BIAB #1 – Old Nutcase Brown Ale

[Jocky]

Having brewed a number of extract based I’ve had some good beers, but there’s always been something missing. So I decided to take the step up to All Grain on my stove, brewing in a bag…

…and understand water treatment…
…and yeast handling.


The thing I’ve missed most from extract has been a sweet malty backbone – so I wanted to make a malty beer first time out.

This recipe has been taken from Randy Mosher’s ‘Radical Brewing’ – a superb book I can highly recommend, although I have used Challenger for my hops.

It’s got a fairly high starting gravity, and is mashed high (69C) so it leaves plenty of residual body.

For water treatment I’m using bottled water, but wanted to understand about carbonate reduction and adding any required salts. My Salifert alkalinity test determined I didn’t need to reduce the carbonate, but overall I could do with some additional calcium from DLS.

Yeast wise I got a vial of WLP002, split half of it into a separate sterile vial, and made a starter from the rest a few days ago using some wheat DME (it’s only 50% wheat, and quite fermentable anyway).

Note that I’m only aiming to make about 8 litres here:

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 9192.00 ml
Post Boil Volume: 7592.00 ml
Batch Size (fermenter): 8000.00 ml
Bottling Volume: 7400.00 ml
Estimated OG: 1.063 SG
Estimated Color: 31.4 EBC
Estimated IBU: 25.3 IBUs
Est Mash Efficiency: 66.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
1850.00g Mild Malt (7.9 EBC) 65.8%
850.00g Amber Malt (43.3 EBC) 30.2 %
110.00g Brown Malt (128.1 EBC) 3.9 %
9.00g Challenger [6.90 %] - Boil 60.0 min 20.0 IBUs
7.00g Challenger [6.90 %] - Boil 20.0 min 5.2 IBUs
English Ale (White Labs #WLP002)

Mash:
7700ml water @ 77C added to grain to give 69C mash
Batch (dunk) sparge in 4200ml water @ 77C

[Jocky]

Brew day went quite well. Started at 10, finished about 3pm.

I have two pots - a 19 litre pot which I can mash in, and a 11 litre pot, which is the biggest thing my stove will boil properly.

Water came up to mash temperature quicker than expected, but after doughing in the mash was 67C. Not bad - but obviously need my strike water a bit hotter in future.

Mashed for 45 minutes, with my pot insulated with my Fiancee's sleeping bag (she did give me permission). Only lost 1 degree in temperature through the mash.

First wort collected was 1.070, and I transferred the bag to my smaller pot for sparging. This was a mistake - the smaller pot is really not big enough for this, and I end up splashed with 77C wort. Ow.

After sitting in the water for 10 mins I pulled out the bag, the wort from this was 1.032, then combined the two runnings and boiled it for 60 minutes, cooled, transferred to two 5 litre plastic carboys, and now fermenting at 20C.

Wort pre boil tasted delightful - sweet and malty as hoped, a world away from the taste of dry malt extract in water. After the boil it still tasted good, cut with a nice bite of hop bitterness.

Can't wait to see how this comes out. Overall I felt that the work to mash wasn't onerous compared to the rest of the time I've taken brewing in the past, and hopefully will be worth it..

[Jocky]

End OG into the fermenter is 1.060

[Cpt.Frederickson]

Sounds like a good start. My first 3 BIABs were all stove tops in an 11 litre stockpot, and were a great start all in all. Didn't take long until I upgraded to a Buffalo though! Well worth it. I know its contentious, but I really doubt I could get better results with a 3 vessel system than with my BIAB set up.
Welcome to the Dark Side, brother

[Jocky]

I think there's refinements to be had from a 3 vessel system - lautering/vorlauf, finer control over water temperatures for various stages, but it's marginal gains.

Next step will be when I move into a larger house, hopefully later this year, after which I will brew al fresco to reduce mess, and potentially allow me to use a gas burner to increase my batch size a bit.

[RdeV]

Congratulations on taking the plunge, I'm sure it will be worthwhile and rewarding.
In terms of methods, Stovetop BIAB is as good as any All Grain, I did it for years with great results (even nabbed a few gongs, so perhaps its not quite as contentious as it once was! ) and only moved out of the kitchen to the shed with a bigger kettle so I could brew larger batches less frequently.
Curious to hear how that recipe goes, Amber is a really interesting malt IMO and I have wondered where the upper limit is, 30% seems a lot but I am yet to see any real guide on this. Also, suspect 69C mash might have been just a little high, so its probably some good fortune that it came in lower. Please keep us posted!

