First BIAB was a success!

[hio3791]

I've been brewing AG for a long time, mostly 10 gal batches. I've been curious to try BIAB so I ordered a bag from Mr. Wilser (great quality on your products!) and did my first BIAB Saturday evening. I did a 5 gal batch of EdWort's Robust Porter in my 15.5 gal eKettle. Here are my notes:

Traditional Mash Tun calculations don't quite apply to BIAB.

1. I heated up 8.75 gal to 170, killed the heat, inserted the bag and added the grains. After thorough stirring, the wort was still at around 165 so I had to add quite a bit of ice to bring it down. With a MT, I would have a temperature loss transferring the hot water and preheating the MT itself. Next time, I'll shoot for a lower strike temperature.

2. After the mash was done, I raised the bag with a ratchet strap and suspended it so that it would continue to drain into the kettle. I ended up collecting 7.7 gal. On a 14 lb grain bill, I only lost 1.1 gal to absorption... But since I was using the wrong calculations, I was expecting approx 6.75 gal preboil (1.75 gal in absorption and 0.25 gal in losses). I had to boil, aggressively, for a little while to bring down that volume.

Other notes:

1. I need paper binders or some other trick to hold the bag for me while stirring.

2. When the mash hit 154, I put the lid on. After an hour, it was at 152. I was pleasantly surprised that my kettle maintained that temperature since it's not insulated and since I didn't fire the element.

So, aside from the fact that I lost about an hour between lowering the mash from 165 to 154 and running the boil for around 90 min to evaporate enough liquid, BIAB was a success. In terms of equipment use and cleaning, it was simpler and that made the experience much more enjoyable.

I would like to be able to brew a 10 gal BIAB batch but with my 15.5 eKettle, I would need to sparge in order to achieve that volume. This batch was a "pilot" batch to get my feet wet with BIAB.

Oh, and by the way, I ended up with 6.1 gal at 1.070 for brewhouse efficiency of 84%!

Looking forward to many more!

 

[RM-MN]

Congratulations on your success! For sure you need to start with cooler strike temps, mostly because you are using a much larger amount of water for the amount of grains so the grains cannot cool the water like they would if you used the 1.25 qts/lb. For a no sparge batch, I would be looking for about 162 strike temp. with room temp grains.

As you have found out, you lose very little wort to the grains as you can squeeze most of it out/let drain while hanging. Since you had the bag of grains hanging right above the kettle to drain, sparging can be as simple as pouring water on the bag of grains. I like to open the bag and pour directly into the grains but apparently from other peoples' reports just pouring the water on the outside of the bag accomplishes the same. That would allow you to do the 10 gallon batch as you could mash with the water that would fir the kettle and then sparge to the proper pre-boil amount.

Congratulations are also in order for accomplishing such a high efficiency. Woohoo!