Help me understand what's happening?

[rjanson]

I had a free day yesterday and got to spend it putting my new rig to work making my first BIAB batch. I'm getting my head wrapped around it, but as everyone knows there's a lot to process!

I used Brewer's Friend and because this is my first brew I had to go with some estimates on what my efficiency would be, thus the suggested starting volumes.

Recipe:
Brew Method: BIAB
Style Name: American IPA
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 5.5 gallons (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 7.5 gallons
Boil Gravity: 1.036
Efficiency: 50% (brew house)


STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.049
Final Gravity: 1.011
ABV (standard): 4.88%
IBU (tinseth): 142.18
SRM (morey): 6.38

FERMENTABLES:
13 lb - American - Pale 2-Row (89.7%)
8 oz - American - White Wheat (3.4%)
8 oz - American - Carapils (Dextrine Malt) (3.4%)
8 oz - American - Caramel / Crystal 40L (3.4%)

HOPS:
2 oz - Magnum, Type: Pellet, AA: 15, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 117.95
0.5 oz - Cascade, Type: Pellet, AA: 7, Use: Boil for 30 min, IBU: 10.58
1 oz - Cascade, Type: Pellet, AA: 7, Use: Aroma for 15 min, IBU: 13.66
0.5 oz - Cascade, Type: Pellet, AA: 7, Use: Dry Hop for 7 days
1 oz - Willamette, Type: Pellet, AA: 4.5, Use: Dry Hop for 7 days

YEAST:
White Labs - California Ale Yeast WLP001
Starter: No
Form: Liquid
Attenuation (avg): 76.5%
Flocculation: Medium
Optimum Temp: 68 - 73 F
Fermentation Temp: 70 F

Steps:

• Heated 8.94 gallons of water to 154
• Lined kettle with bag, added grains and stirred
• Covered and monitored temp which quickly fell to 144
• Filled a pot with pre-wort from the kettle valve and brought to 200 degrees on a separate burner, added back to kettle which raised temp to 152, where it held fairly steady over the next hour, eventually falling to 148 at the end of the 60 minutes.
• Stirred grains every 15 minutes
• After an hour, removed grain bag and let it drain back into kettle, helped along with some squeezing of the bag to force more wort out.
• At this point I've got 8 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.043
• Brought wort to a boil, added hops to a bag and started 60 minute timer
• Added hops to same bag at 30 minutes
• Added hops to same bag at 15 minutes
• Added wort chiller at 10 minutes, temp fell to 200 for a few minutes, then resumed boiling
• At this point I had a slight boilover and had to reduce the output of the burner
• Added 1 whirlfloc tab at 5 minutes
• Flameout at 0 minutes
  
• Connected wort chiller to water source and began chilling
• Connected pump to recirculator
• Removed hops bag and squeezed some of the wort out
• Chilled wort down to 70 in about 10-15 minutes (didn't time this step)
• Removed chiller
• At this point I've got 6 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.053
• Transferred cooled wort to clean and sterile 6.5gal carboy
• Pumped oxygen for five minutes into carboy
• Gave the carboy a shake for good measure
• Added Yeast
• One more good luck shake to get some of the yeast off the sides of the carboy
• Filled 3 piece plastic airlock with star-san solution and stuck into the stopper on the carboy
• Carboy in shady corner of garage with a pretty stable temp of about 70
• Checked this morning and there is vigorous activity

Brewer's friend tells me I have a conversion efficiency of 69.1%, pre-boil efficiency of 64%, Kettle efficiency of 59% and Brew House efficiency of 49%. This is the part I'm not clear on in regards to these numbers. Do they sound right? Are they good or bad, can I do something differently in the future? How will they affect this batch of beer?

Any comments or insight are greatly appreciated.

 

[m1k3]

Efficiency is a number that you have to know to be able to create repeatable recipes moving forward that is all.

I do not do BIAB but most people who do say their numbers are close to what I get Batch Sparging. (you numbers appear to be a little low)

I would expect to get more that 1.049 from a recipe with 13# of base malt.

