AG Brew No 1 - Bitter & Twisted Clone

[RajBoab]

Here's some pictures of my 1st all grain attempt - a Bitter & Twisted all grain kit from Barley Bottom.
Decided to go Aussie and do a brew in a bag and no chill! Wanted to try a brew with minimal new equipment.
Still working out volumes etc but ended up with about 25L at 1047.

Grain, Hops, protafloc tablet and Safale 04 Yeast


Water into boiler and heating


Bag in and secured


Grain in, stirred well, no doughballs.


Mashed at 66C for 90 mins.
Didn't insulate the boiler/mashtun too well.
Lost 2C in 30 mins. Turned the element on for a few mins to briing temp up again.


Bag removed, suspended and drained into a bucket - The bike maintenance stand came in handy!


Bittering hops added for 90 minute boil


Boil on the go


Flavour hops in at 15 mins to go


Flavour hops in boil


What's left in the boiler after draining


Boiling wort into 'No-Chill' cube to cool


Wort into fermenter and aerated


Wort in fermenter with immersion heater and thermometer


Fermentation at 18C

[WishboneBrewery]

Looks like you've got that cracked then
I don't think you'll be looking backwards now, hope its a good one.

[Deebee]

I've done this one myself and its a real cracker, bitter with a little acidity, and those Bobek are just fantastic!
I am a newbie in regards to AG but would never brew kits again for sure.
Hope this is a great brew.

Are you not using an airlock.

i find this intersting because i am looking to get ahold of an immersionheater. You keep this on for the entire fermentation i supose( i will have to as 4 degrees would not help the yeast much where i am )

The BIAB method looks interesting. was this the entire boil volume, then in with the bag, or did yo drain the wort from the bag and the dilute before the boil?

Thanks

[RajBoab]

Never use an airlock. I usually just cover the fermenter with a towel!

I used the Australian BIAB method (http://www.biabrewer.info/). Full volume into boiler, start heating, bag in, grain in, stir, bring to temp and hold for mash period, bag out and drain, proceed as normal.

Stuart

[Bobba]

Are you not using an airlock.

Airlock generally a waste of time - as soon as the yeast is going there's a co2 layer on top which'll do the same job as an airlock in stopping the surface oxidising. Just lossely fit the lid. If I was brewing in a shed with bugs etc crawling around however I might be a bit bothered about something crawling in under the lid.

i find this intersting because i am looking to get ahold of an immersionheater. You keep this on for the entire fermentation i supose( i will have to as 4 degrees would not help the yeast much where i am )

The immersion heater has a built in thermostat, so once youv'e set the temperature on the dial on the top it turns itself on and off as it needs to.

Decided to go Aussie and do a brew in a bag and no chill! Wanted to try a brew with minimal new equipment.

This looks like a brilliant method of getting to all grain without a mash tun. Think I'll try this out on my next batch. I'm totally skint at the moment, but have an addiction for getting the boiler out. Extract brewing is killing my pocket and I need to get the grain quantities up. Mini/partial mashing using the oven seems like a pain considering I want to do a 22l batch, but this way looks very promising actually.
What kind of efficiencies can you get with this method?
Is there a sensible way of sparging in this situation? Bit tricky as the boiler is in use (unless you have a separate hot liquor vessel)

[RajBoab]

Hi,

I chose the brew in a bag method because of the low expense and it looked like the easiest way to leave extract behind.

You could spend your whole life reading about the BIAB method here (http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum// ... opic=11694). There's loads of brewers down under doing it with very favourable results, although mashing in a bag isn't anything new.

I think you get a reduced efficiency versus a traditionally sparged mash and I've no idea what efficiency I got. Will have to work that one out later. I think you can get around the lesser efficiency by upping your grain bill slightly or by milling the grain finer (you can have more flour in your grain because there's less chance of a stuck mash because there's so much more liquid). I'll have to do a few brews to work out if I need to add extra grain to meet the recipe figures. Some do a sort of 'dunk sparge' with the bag to up their efficiency a bit.

I got my bags made by the local seamstress with some Swiss Voile Curtain material from the fabric shop. Cost me a fiver each. Next time I'll use my second bag for the hops so I can easily lift them out and squeeze them to get every last drop of wort (two pan lids come in useful for this hot task)! It's easy cleaning as well. Turn the bag inside out into the bin, shake, rinse under the tap and stick in the washing machine.

Hope this helps,

Stuart

[Bobba]

Cheers for the info Stuart Nice one mate
Looks like a good option, think I'll give it a go on the next batch. Cant be splashing out another £20 on dme!
Do you think the largest hop bags from h&g would do it? http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/catalog/de ... HOP2131637
or would a bag that's specially designed to fit the boiler be best?

[aus069]

Cheers for the info Stuart Nice one mate
Looks like a good option, think I'll give it a go on the next batch. Cant be splashing out another £20 on dme!
Do you think the largest hop bags from h&g would do it? http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/catalog/de ... HOP2131637
or would a bag that's specially designed to fit the boiler be best?

The best way to do BIAB is to make your bag big enough to fit your mash tun in . So if the largest grain bag can hold your mash tun then it is big enough . We make our bags from swiss voille to a shape that looks like a tear drop when it's suspended so that the wort actually drains from the bottom when you sparge . Which is basically pouring hot water over it . It also wont hurt if you squeeze the crap out of the bag .


aus069

[Bobba]

If you have a tap on your fermenter and aren't mashing in the boiler, why are you lifting the grain bag out of the bucket ? The tap will allow you lauter the mash and sparge the grains properly and produce a better quality wort as was intended by the original mashing and sparging bag http://www.colchesterhomebrew.co.uk/col ... g-Bag.html as advocated by Dave Line. (which is a much better idea as far as i'm, concerned.

I think RajBoab is mashing in the boiler, not the bucket.

I was wondering if you can mash in the boiler, say at 66C for 90 mins or what ever, then raise the temperature a bit higher as you do for the sparge using the boiler, run some off into the bucket, poor it over the top a few times with foil in place to sparge, then remove the bag and get boiling. I can understand why I'll get a response saying 'why not just do a proper mash in a tun' but that way you only need two vessels: no mash tun and no hlt, which for me is the only reason i havent gone AG already.

[haz66]

Nice work there.
But i dont think you have enough toilet rolls

[Bobba]

But i dont think you have enough toilet rolls

good spot!

[RajBoab]

Arf!

Once you've tried my Turbo Cider you need large amount of bog roll for the after effects
If CostCo starts doing malt then I'll be buying that in bulk as well.

S