I want to take my first baby step into all grain brewing, and I thought that doing a BIAB recipe may be a good way to do so. The recipe for the Oatmeal Cookie Brown Ale looks pretty good, and should be a good beer for the holidays.
I noticed however, that this is only a 3 gallon recipe. Would there be any way of converting this to a 5 gallon recipe? If so, how much additional grist would I need? I would imagine that increasing each ingredient by 2/3 would give me what I need for a 5 gallon batch, but being as that I’ve never done an all-grain brew, I’m not sure if I’m overlooking anything.
Any thoughts are appreciated. I suppose, if nothing else, I could always just do two 3-gallon batches and have an extra gallon of beer!
Thanks for the tip! Do I need to worry about rinsing, or sparging, the grist when doing a BIAB brew? I’m curious because I’ve seen many videos online of folks who will remove their grist from the mash tun, and run hot water over it in a strainer to sparge out any trapped sugars. I only ask because the NB recipe I posted above makes no mention of doing this.
I do a sparge when I BIAB, I find it definitely helps efficiency and you can definitely grab a few more gravity points. For a 5 gallon batch, I just heat up about 2 gallons of water to 170*, keep it in a spare, clean ale pail, pull the brew bag out of the mash, and let it sit in the ale pail for 10 minutes. You can also use this time to heat your main kettle and start bringing it up to a boil.
If you decide to do 5 gal. BIAB, a great tool for recipe creation or conversion is Beersmith2. You can copy a recipe & scale it to any size, or as i’ve been doing, come up with your own. I think it’s a great investment for about $25. Also, make sure you have a 10 gal. kettle as you’ll need about 8.5 gal. of water for a batch. This will require a gas burner for best results. I sparge with a gal. or so of 170 deg. water also to get the most out of it. Have fun & good luck! :cheers:
Thanks for the advice. I think I’ll have to look in to getting that! I’ve already got a 10 gallon kettle and Banjo burner, so it seems like I’m just one resource away from getting creative. :cheers:
Quick update, I bought my grains (which came out to be about 13 lbs. total), and I found a nice big 29" x 29" grain bag to hold them. What is the best way to sparge a 5 gallon batch? I have a metal strainer that could go over the kettle, but I doubt it will hold 13 lbs of grist (probably close to 30 lbs when wet).
I prefer a no-sparge BIAB. I put my grain bag in a bucket with a bunch of holes in the bottom (basically a strainer); put this in a collection bucket, and place a third bucket on top (plunger bucket). I sit on the lid of the plunger bucket for about a minute, which extracts between 0.5-1 gallon of wort. No sparge needed, and my grains are squeezed (squoozed? squozen?) nearly dry.
After mashing, i raise the bag (have had up to 14 lbs. grain) & let it drain for a few minutes. I made a boat winch/pulley setup that works slick! Also lifts deer nicely! Then i lower it onto a grill grate placed on the kettle (no-never used on a grill!). I then slowly pour a gal. of 170 deg. water over the grain to sparge. After it drains for awhile, squeeze the crap out of it with a saucepan lid. Takes a little time but works well.
I appreciate the advice. I could be wrong, but I thought you were never supposed to squeeze your grist after mashing? Granted, I’m going off of the original instructional video that I got from NB with my starter kit a while back, and they were teaching how to brew an extract kit, but one of the things they said was that squeezing out your specialty grain bags would release unwanted tanins into your wort. I’m assuming this is not the case with all grain?
I appreciate the advice. I could be wrong, but I thought you were never supposed to squeeze your grist after mashing? Granted, I’m going off of the original instructional video that I got from NB with my starter kit a while back, and they were teaching how to brew an extract kit, but one of the things they said was that squeezing out your specialty grain bags would release unwanted tanins into your wort. I’m assuming this is not the case with all grain?[/quote]
Tannin extraction from squeezing is one of those homebrew myths that has been beat to death. Tannin extraction is a factor of pH, not mechanical handling. Some breweries even use a grain press. From what I understand; the grain-squeeze myth was a theoretical assumption based on over-sparging. IE; oversparging extracts much more of the sugars, but also released tannins. Therefore squeezing the crap out of a grain bag to extract more sugars would theoretically release tannins in a similar way. However, the tannin issue is due to the the change in pH balance that occurs with oversparging, while mechanical handling has no effect on pH. Hopefully that makes sense how I wrote that out…
I appreciate the advice. I could be wrong, but I thought you were never supposed to squeeze your grist after mashing? Granted, I’m going off of the original instructional video that I got from NB with my starter kit a while back, and they were teaching how to brew an extract kit, but one of the things they said was that squeezing out your specialty grain bags would release unwanted tanins into your wort. I’m assuming this is not the case with all grain?[/quote]
Tannin extraction from squeezing is one of those homebrew myths that has been beat to death. Tannin extraction is a factor of pH, not mechanical handling. Some breweries even use a grain press. From what I understand; the grain-squeeze myth was a theoretical assumption based on over-sparging. IE; oversparging extracts much more of the sugars, but also released tannins. Therefore squeezing the crap out of a grain bag to extract more sugars would theoretically release tannins in a similar way. However, the tannin issue is due to the the change in pH balance that occurs with oversparging, while mechanical handling has no effect on pH. Hopefully that makes sense how I wrote that out…[/quote]
It does, and thank you for the clarification! So based on the advice I’ve gotten, I’m thinking if I start with 5 gallons of water pre-mash, sparging with about a gallon of hot water and pressing the grist, I should have enough to come out with about a 5 gallon batch (factoring in a bit extra that will be lost during the boil). Does that seem sound?
Your volume losses will depend on your system and processes, which you won’t be able to fine tune until you’ve plunged into a few brews. I usually lose 0.5 gallon to the mash, one gallon to the boil, 0.5 gallons that I leave behind in the boil kettle to reduce hops/trub in the fermenter, and finally 0.5 gallons fermentation trub that I leave behind; so my normal process:
Start with 6.5-7 gallons (depending on grain bill)
6 gallons after BIAB
5 gallons after boil
4.5 gallons in the fermenter
4 gallons in serving keg
My process is similar, starting with about 7 1/3 gal. & 1 gal. sparge. After boiling,cooling, transfer to fermenter, i end up with about 5 1/2 gal. in fermenter & 5+ in bottles. It took a couple batches to dial it in. Your setup may be a little different as already stated. :cheers:
