I’m brewing my first doppel bock in the morning. Very similar recipe to the one from classic styles. Just racked pils off the bavarian lager yeast cakes so they’ll be ready to recieve the new wort.
Any suggestions for a water profile?
It’s about a 33 lb grist bill and I’ll BIAB it so I’ll post some pics here tomorrow of the system and the ratchet lift I use to pull the bag.
EDITED TO CORRECT ACTUAL WEIGHT OF GRAIN BILL.
Danny, first, that pic of you certainly has changed! I can see the new year has not been to good to ya! 
What program are you using? I think it’s Bru’n water… If so I use the SRM chart and would shoot for the ‘balanced’ profile. Sure you think you want malty but I think the grain bill and hop schedule is already established for that.
That’s my boy Brutus trying to convince me to let him eat the spent grains.
Yea I use brunwater. I’ve been using the water profiles by color but recently i’ve heard people using the german city profiles so I was just curious what others are doing.
Funny that I’m doing a doppelbock today also. I’ll be pulling 30# of grain. I’ll let you know how that goes. If I get better than expected efficiency I’ll make it a 13 gallon batch instead of 10.
Got a cold that worsened overnight with a poor night’s rest. Trying to work up the energy to get going. Not sure it’s going to happen today as planned. We’ll see.
The steam will be good for you.
Tough mashing in. Good thing I took@rebuiltcellars advice and used one of those joint compound stirrers on my drill to mash in. Between that my wife and paddle she’s sitting at 151 now with what I think is a good stir.
we used the Munich profile in Bru’n. Been lagering 7 weeks now. Will probably be 9ish by the time I have kegs freed up, so probably a solid 11-week lagering by the time I drink it. Nice.
Still haven’t gotten around to brewing mine. Hopefully tomorrow.
I pitched 34/70 slurry. According to the pitch rate calculator I under pitched a wee bit but it took off aggressively so not worried. I got 69% efficiency. Not surprised with that much grain in biab
I have about 32 ounces of 34/70 slurry available to pitch this weekend for a Bock. How much did you need for 10 gallons?
I have two bavarian lager yeast cakes from 10 gals of pils that I’ll be pitching to.
For my bock which was .072 I needed about 800 ml so you should be good
Finally got around to brewing the doppel bock. Boiling as I type.
33 lb grain bill was definitlely getting close to the limits of my BIAB system. Green Bay Rackers “can I mash it” calculated I’d need 12.5 gallons of space…haha…It was closer to 14 and change in my 16 gallon BK/MT.
Pulling the bag proved a bit problematic…my pulley, wieight capacity of 250 lbs, wasn’t very helpful or I wasn’t strong enough…had to stand on a stool next to the kettle and lift with one hand while pulling the rope with the other…then lowering it was not much fun either…but I got it done. If I want to do grain bills this size BIAB again I’ll have to get a power hoist of some kind. I’m too old for this shite.
Efficiency was definitely lower than my norm for BIAB. 77% which isn’t bad by any standard but I’m usually in the 90s. I’ve heard people say bigger grain bills BIAB tend to be lower efficiency. I’m guessing it’s due to the sparge not rinsing ALL the grains like it would in a batch sparge where you could fill and stir. Still I’ll take it for this one. Next time I brew this I may break out the ole cheap n’ easy tun.
What kind of efficiency did you get with your mash. I got about 69%. It was thick. I could use more mash water and less sparge but I don’t think that would help efficiency.
My mash efficiency was 73.9 compared to my last brew, a pils, which was over 100 according to BS2.
My mash was thicker than usual too of course to fit it in the kettle. 1.25 qt/lb versus the pils which was 2.1 qt/lb. My sparge water may have been cooler than usual because it was cold out and I didn’t check the temp, I did run the sparge faster than I usually do to get my preboil, both because it was cold and late and I’m still trying to shake this bad cold…so maybe I’m partially to blame but I can still see how it’s harder to sparge a larger than usual grain bill in this manner.
Sorry I thought you meant your normally got 77%. I’ve never gotten 90% biab. Can you expand on your process. I can’t see your whole pully system but I think more line would give you better leverage
No I get much higher efficiency. I mash in the 1.5-1.75 qt/lb range typically. While mashing I heat sparge water in the HLT generally to boiling point so I can pump it through the system and sanitize the lines, pump, chiller, etc. Once the mash is complete I pull the bag and let it drain. The sparge water is usually cooled to 190 or less by now. I hold the end of the tubing in the top of the bag and pump water into the grain bed trying to distribute it all around the top and let it filter through until I get my pre-boil volume.
Nothing special really but I think the sparge makes a huge difference in efficiency for BIAB. Before I got the pump I did it with a 2 qt pyrex pitcher
I mashed 30# with 12.5 gallons of water which left 3gallons for sparge. Maybe I left a lot on the grain. That might have been the problem.
