any first attempt at a biab advice?

Make grain beers with the absolute minimum of equipment. Discuss here.
WalesAles
Falling off the Barstool
Posts: 3899
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2013 11:07 pm
Location: South Wales UK.

Re: any first attempt at a biab advice?

Post by WalesAles » Thu Sep 07, 2017 5:12 am

chefgage wrote:
Tue Sep 05, 2017 9:45 am
The first few BIAB I did i was a bit impatient when draining the bag. Give it time to drain, I was surprised how much I was loosing by not letting the bag drain fully (especially as I was brewing small volumes).
chef,
Then you get to the point of shouting at the bag `Come on drain faster you bloody stupid slow draining bag`,
so you squeeze the bag, wring its` bloody neck off because you are fed up waiting for things to drain.
Then you read on JBK `Don`t squeeze the bag because you will mess up your Beer`! [-X
Anyway, my Beers turn out OK (ish).

WA

Still loading the Washing,

KevH
Steady Drinker
Posts: 76
Joined: Wed Nov 25, 2015 8:01 am
Location: Prudhoe, Northumberland

Re: any first attempt at a biab advice?

Post by KevH » Thu Sep 07, 2017 6:52 am

Well, i had a go......
Took on board as much advice from here as i could remember whilst out in my garage.
Evening went fairly well, with no 'major' cock-ups. Fairly pleased with that as am used to Murphy's Law. Anyway, forgot to not squeeze the bag but also ended up with less wort (but at a higher gravity than planned). These are easy to fix for next time!
Have struggled with getting yeast started whilst Fermenting at 12°c, see other post, but hopefully got that sorted now (fingers crossed!), and since next brew will be an ale, i should be alright there.
Will update in a month or two when hopefully I'll be able to enjoy supping my first Biab.
Kev
BIAB, working through Greg Hughes (GH) recipes to begin with.

Planning: Patersbier (extract version), Russian Imperial Stout. Turbo cider, IPA, Limoncello.
Fermenting: nothing.
Conditioning: GH American ipa (6.3%), GH Summer ale (3.8%), GH Oktoberfest (6.8%), Japanese Lager AG (4.9%)
Drinking: nowt.
Drunk: GH Czech Pilsner (6.4%); GH Winter Warmer (4.9%); GH Christmas Ale (5.25%), Coopers Wheat beer kit (4.7%)

TheSumOfAllBeers
Lost in an Alcoholic Haze
Posts: 677
Joined: Tue May 05, 2015 11:21 am

Re: any first attempt at a biab advice?

Post by TheSumOfAllBeers » Thu Sep 07, 2017 3:24 pm

There are a lot of BIAB myths out there, that continue to get reshared across forums long after they have been disproved.

The bag squeeze ruining your beer is one of them.

I squeeze the crap out of my bag.

I only stopped when I upped my brew length. Squeezing 15kg grists is a nightmare.

User avatar
basswulf
Piss Artist
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2011 9:55 am
Location: Oxford, UK
Contact:

Re: any first attempt at a biab advice?

Post by basswulf » Thu Sep 07, 2017 5:54 pm

On draining and squeezing:

I lift the bag out and let it drain for a bit before putting it in a suitably strong colander above a bowl. I then get on with bringing the wort to the boil, adding hops, starting the timer and so forth. Every few minutes I check to see if more wort has collected in the bowl and add it to the main volume; when the bag has cooled down a bit, I give it a good squeeze, which gets more out. By that point it is definitely at diminishing returns - there might be a tiny bit more to add near the end of the boil but I can feel that I've not wasted too much.

My feeling is that it gives enough volume to make it worthwhile (since I'm only doing my brews starting with 10l water) but not enough to have any detrimental effect.

Wulf

john_drummer

Re: any first attempt at a biab advice?

Post by john_drummer » Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:45 pm

During the boil, make sure the lid is not completely on. Otherwise boil-over + sticky mess

Bribie

Re: any first attempt at a biab advice?

Post by Bribie » Fri Sep 29, 2017 9:48 am

I brew full volume cornie keg brews (around 22 litres brew length) so I'm generally using about 5 kg of grain. If you are going to be doing batches of that size or bigger, and if you have anything overhead as an anchor point, you'll do yourself a favour by buying (or assembling from bits from hardware shop) a double pulley system. Mine's about 8 years old and my 83 year old lady friend who is recovering from a stroke can lift the bag with one hand.

If you raise the bag very slowly you'll get less crap and trub in the boil and a pulley system lets you raise slowly as opposed to "let's pull this bag out of the way ASAP".
Double Pulley.jpg
Also with regard to squeezing, a lot of commercial breweries nowadays use a system called a "mash filter". Basically it's a series of huge bags that the sparged grain is dumped into then squeezed with powerful hydraulics to get every last possible drop out of the mash. Squeezing works for them, works for me.

Post Reply