bought a bigger pan

[filet o fish]

So have just taken delivery of a 33 litre pan, muchas gracious senior malty miller.

Presumably for the best temprature retention during mashing it needs to be full to the brim.

Would you think that the grain bill needs to be scalled up a bit ?

I had been doing 23 brews in a 20 litre pan , and getting a concentrated wort that i then dilluted down to the target OG in the fermentor.

My guess is with taking the grain out and evaporation it should be about right.

its going to be duechars clone from BYOBA .

cheers

filet o fish.

[filet o fish]

so, not so good.

mashed my 3.5kg odd grain in the pan full to the brim got a gravity of 1030 , wanted 1038. Boil brought it down to 1037 so okay but only ended up wiht 15 litres. Will do a couple of sparges next time.

It doesnt seem possible to me but would less water be more efficient at getting the goodness from the grains ?

[potatoes]

so, not so good.

It doesnt seem possible to me but would less water be more efficient at getting the goodness from the grains ?

The ratio on howtobrew.com http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter18-2.html is 1.5 quarts water to 1 pound of grain. Or in metric, about 1.7 litres for every 450grams. If you are doing a Maxi- BIAB you would start off with 3.5 Kg grains and 13.2 litres of water. Then sparge to get your desired OG. What was your ratio?

[filet o fish]

thanks potatoes.

i didnt specifically calculate a ratio of grain to water just filled the pan to the brim.
But it must have been far higher than you have suggested, more like 27 litres to the 3.5 of grain.

why would swimining around in less water be better at getting the goodness out ?

i filled to the brim as well because thought that would be better at holding the heat during the mash than a half full pan.

[potatoes]

I am not sure as well. My guess is that it might have to do with the PH of the mash and enzyme activity. When you add the grains to water it changes the PH level. More water might mean less of a change in PH when the grains are added as they are more diluted. You might want to read this page http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter14-6.html, but it doesnt specifically answer your question. hmmmm ...

[filet o fish]

thanks for the thoughts, i went to have a look at my copy of howtobrew last night, and what you saying certainly seems the advice. I will try this way this weekend.
Doing some quick back of the fag packet maths , it seems to indicate that my pot would be best for mashing approx 6 kilos of grain..... hmmmm....maybe work this way and get twice as much of lower gravity beers..

[gti1x]

why would swimining around in less water be better at getting the goodness out ?

Just a guess from me. It may be that you have reached a point where the dilution of the enzymes, which are relatively soluble in water, means that there is less effective contact with the insoluble starch in the grain. This will slow the initial process in the mash, that of digesting the starch to shorter chain polysaccarides. This in turn will delay the digestion of thse products to simpler sugars. This has been my thinking for why I've been getting low OG's using a full boiler.

Haven't yet tried it with less water to see if this helps - that'll be the next brew.

GTI

[filet o fish]

cheers GTI thats exactly the sort of thing i needed. strating to get my head round the idea now,

cheers all

[smuggles]

Haven't yet tried it with less water to see if this helps - that'll be the next brew

But wouldn't that mean you'll have to do a fair amount of sparging, at which point you might as well be doing full on AG rather than BIAB? Or am I missing something here?

Also, I'm sure I've seen other people mentioning efficiencies of 80% from full volumes mashes, so maybe it's the sparge method that's causing the low efficiency?

I've been having the same problem myself, only getting around 70% efficiency from mashing in as much as will fit in the boiler, then using a dunk sparge to bring it up to full volume. Having checked the water and pH, my next idea was to try a shorter brewlength so as to cut out the sparging step.

[potatoes]

Thanks GTI1x, that is what I was thinking but you explained it in clearer and coherent manner.

Just an idea:

What about starting BIAB with less water, after 60 mins of mash top up with 70c water to the brim of boil pot. Then leave for another 10 mins or so. Then, take the bag out, squeeze a little and then brew as normal. This would be like a batch sparge but done in the BIAB style.

Another idea is; you know your efficiency is going to be less, so just add more grains. How much will depend how far off your predicted OG is.

Thoughts?

[smuggles]

What about starting BIAB with less water, after 60 mins of mash top up with 70c water to the brim of boil pot. Then leave for another 10 mins or so. Then, take the bag out, squeeze a little and then brew as normal. This would be like a batch sparge but done in the BIAB style.

I like this idea. For myself it would still mean a shorter brewlength, as I can't quite fit enough liquor in with the grains to end up with 23L (I have a 33L boiler), but it's definitely worth comparing this to a full volume mash to see what the difference might be.