 

[kombat]

Did you oxygenate for 5 minutes, or aerate for 5 minutes? Because if you were using pure oxygen, you very likely over-oxygenated. 1 minute of pure oxygen is generally more than enough for a standard gravity ale. I go 90 seconds for my lagers. 5 minutes would be way too much for either. If you were aerating, on the other hand, you're fine, since (AFAIK) it's impossible to over-aerate. The wort will saturate at 8 ppm and not take any more air into solution.

 

[CU_tony]

Ive found with BIAB I have been surpassing the default %70 efficiency so far, Ive upped my brewhouse efficiency to %80 so Im not getting high grav brews from a standard recipe.

I also do a cold sparge of sorts where after the bag has dripped for a few minutes, i pour 4+cups (enough to get to boil volume) of RO water over the bag slowly to get some delicious wort out, and cool it down for a healthy squeeze!

 

[rjanson]

Efficiency is a number that you have to know to be able to create repeatable recipes moving forward that is all.

I do not do BIAB but most people who do say their numbers are close to what I get Batch Sparging. (you numbers appear to be a little low)

I would expect to get more that 1.049 from a recipe with 13# of base malt.

Good call, the recipe has an OG of 1.065-1.069, so I'm clearly short of that. Is that directly related to not keeping a steady 154 degrees while mashing?

 

[rjanson]

Did you oxygenate for 5 minutes, or aerate for 5 minutes? Because if you were using pure oxygen, you very likely over-oxygenated. 1 minute of pure oxygen is generally more than enough for a standard gravity ale. I go 90 seconds for my lagers. 5 minutes would be way too much for either. If you were aerating, on the other hand, you're fine, since (AFAIK) it's impossible to over-aerate. The wort will saturate at 8 ppm and not take any more air into solution.

Good catch, I was aerating with a pump and diffusion stone.

 

[rjanson]

Ive found with BIAB I have been surpassing the default %70 efficiency so far, Ive upped my brewhouse efficiency to %80 so Im not getting high grav brews from a standard recipe.

I also do a cold sparge of sorts where after the bag has dripped for a few minutes, i pour 4+cups (enough to get to boil volume) of RO water over the bag slowly to get some delicious wort out, and cool it down for a healthy squeeze!

When you do this, do you have to change your water calculations elsewhere? Less strike water to begin with?

I considered doing something like this as well, but figured I would try to keep it as simple as possible first time around.

 

[JimRausch]

Conversion(mash) efficiency of 69% for a 1st time using the BIAB method is pretty good. With practice and finetuning the grain crush, that will increase a little-maybe up to 70-75%. Mash efficiency I do keep track of, because if I'm low, then I know I'll need to add some DME. The rest of the %s I don't bother with. And think about it- the recipe predicted an OG of 1.049 and you achieved a 1.053. That's the most important number of all. You done good!

 

[m1k3]

Good call, the recipe has an OG of 1.065-1.069, so I'm clearly short of that. Is that directly related to not keeping a steady 154 degrees while mashing?

The crush of the grain can have a huge effect.

My efficiency went up a bunch when I started to mill my own grains. Brew House efficiency is also affected by any losses of wort in the process. (but you need a good measurement of volumes to get reliable efficiency numbers).

Again... you want a repeatable process and there is more important things than chasing efficiency, just saying it's a bit low. As you noted the recipe expected a higher OG.

It is nice to be in the middle of the road for efficiency. I can now brew a recipe out of a book/magazine and be in the ball park that they expect for homebrewers.

 

[CU_tony]

I dont have my brewbook with notes in it ATM, but I started off note taking with 2gal batches

double crush grain (at LHBS so no clue what metric to use to measure that)
~3gal strike
mash 90 min
"cold sparge" to top off to 3.25 gal and squeeze
bring to boil for 60 min
cool and rack to primary

I cant say this is "the right way" or the best way, but its the flow that Ive developed that Ive been happy with my results so far.
Im now in the market for a new larger BK so my process will change as I get used to that.