My first AG/BIAB

Mashing
1

Going for my first AG/BIAB today. Split my mash into two kettles, my old five gal and my eight gal boil kettle. Went with my SNPA Clone, the one discussed extensively on the Recipe forum, as I can find fresh SNPA for comparison, and my extract clones were pretty successful. I managed to make wort, and have the SG samples from each kettle, as well as the total wort, cooling down in the fridge so I can take hydro samples to find my pre-boil OG.

My only failure, was that I didn’t take one obvious factor into consideration, which is the amount of water the grain would absorb. Basically, I used 6 gals for a five gallon batch. This is my standard amount for ex/grain and it always landed my with 5 gals of beer after boil off. Now, I have 5 gals of wort, so I;m obviously going to be boiling this brew down and will likely end up with less beer and a higher OG then SNPA. Don’t have anymore bottled water, and my local water is gross so I’m just going with this brew. Unsure if I’m going to adjust hop additions or anything like that, or if I’ll just have the IBUs ramped up to a more IPA level. We’ll see how it goes, but overall I think this was a success, would just up the water by a gallon next time around. I’ll post an update with the pre-boil SG’s later to see what kind of efficiency I got.

Cheers everyone!!!

2

Id just brew like normal and not worry. You wont necessarily make the beer you were looking for but youll have a beer in the end.

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Grain absorbs about 1/8 of a gallon per lb. If you’re not sparging, then just multiply the total weight of the grain by 1/8 and add that extra water to the mash. So for six gallons in the kettle with 10 lbs of grain, you’d mash with 6 + 10/8 = 7.25 gallons total.

4

Thanks for the replies. Yeah I can’t believe what a huge oversight I had on my part (water absorption). As far as SG’s for the two mashes and the wort itself pre-boil.

With three gallons of water in a five gallon kettle, and 5.5 lbs 2-row pale and .5 lb. of Crystal 60 I got a SG of 1.060.

With the same water and grain in an eight gallon kettle (is wider than the 5, hence the water lays shallower, I had a SG of 1.051.

The pre-boil SG, after blending the two, came to 1.055.

I may just continue as usual, however I think more IBUs are necessary if the OG is going to be in IPA Range. Can anyone comment on what it may be (without my boil off rate etc, never measured)? It’s a 75 min rolling boil starting with the above OG in an eight gallon SS kettle.

Thanks.

5

OK, beer’s in the fermenter, and the results…

I ended up with 3.5 gallons of beer. Went with my gut, and threw together a quick IPA hop bill with what I had on hand from the SNPA clone recipe, as I figured the OG would be pretty high after boil off. So the recipe ended up being as follows as follows.

3.5 Gallons

11 lbs. Rahr 2-row pale
1 lb. Briess Crystal 60

Mashed as close to 152 as I could, BIAB style.

Boiled for a little over 75 minutes, as I deliberated on how to proceed.

Hops

60 - .5 oz Magnum @13.1%
40 - .25 0z Perle @6.5%
30 - .5 Perle @6.5%
20 - 1 Cascade @6.4%
10 - 1 Cascade @6.4%

Going to toss the last 1 oz of Cascade in the keg dry.

Total IBU’s (Tinseth, calculated by IBrewMaster) at 79.58

Yeast is a starter prepared with 1.056. Standard starter for a standard gravity 5 gallon batch, so hopefully my pitch rate is decent.

I ended up with an OG around 1.078, so I’m in technically in DIPA range, OG and IBU wise. I don’t really like the idea of the Pearle in this style, and I would’ve just left them out and upped the Magnum, plus tossed the other ounce of Cascade in the boil, but I didn’t realize until I decided to up the IBU’s that I had absent-mindedly tossed the remaining half ounce of Magnum in the garbage. Hence, the 40 min Perle addition to add some more IBU, and the moving Cascade additions back to 20 and 10, to make Cascade flavor more evident, while upping the IBUs as well.

I guess this’ll almost be SNPA after a few cycles of steroids. Hopefully it’ll be a good beer. I may buy a variety of hops and toss them in dry, just to make the hop aroma huge and more complex, or I may just toss the ounce of Cascade in. Either way, I’m glad I tried BIAB, and I think the knowledge I gained here will allow me to do this more successfully in the future. All I have to hope now is that the wort I managed to extract is pretty fermentable, so this beer dries out nicely. I tried to keep the mash temp low, so we’ll see.

Either way, I invite everyone raise a pint to my creation of Mash Mishap IPA, my first AG batch!!!

Cheers everyone!