Total Convert - 1 gallon BIAB

Make grain beers with the absolute minimum of equipment. Discuss here.
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Yeasty Rob

Total Convert - 1 gallon BIAB

Post by Yeasty Rob » Sun Jan 02, 2011 9:17 pm

Well I've just put my bottles in the beer fridge for secondary fermentation and have to say I'm a total convert to AG brewing and love the BIAB method.

I converted it to a 1 gallon batch, and although the weighings of the hops can be trickier due to kitchen scales not being very accurate, the method works very well and causes very little fuss for SWMBO ;)

Having never made a AG beer before I wanted a "baseline" taste to work from, so for this simple recipe I used:
4 litres water - no treatment so I could see how it comes out
1000g pale malt - mash 60 minutes
6g fuggles
4g challenger
Boil 60 minutes
Make up to 4.5 litres and add yeast.

Strike temp of 73 degrees resulted in 68 degrees in 4 litres of water. After 60 mins mash it had dropped to 64 degrees though so I think my insulation wasn't enough as you don't have a decent volume of mash to hold the temperature so well long term. I'll have to work on this aspect for my next batch.
I drained the bag and ran about 500ml of hot water through it as a sort of brief sparge, then gave just some gentle squeezing to get the excess out.

Forgot what I was doing and weighed out 6g of both hops and put them both in for the boil. I suddenly realised this was too much and so using the BeerEngine software quickly calculated that a boil of only 45 minutes should result in a not too high bitterness level. Tasted the wort and it certainly had a good wallop of bitterness. This could be a problem, but like I say, at least i'll have a baseline to work from.

Haven't made a cooler coil yet though so had to just put it in a bowl of cold water. Does the cold break make any difference to taste, or is it purely to bring out more of the proteins?

Anyway, the SG was 1050 and this was exactly what BeerEngine had stated it should be, so I'm impressed it seems to have come out as expected.
Used Gervin English Ale yeast which worked great pitched straight on the wort and finished after 3-4 days and has left me with a final SG of 1012 which again is what BeerEngine predicted, this is almost too good :wink:

I've tasted the beer as I bottled it for secondary and have to say I am very impressed. Even with my amatuer beginnings and messing up the hops stage, it still tastes better than any kits I have done at this stage. The bitterness is high, but not so much to be a problem. Would possibly make a nice summer beer, although I'm sure I'll enjoy it anyway in a few weeks time.

Have to say a big thanks to this forum, pretty much all the knowledge and recipe etc to get me going has been from working my way through a lot of posts and its a great source of information.

Will post up how the final beer tastes, but already got some pale, crystal and chocolate malts for my next beer, and also am working out how to brew a mild similar to those that I used to get in the midlands years ago.
Last edited by Yeasty Rob on Sun Jan 02, 2011 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Spud395

Re: Total Convert - 1 gallon BIAB

Post by Spud395 » Sun Jan 02, 2011 9:32 pm

Well done Rob, the bitterness will mellow out a bit with time as well

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