My 1st AG 10L BIAB, not complete disaster!

[Toffee]

I reckon you're right! I think the Aussie glad wrappers fasten it in with a rubber seal taken from inside the lid of their fermenters. Do Coopers FVs have these?

nope. no rubber seals on them, the lid just fits ontop.

 

[GHW]

cascade, I think I love you...

Just opened the fv for first time in 10 days...OH MY GOD this smells like I have made heaven in a food grade plastic bucket. Big hop hit, all cascade freshness and zing, wonderful. Going to add a bit of cascade for dry hop Friday evening and bottle Monday. Oosh!

Frankly if this tastes like it smells I'm hanging up my hydrometer as I'll never make a better beer.

finished at 1010, so 5.3%, which means 80% attenuation from the sa05, pretty good. Must have been the bit of nutrient I added. Clear as a bell too.

ALL GRAIN you are the man.

Goodnight.

 

[GHW]

Bottled this beauty tonight, 18 bottles of wonderment.

Tried to attach photos though can never seem to manage it properly. [edit, only one attached]

All v promising taste wise, and I'm amazed how much 5g of dried hops expands into.

Didn't lose anything to the trub which had compacted much better than I expected.

Now the wait.

 

[Covrich]

Looks very good

 

[Hops_and_Dreams]

Now, the test of your willpower begins!

 

[stevej]

Bottled this beauty tonight, 18 bottles of wonderment.

Tried to attach photos though can never seem to manage it properly. [edit, only one attached]

All v promising taste wise, and I'm amazed how much 5g of dried hops expands into.

Didn't lose anything to the trub which had compacted much better than I expected.

Now the wait.

Haha theres no turning back now:lol: good luck to more good beer

 

[GHW]

Tbh the wait won't be an issue, mad busy at work and got my barrels to quaff before they boil in this ridiculous heat. Wrapped a towel round a barrel earlier in an attempt to cool it. Didn't work but I don't think I gave it long enough.

BEER!

 

[Tony1951]

I did the same sort of brew 2 weeks ago (Following Cbit's very simple and clear instructions) - Wiko 12 litre pot too. Faced many of the same problems mentioned in this thread - including poor contact between the raised bottom of the pot and the electric hob. Since then, I bought a brew bag so that I don't have the horrible job of trying to strain grain out of the wort with kitchen implements and ending up with sticky drips all over the kitchen floor. You learn by doing..... Next time, it will be better, and if I like the beers, I will buy a tea urn boiler and get away from some of the problems. The good news is that inspite of looking horrible when it was in the pot, with some sort of swirling amoeba like 'thing' in the wort (protein I think), it has cleared up nicely in the bottles. I got 10 litres at an OG of about 1045..... probably didn't keep good enough control of the mash temperature, and it didn't go down below 1014, but I cracked a bottle yesterday (I just had to taste it now it was partly clear) and it tastes good even in its very young state. Another fortnight, and I will know better.

 

[clibit]

Since then, I bought a brew bag so that I don't have the horrible job of trying to strain grain out of the wort with kitchen implements and ending up with sticky drips all over the kitchen floor.

A bag is a good idea for sure, especially for brews bigger than 5 litres or so. But if you line a colander with a piece of muslin and place the colander on top of a pot or bucket, there doesn't need to be any mess. The more you brew though, the more grain you use, and the less chance of getting all the grain into a colander or similar.

Some people but a square meter of muslin or voile and line the pot with it, and then gather up the edges to lift it out, bag style. You can tie something round it above the grain. A square meter of muslin is about £2.

 

[Tony1951]

A bag is a good idea for sure, especially for brews bigger than 5 litres or so. But if you line a colander with a piece of muslin and place the colander on top of a pot or bucket, there doesn't need to be any mess. The more you brew though, the more grain you use, and the less chance of getting all the grain into a colander or similar.

Some people but a square meter of muslin or voile and line the pot with it, and then gather up the edges to lift it out, bag style. You can tie something round it above the grain. A square meter of muslin is about £2.

Thanks for the information and for the original thread which spurred me to try an all grain brew. I think the beer will be OK actually, even though my execution of the mashing process wasn't ideal. Nor was my hopping.... I didn't have a high resolution scale so measuring 10g of boiling hops turned into gauging a palm full of citra and saying, 'That's about ten grams,' and chucking them in the pot. Since the beer tastes alright, the process is as forgiving as you said it was in the original thread with your recipe. I bought a cheap scale that measures down to parts of a gram now, so with my bag (more expensive than the muslin sheet, but not prohibitive) I will do better next time.

Thanks again for the inspiration to try something other than kits Clibit. Mind you - I have been having great success with Coopers kits and they aren't half easy to use by comparison :))

I used to brew a bit forty and thirty years ago and packed it in about 1985 until this Christmas when one of my sons bought me a Moonshine Brew in a Bag kit which turned out decent (if expensive). I then bought some brewing bins etc and would say there is no comparison in the outcomes from the 1980s kits to now. Every brew I did in those days except really dark stouts had a horrible 'homebrew' taste. I wonder if it was the yeasts they supplied with the kits in those days. I can't imagine that malt extract has changed since then. Now my dry hopped, kit bottled beer tastes as good as decent craft beer in a pub - very rewarding. The versatility of all AG methods offers a whole new set of variables to play with. :)

 

[Twostage]

My BIAB bag is actually a small old fashioned fancy patterned cotton table cover. It had a seam round all four sides that I got the missus to thread a piece of nylon cord through.

I thought the fact that it had varying sized holes due to the floral pattern would be a problem but it works a treat.

