10 litre boil in a bag all grain brewing

[bionara]

I've spent the last 6 months brewing from the canned kits, but now I am ready for the next step! After much research, I bought a small pan (11litres), various cracked grains (all in all about 4kg), some hops (2 kinds: challenger and fuggles), some packets of dried yeast (nottingham ale and golden something), and finally a big mesh bag thing.

Would one of you guys be able to help me out with a simple how to boil in the bag and general quantities (weight) of grain using a 10-11 litre pan.

eg: 9L water, 2kg total wheat (% mix for recipe, eg 50% pale, 50% dark). Boil x minutes and then do...

Total beginner here with grains. Hoping that you guys can help me out as google search yields only instructions etc for bigger brews and experienced brewers.

 

[chickypad]

Welcome!
Just to get the teminology straight, BIAB stands for brew in a bag - you don't boil the grains. What you are really doing in the bag is mashing.
I would suggest you start with reading this section of John Palmer's How to Brew (or better yet buy the new version). It will explain the mash process. It's important to understand the bascis here because all your fermentables are coming from grain with no extract to fall back on.

With BIAB some folks do a full volume mash with no sparging, in which case you usually need a pot at least double your batch size. If you sparge you can do a little bit bigger batch. With your pot I think you're going to be limited to under 2 gallon batches. Which is fine if that's what you want, there are a bunch of 1 gallon brewers on here and many of the online vendors like Northern Brewer sell 1 gallon all grain kits.

As far as procedure, the 2 sticky's below show the basic technique for BIAB full volume mash and BIAB with sparge technique (the second sticky is actually Deathbrewer's procedure for partial mash, but it is the same for small batch all grain - you just use a little less water and you wouldn't add the extact at the end).

BIAB full volume - sticky in BIAB forum

Partial mash - sticky in Beginner's forum

Once you get this down folks can help you with recipes and water volumes, or you could go with one of the small batch kits which should give directions.

 

[ong]

You can always divide a larger recipe, too! If you're doing a 2 gallon batch, which your 11 liter pot should permit, multiply everything in a 5 gallon recipe by .4 to get your measurements.

 

[bionara]

Thanks very much for the solid advice chaps. Much appreciated. I'll read up on the links and then have a go over the weekend. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

 

[fartinmartin]

I made the same mistake as you already have, thats buying a small pot !
Mine is 19 Litres I kick myself every time I use it, I wish much much bigger (6-7 gallon)
Possible my biggest mistake in the hobby for me.

 

[bionara]

I made the same mistake as you already have, thats buying a small pot !
Mine is 19 Litres I kick myself every time I use it, I wish much much bigger (6-7 gallon)
Possible my biggest mistake in the hobby for me.

Yeah, I was aware of this but decided to stick to a smaller one for several reasons, mostly being flatspace living in London! Also keen to try and do small batches that'll let me experiment a lot more as I get going.

Of course I know I'll wish for a bigger pot 5 mins into the first boil! :rockin:

 

[NicolaiGj]

Yeah, I was aware of this but decided to stick to a smaller one for several reasons, mostly being flatspace living in London! Also keen to try and do small batches that'll let me experiment a lot more as I get going.

Of course I know I'll wish for a bigger pot 5 mins into the first boil! :rockin:

Ï had EXACTLY the same thoughts as you, small batches, experiment often, and it worked just fine. Had a 18 liter pot and brewed 10-12 liter batches, but I just had to go bigger, so now I brew 18-19 liter batches, but have to brew just as often as before!

 

[fartinmartin]

I now split my boils, I take my first runnings and some of the sparge to my bigger pot and boil the first 18 litres or so outdoors on the gas. Then I continue drawing off the sparge into our three biggest pans and boil them seperatly on the hob so thats four boils going at the same time. I then pour the lot into my fermenting bucket and put the cooler in there.
Its real pain in the * but it works.

 

[bionara]

Given that I have a 11Litre pot (about 2 gallons), how much total grain should I expect to be using?

 

[fartinmartin]

Not much more than 1Kg