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BIAB 1 vrs BIAB 2

Northern Brewer General
#1

Decided to try all grain BIAB style and brewed my 2nd batch this past weekend.
I’m working with a smooth top electric range for what it’s worth.

1st batch (an IPA) I only had 58% efficiency with 7lbs of base malt. In being too anal I tried to control the temperature too much during the 90min and ended up varying the temperature too much. Started with 5 gallons and ended a hair about 3 gallons with an OG of 1.058. It is now at 1.008 and is dry hopped and will be putting it in the garage to cool it before bottling to get the hops to drop. Taste test was okay, not as malty as the extract/partial mash recipes I’ve been doing which is fine.

Yesterday I brewed a Brown Ale with 7-3/4 lb of base male. Started with 5 gallons and ended with 3-1/2 gallons with an OG of 1.073 for an efficiency of 79%.
What I did different this time?

The biggest factor and thanks to suggestions made on this forum I ran the grain through the mill twice at the NB store.
I used two bags instead of one to make the end procedure a little easier. I heated up 4 gallons to 160 mixed in the grains moved the pot off of the hot burner, wrapped the pot with my wife’s fleece blankets. The temperature started at 156 and after 90 minutes it finished at 150 and I didn’t mess with it for the whole period. This was nice because it gave me a chance to clean the house a little.
I heated up a gallon of water to about 175 and started dunking the bags in that water one at a time to rinse the sugars out the best I could. Then I squeezed them out over a pail and added both to the boil.
Seemed to work out well except for the hole I put in one of my wife’s blanket because it touched the hot burner :mrgreen:

Our water is really bad here and we have a softener so I have been using a combination of Ice mountain spring and drinking water.

Any suggestions would be appreciated and one question would be, was it worth it to rinse the grain like I did or should I just skip that and drain the grain out the best I can?

#2

I’m curious how you made two bags work.

I brewed the largest BIAB yet (8.25 lbs) and it FILLED my grain bag to the point I couldn’t tie a knot in it at the end. I ended up clipping on a bag clip to hold it closed and carefully dealt with it, but wasn’t as careful as I had hoped. I used 4 pint glasses heated in the microwave to sparge my grains in a metal mesh colander, and had water run around the handle and onto my finger. Burned the heck out of myself!!! Now I’m using this pretty pink silicone pot grabber thingy.

I’m looking for one in a prettier color than pink…

#3

Both of my bags will fit the opening of my 8 gallon pot. So I use a bungee cord to hold 1/2 the circumference of each bag to the pot, worked pretty well…
The Micro wave idea sounds good, thanks…

#4

hi ,sounds like all went well. how did you deal with the cold break after the boil? I also used store water a lot until I found out that some of the so called spring water was nothing more then r.o. with too high of salts to be called r.o. that’s why they sell it as spring water, but spring water should really have much higher mineral levels then what most store water has in it. this brings up the ? as to your water profile that you had with the mix. I went through all this in the last few months so though I would let you know. sorry if I’m getting to technical . In the end if the beer tastes good congratulations

#5

[quote=“Brew1”]Decided to try all drain BIAB style and brewed my 2nd batch this past weekend.
I’m working with a smooth top electric range for what it’s worth.

1st batch (an IPA) I only had 58% efficiency with 7lbs of base malt. In being too anal I tried to control the temperature too much during the 90min and ended up varying the temperature too much. Started with 5 gallons and ended a hair about 3 gallons with an OG of 1.058. It is now at 1.008 and is dry hopped and will be putting it in the garage to cool it before bottling to get the hops to drop. Taste test was okay, not as malty as the extract/partial mash recipes I’ve been doing which is fine.

Yesterday I brewed a Brown Ale with 7-3/4 lb of base male. Started with 5 gallons and ended with 3-1/2 gallons with an OG of 1.073 for an efficiency of 79%.
What I did different this time?

The biggest factor and thanks to suggestions made on this forum I ran the grain through the mill twice at the NB store.
I used two bags instead of one to make the end procedure a little easier. I heated up 4 gallons to 160 mixed in the grains moved the pot off of the hot burner, wrapped the pot with my wife’s fleece blankets. The temperature started at 156 and after 90 minutes it finished at 150 and I didn’t mess with it for the whole period. This was nice because it gave me a chance to clean the house a little.
I heated up a gallon of water to about 175 and started dunking the bags in that water one at a time to rinse the sugars out the best I could. Then I squeezed them out over a pail and added both to the boil.
Seemed to work out well except for the hole I put in one of my wife’s blanket because it touched the hot burner :mrgreen:

Our water is really bad here and we have a softener so I have been using a combination of Ice mountain spring and drinking water.

Any suggestions would be appreciated and one question would be, was it worth it to rinse the grain like I did or should I just skip that and drain the grain out the best I can?[/quote]

The dunking of your bags into 175 water is what’s called a sparge. I BIAB most of my brews outside on a propane burner in a 9 gal kettle. When I pull the bag I rest it on a metal grate over the kettle and pour 190 degree (because the grain and ambient air will cool to appr 170ish) sparge water over it then squeeze the hell out of it. That sparge and squeezing of the bag will definitely get you a few more efficiency points and is likely where much of your difference came from.

Congrats on the move to all grain! :cheers:

#6

Water will be my next step. I found the water profiles for the Ice Mountain stuff but haven’t taken the time yet to figure out what I’m looking at or need in brewing water.

I use an immersion chiller, probably took about 10 minutes to get it down to 70 degrees. I move it back and fourth slowly to help with heat transfer otherwise it would take a lot longer

#7

Speaking of water, I found this report on Ice Mountain’s website.

http://www.nestle-watersna.com/asset-library/documents/im_bwqr.pdf

It’s a little confusing to me because it looks like the tested levels are ranges so you really never know exactly what you are getting.
Calcium 12 - 66
Sodium 2.2 - 5.5
Potassium .68 - 1.4
Magnesium 4 - 22
Bicarbonate 15 - 210
Nitrate .55 - 1.8
CI 3.8 - 8.9
pH 6.41 - 7.98
Sulfate 11 - 23
TDS 74 - 250

So to start with do you just worry about getting the pH level down a bit?

#8

I’m not clear on your 2 bag setup. Are you saying that you run a bungee across your pot and then clip one side of the bag to it and wrap the other portion around half of the pot’s lip?

#9

Maybe later I can take a photo that will show how I did it but I’ll try to explain better.

1/2 of each bag will go over the lip of the kettle and then I put the bungee cord around the circumference of the kettle right under the lip to hold them both in place. This allowed me to pour 1/2 the grain bill into each compartment and have access to stir the grain at the start of the mashing process.

Don’t know if this will help, top view on the left, side view on the right.

#10

Gotcha!

Cool idea! I may have to steal that from you as 8.25 lbs was just a bit too much for me to handle.

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