 

[clibit]

Cheers Tony. You can always do a mix of kit brews and AG brews, obviously. I occasionally do a kit with mini mash, or a partial mash.

 

[Tony1951]

Cheers Tony. You can always do a mix of kit brews and AG brews, obviously. I occasionally do a kit with mini mash, or a partial mash.

Yes - tons of possibilities and experiments ahead....

While I am waiting for my first AG 10 litre brew to mature a week or two, I did another Kit 23 litre brew and dry hopped it with 25g of Cascade hops - direct into the FV at day four when the fuss had died down. Previously I had put the hops into a muslin bag, but I had the idea that I wasn't getting good interchange through the bag between the beer and the hops. I just did my daily check (Day 7 now since I pitched the yeast) and stirred the top inch or two squashing the floating hops with the sterile spatula on the side to squeeze out the aromatic oils.

Now it occurs to me that when I strain these hops out to bottle the brew, I could use them again in the boil of my next AG brew. They have only shed their aromatic oils - not the bittering quality and probably not the main flavour.

Do you think that would work or is it taking miserliness to extremes?

 

[clibit]

It does work, and some people do it. I have never bothered myself. I guess it makes sense if you use an expensive hop to dry hop with. For example, Simcoe is a fantastic bittering hop, but is also great as a dry hop. You could certainly use it again to good effect. Whether you would need to add a few extra hops I'm not sure. Probably not, any slight loss of AA would be negligible I think.

I am finding 10 litre brews are a good size. Plenty of beer really, I'm not a big boozer, so I brew larger batches very infrequently now.

 

[Tony1951]

I am finding 10 litre brews are a good size. Plenty of beer really, I'm not a big boozer, so I brew larger batches very infrequently now.

Thanks for the advice on the re-use of hops. I'll try it and tell you how it goes.

On the volume of brewing. I am not a big boozer either. I try to not have more than a litre at a sitting of the 5% type brew and I have a barrel of 2% light ale derived from a single can of Coopers and 100g of dextrose which I made for general meal time drinks.

There is no doubt that the stronger beers taste better though even though I need to drink less of that sort. I have three adult sons who come around here quite often so It is easy to get through a few bottles at an evening sitting. Also, I am trying to build up a good stock so I can let it mature properly. So far, none of it has lasted more than about five weeks before being 'disposed of'. :)

The other thing about brewing larger volumes is the time needed to go through the process. Five hours seems a big time investment for 18 or 19 bottles which is all I got out of my first AG brew. On the upside, bottling was soon done....

All good fun - much better than when I used to do it on and off in the 1970s and 1980s.

 

[clibit]

My 10L brew day takes 3 hours, and I bottle that quantity in under an hour now. 45 mins ish. A 3 hour brew day is much easier to find a slot for - I don't have many 6 hour windows. So I end up brewing more beer probably, and brew more often, and get different beers. Two types for every one of a full batch.

 

[GHW]

I've finally cracked and opened my first full AG bottle tonight, my cascade/centennial APA.

Well, it's definitely the best beer I've made yet. V similar to the amarillo, perhaps not surprisingly.

Slightly less carbonation than ideal so not much head on it, but it has that classic cascade aroma and a really fresh orangey taste that stays in your mouth. Perfect bitterness for me, strong but not overpowering. Good mouthfeel though not radically better than the extract brews I did. Certainly not disappointed. Think I need to move on to some different beer styles now though. I'm feeling like I've done American styles (and have a ton still to drink through!) so looking forward to getting some other brew styles going on.

 

[Tony1951]

I've finally cracked and opened my first full AG bottle tonight, my cascade/centennial APA.

Well, it's definitely the best beer I've made yet. V similar to the amarillo, perhaps not surprisingly.

Great. Glad it was such a success and as a new user of cascade I can just almost taste it here :)

My simple AG (No1) was not quite such a success as yours, but is still a nice drink. It has three faults:

I didn't control the heat well enough in the mash and it got a bit too hot so I got too many dextrins and it didn't ferment right out. It stopped at 1015/1016, so it has a certain sweetness it shouldn't have, but not at all unpleasant.

It also has a haze which is particularly evident when it is cold from the fridge, but is still there only less so when it is a bit warmer. I'm not sure why I got that, but maybe some Irish Moss would help in future.

The final and most annoying thing is that I overcarbonated the brew on bottling. I put too much sugar into the priming bucket (can't quite remember how much but it was between 85 and 100 grams in a ten litre brew) so when I opened my first couple of bottles, I thought I might try and sell them to airport fire brigades for foam extinguishers. Any attempt to pour them unless they were at about 2C resulted in a glass or three full of foaming brew. I improved these a good bit by opening the bottles and then resealing them a couple of times (they are in flip tops so it isn't a big problem). They now pour OK and taste quite good. The single hop was Citra and the taste is gorgeous, but flavour is slightly impaired by yeast being raised by the over-carbonation.

I made another 10 litre brew on the Bank Holiday and this one is going to be a cracker.

 

[MyQul]

asant.

It also has a haze which is particularly evident when it is cold from the fridge, but is still there only less so when it is a bit warmer. I'm not sure why I got that, but maybe some Irish Moss would help in future.
.

That's known as 'chill haze' If you don't chill the wort down quickly after the boil not all of the protiens are 'dragged' out of the wort and remain there. Only evident when chilled.

 

[clibit]

Definitely use Irish Moss. In my latest brews I have added Clarityferm to the fermentation. I did this as it massively reduces the gluten in the final product, my superior half is coeliac, but it was designed primarily to deal with haze, hence the name. When mashing your own grain there are factors that can lead to unclear beer, which I don't fully understand. That said, I've had plenty of clear AG brews, even without knowing how.