Newbie BIAB brewdays

[An Ankoù]

I've enjoyed the last two pales I've brewed although I detect a hint of something a bit mediinal in there and I have a suspicion it was either my cleaner (chemipro oxi) or chlorine in the water. So this time I have used half a Campden tablet in my water before mashing for the first time.

DOn'[t forget to put the other half of the Camden tablet in the sparge water (unless you do no-sparge, of course).

 

[dwhite60]

Beer I brewed in October was my second BIAB. I was surprised when my efficiency came out to 85 percent.

Thinking the October batch was a fluke I brewed again this past Saturday, similar recipe and process. Again I hit 85 percent. Had to dilute my batch to get the gravity I wanted so I've got more beer.

My mash / sparge process I normally got 70 to 72 percent efficiency.

Are you crushing your own grain? Homebrew stores crush for traditional mash and sparge. You can crush extra fine with BIAB. I have my mill set at 0.7mm for BIAB. Finer grind will increase efficiency. Check your crush.

Oats do get sticky as others said and can cause problems.

All the Best,
D. White

 

[Petegriffin]

Thanks Matt and others,

I think you're right and it's just efficiency. I am curious what I can do to improve that however so thanks for the idea on the crush. I get it crushed by the shop (homebrewcompany.co.uk) so I'll ask what they suggest. I don't think I'm on the scale to by a mill yet and I'm a little paranoid about keeping grain stored due to the risk of mice in the garage.

I'm expecting to be very happy with the 5% IPA, but I'm just keen to know what I'm going to get out and work on consistency. Matt's option 1 was what I initially thought to do, but it seems like my efficiency is very, very low so I would like to improve it if possible to open up the options for what I can brew.

Interesting to hear the sparge make so much difference. I could quite easily add that step with another cheap boiler but I think I'd rather just move from BIAB if I need to spend on more vessels/gear. I guess I'd then need a longer boil to get the volume back down if I did opt for a dunk sparge?

I'll focus on the bag squeeze next brew as I know I can get more out but wasn't sure it's making much difference at that point or if it's all just as sweet as the last few ml. The only experiment I can find on it uses a hoist to drip drain the bag as the comparison so if I can't do that instead I guess a solid squeeze is the way to go. To do this I've been using a clean plastic tub to drain the bag in and press down to squeeze, transferring the resulting wort into the boiler while it's heating up.

Useful ideas as always, thanks all.

 

[dwhite60]

Sometimes running the grain through the mill twice makes it a little finer, enough to get higher efficiency.

Would not surprise me some shops crush extra coarse so people have to buy more grain to hit their target gravity.

All the Best,
D. White

 

[Petegriffin]

I finally got around to a brew after the Christmas break. I had ordered grain from Maltmiller and specified a fine crush. I also took the time to set up my Beersmith profiles to pretty much match my set up/process.

I got much better OG at 1.062 for a Cascade SMaSH IPA. It was near enough bang on the Beersmith number. I had one cock up (as always) and got caught with some bits in the house while the boil was heating up, so I didn't keep on top of it and lost a litre or so to boiling over and there's a chance I might have introduced some burnt flavour if the element got too much crud on it, fingers crossed but it smelled fine during the cool.

This was part of an experiment to work out where my chemical flavour is coming from. I still reckon it must be either my cleaning process or the water having come residual chlorine. So I have used Ashbeck water for this one for once (I don't like to have to uy so many plastic bottles normally) and I'll repeat the brew this weekend with my tap water + Campden tablet. Should give me a good stash of at worst a passable IPA and hopefully get me a step closer to fully understanding my process! Only problem is I only have the one keg, so I won't know the outcome until both brews have carbed in bottles, so I'm looking at 5 weeks from here minimum.

 

[johncrobinson]

A bit of campden should take chlorine out of the game,But from what i read on here water quality really plays an important part with beers.

 

[Petegriffin]

A bit of campden should take chlorine out of the game,But from what i read on here water quality really plays an important part with beers.

Yep, I have the spreadsheet template suggested elsewhere and my local water report to plug in to it. If the quality difference in the beers with water from Tesco and my tap is really noticeable I'll start doing a treatment on the water for each brew. I'm hoping at my level (and lack of consistency of process) I have bigger areas to focus on improving but I'm open to ideas.

While I wait on the 'results' I'll brew a couple of stouts/darker beers which I've found are affected much less.

 

[Crappyfish]

My brother got an off flavour described as astringent we put it down to over sparging cos he used to squeeze the bag really thight and sparge loads. He stopped doing it as much and the off taste went away

 

[johncrobinson]

Up here in Muir of Ord the tap water is superb taste wise.
When i lived in london in some areas it was undrinkable.
Not a suprise to find brewers commenting on thier water.