrying about measuring ingredients, but it does say that for a conventional AG you would start mashing with 2.5l of water per kg of grain).

How would I go about this? Would I just work backwards from the 11.5l final volume and add 30-50% (I think I heard that figure somewhere) when starting to mash?
Or would I work with the grain weight and some BIAB specific multipliers (which are they?) to figure out the initial volume?
What if I get it wrong and at the end of the boil there is too much or too little volume?

Thanks ever so much!

 

[Tony1951]

Hi,

I'm about to move up to AG brewing from kit brewing and wanted to give BIAB a try just for the simplicity of equipment (ultimately my dream kit would be a Grainfather, but I wanted to take one step at a time...)

I got myself a 30l Cygnet boiler and wanted to try a Brupak London Bitter Mash kit, which I was going to split in half in order to not run out of space with a full volume/no sparge BIAB brew.

But now I struggle to figure out the total volume of water needed. The full kit is for 23l, so I'm shooting for a final volume of 11.5l. I've not weighed the grain yet (The kit doesn't give any weight information for the ingredients, probably as the whole point of a kit is not worrying about measuring ingredients, but it does say that for a conventional AG you would start mashing with 2.5l of water per kg of grain).

How would I go about this? Would I just work backwards from the 11.5l final volume and add 30-50% (I think I heard that figure somewhere) when starting to mash?
Or would I work with the grain weight and some BIAB specific multipliers (which are they?) to figure out the initial volume?
What if I get it wrong and at the end of the boil there is too much or too little volume?

Thanks ever so much!

I can't answer your specific question Lars, but one thing if you spilt a grain bill that contains more than a single type of grain, you probably ought to give the grain a very good mix up before you split it. If it has a small proportion of specialist grains, they are probably sitting somewhere in the bag in a little clump as they were dumped into the bag. This could mean that one half of the grain bill contains all the crystal malt or whatever.

I did an ingredients kit once split into two before I got my boiler and only had a stock pot. I emptied the whole grain bag into a big plastic storage box and mixed it up and the scooped it out into two containers jug for jug into the two recepticals. That way I was sure I had all the grains in each half.

Hope it goes well for you.

 

[Larz]

if you spilt a grain bill that contains more than a single type of grain, you probably ought to give the grain a very good mix up before you split it.

That's a very good point. I hadn't really thought of that...
As the only reason for wanting to split the grain is the fact that my boiler won't be large enough for a full volume BIAB, I guess an alternative approach would be to go for the full kit, but not use the full volume of water upfront, but rather add a sparging/rinsing stage afterall?

 

[ManseMasher]

At the top of the home page there is a link to calculators mate. Look in the All Grain section, there's one in there that will help you out. Bear in mind though if all the grain in your kit is mixed together you won't be able to guarantee you get a complete 50/50 split of all your different grains....

 

[brumbrew]

I use grain weight x 2.5 litres.

So 2 kilo x 2.5 would be 5 litre mash water.

Then mash water divided by 1.5

So 5 divided by 1.5 is 3.3333 litres to sparge with.

Taking into consideration grain absorption you'd probly end up with 6-7 litres.

You can sparge more if you like to a desired boil volume. During the boil you will loose volume evaporating. I assume the figure of 10%

Hope this helps. By no means perfect but a rough guide

 

[Covrich]

If its your first BIAB then the water calculators will be a bit of a guestimate, it is a bit trial and error until you find out what works for you.

I do full volume no sparge BIAB and I tend to use around 32-33L of water but the grain bill will normally dictate the amount I start with.

So off the top of my head I would say if you started with say 16.5l.. based on an average of a 5kg grain bill being split into 2.5kg..

I find doing full volume I don't lose quite as much as 1liter of water to grain absorbtion. but you shoudl have 14l or maybe a bit more after your mash (and if you mash out) pre boil volume.. that should give you a few liters for boil off and evap in cooldown and I usually have an extra liter for trub (I count for nearly 2 in my full)..

 

[Larz]

Thanks all - hugely appreciated!

Using the calculator on the brewer's friend website (tweaking an existing London Bitter recipe on brewersfriend.com to fit the total 3.8kg of grain that my kit includes - I managed to figure that out in the meantime) I come up with a total volume of 33l for a fermenting volume of 23l.

So if I were to split the kit in half (and I do appreciate this might not be a brilliant idea considering the kit consists of a blend of grains) I'd start with 16.5l, which is consistent with what was suggested here, so I guess I'll just give that a shot...

 

[Smileyr8]

I have a Sygnet and use the BIAB method, I tend to mash as near to full volume as possible, I mash in approx 20 litres (aiming for 22.4 litres in the FV) I add any short fall (liquor back) to the FV, I don't sparge but do give the bag a good squeeze recent brews have yielded 83-87% efficiency. I use Cornies so after fermentation I end up with 19 litres (you will be surprised how much trub you end up with), this usually leaves my a small amount of beer to aid yeast recycling.

 

[Godfather50]

Pro for BIAB is cheaper set-up cost and needs less space.
Con is that efficiency not so high. (For me this was 65% vs 80% efficiency).
Brewed some of my best beers with BIAB but 3 tier system is more relaxed.