[timbo41]

Nice going. I've found in my burco that by slowly raising temp at mashout to around 78 I don't need to sparge seperately, I reach the pre boil grab anyway. Never worked out efficiency but can't be bad!
Opens up options of course....made a small starter last time on stove top from second runnings, just 24 hrs while no chilling,took off like a rocket. Or you could sparge to maybe 10 liters for a stove top small beer....2 for 1!

[Jocky]

Congratulations on taking the plunge, I'm sure it will be worthwhile and rewarding.
In terms of methods, Stovetop BIAB is as good as any All Grain, I did it for years with great results (even nabbed a few gongs, so perhaps its not quite as contentious as it once was! ) and only moved out of the kitchen to the shed with a bigger kettle so I could brew larger batches less frequently.
Curious to hear how that recipe goes, Amber is a really interesting malt IMO and I have wondered where the upper limit is, 30% seems a lot but I am yet to see any real guide on this. Also, suspect 69C mash might have been just a little high, so its probably some good fortune that it came in lower. Please keep us posted!

Yeah, I'll be moving up in equipment as I really want to refine my techniques to be able to lauter, remove boil trub by filtering through the hop bed etc. I don't really have the space for that right now, plus the losses from end volume are a killer.

I think the question of Amber malt quantity may depend upon the maltster - I used Crisp's amber malt, which is considerably lighter and supposed quite different in character than Fawcett's.

As for my mash temperature - the book it's from is called *Radical* Brewing! It was also a thick mash - only 2.5 litres per KG (aka 1qt/lb).

[Jocky]

Well I guess my yeast starter worked ok - plenty of bubbling this morning (14 hours after pitching), and by this evening, 12 hours later it looks like high krausen has come and gone, albeit with lots of bubbling still.

WLP002 is a rapid one.

[Jocky]

And 24 hours on it appears to be done. If it's fermented out properly WLP002 could well be the SAS of yeasts.

[Jocky]

Ferment appears to be well done. Down to 1.021, making this a touch over 5%.

Bit of a taste gives lots of toastiness and a big sweet body. A bit like an super strength brown mild.

Very nice. Couple more weeks to clear in the fermenter and then into the bottle for a month I think.

[Jocky]

Decided to bottle this now - at bottling time the gravity has dropped a bit further to 1.018.

A taste has brought all the things I was looking for - toasted malt, caramel, biscuits. There's a couple of slightly harsher notes in there from the alcohol, but that's being very critical, and this beer is meant to be aged now for a month before drinking and those will mellow.

Cannot wait for first proper taste. Going to have to sit on my hands for a few weeks.

[Deebee]

so how did this turn out. 1.018 sounded alittlehigh.

Have suffered with eithe rinpatience or incomplete fermentatin for a while now so ened up making a fermentatio fridge with some help of some of the great member here.

Best thing i ever did. It means i can leave all the brewing in the garage. Fermentation and warm conditioning done in the same place ( only one batch at a time til i get a bigger fridge..... then straight in the brewery shelves for cold conditioning.

The incomplete fermetation resulted in some spectagular Geisers:)

[Jocky]

The high FG was quite intentional - it was mashed high and thick to achieve this. In any other beer the high amount of Amber malt would probably make it unpleasantly astringent, but the residual sugars in this take the edge off, just giving you malt, malt and malt, and a slight reminder of the 5.5% strength.

I shared a bottle with a friend the week following bottling, and it was pretty gorgeous. Lots of malt on the nose, lots more in the mouth. Everything I wanted from moving to all grain brewing, but I think it'll need another 2-3 weeks before it's properly done conditioning.

In future I'd like to up the hops a little at both ends and add some additional sugar to boost this to 6% or even 7%, maybe adding a single decoction in too to create some kind of 'Dubbel Mild'.

[Jocky]

Tried this back to back tonight against The Kernel brewery's own Brown Ale.

Admittedly it's one of their weakest ales, but still... Jocky wins.