First BIAB and it went wrong - went well in the end!

[TheFlatulentCow]

I found a good Xmas beer recipe in a book but the one thing it didn't mention was the amount of water required so I went to the BIABRewer.info site to see if I could work out how much I would need. Based on their starters guides and calculator they recommended 43L which I though was a bit much but hey I'm the newbie so i went with it. The 90min mash seem to go ok and the 90 min boil seemed the same as the extract ones i've done except more volume. At the end the volume was still about 30L and given this was for a 23L brew unsurprisingly enough the O.G. is 1.030. So given this beer should be about 5% abv it's gone very wrong. Before I ditch it and give up has anyone any good ideas for saving it?

[super_simian]

Why would you ditch it? A lot of effort just to tip it out. You could ferment it out as is, and have a low-alcohol beer. Or you could keep boiling it down till you end up with 23 litres.

[GrowlingDogBeer]

+1 to super simian

[TheFlatulentCow]

I wouldn't enjoy a beer with a fairly low abv and my Kegs seem to be full of low gravity beers as it is. I decided to reboil in the end and add honey along the way. Ended up about 1.042 which is fine but am i likely to have lost a lot of the hop flavours from reboiling? I also need to understand what sort of volume of water I should have started with in order to wok out what went wrong, does anyone have any good advice in that aspect?

[GrowlingDogBeer]

You will lose approx 1 litre of wort per Kg of grain, plus 1.5 litres per 100g of leaf hops.
You will lose approx 10% per hour boiling, plus any deadspace. For a 23 litre brew I would expect to start with approx 35 litres.

As for losing hop flavour, early addition hops will be fine, but if you added late hops then you will lose some flavour and aroma from them, and also extract some more bitterness from them by boiling for longer.

[TheFlatulentCow]

Many thanks for the help it's been extremely useful and lifted my dishearten spirits. I assume I could get around the lost hop aroma/taste by dry hoping.

[jimp2003]

Could you post your recipe and I will put it into the biabbrewer spreadsheet that I use and see what water volumes it throws up.

Jim

[TheFlatulentCow]

Thanks, here it is:

3.8kg Pale
270g crystal
230g Amber
50g roasted Barley
110g flaked barley

bittering:
4g goldings
19g Northern brewer
6g bobek

Aroma
6g Goldings
8g Northern
13g Bobek
+pinch nutmeg, 2-3 cloves and a small cinnamon stick

Cheers.

[EoinMag]

Boil it down to 23l and your problem is solved, it's a lot of boil off but that's what you need to get your wort more concentrated.

[simco999]

Thats a lot of water to begin with - I use 34 litres (BIAB) plus another litre or so from the kettle if I need to adjust the temp- you lose 5 to the grains (if you use 5kg of grain) and 5 to the boil (60 mins).

You did the right thing to boil it down.

It'll be fine - you will get used to what you need for your kit - keep up the good work!!

BTW - interesting recipe - let us know how it comes out.

[TheFlatulentCow]

Thanks everyone for the help and advice.

By the way the recipe is from a book by John Parkes called Home Brewing self-sufficiency. It's a good read with quite a bit on the history of beer types and brewing methods, really enjoyed reading this book.

Cheers.

[simco999]

plus 1.5 litres per 100g of leaf hops.

BTW - thanks for the tip Steve - I wondered where it all went - never factored that in. Good call.

[Twistedfinger]

Glad to see you didn't ditch your brew and decided to reduce by boiling. You could always dry hop to add some hoppiness back.

On your volumes 42l does seem high could you have used the Mash Volume figure instead of the water required figure ?

Why not post the calculator spreadsheet and I'll have a look. (either here or over on Biabrewer) .
or expand on the recipe you've given with the figures for:

Brew length or volume into fermenter
OG required
Your pot diameter
your efficiency figure used

Cheers

Yeasty

[TheFlatulentCow]

Glad to see you didn't ditch your brew and decided to reduce by boiling. You could always dry hop to add some hoppiness back.

On your volumes 42l does seem high could you have used the Mash Volume figure instead of the water required figure ?

Why not post the calculator spreadsheet and I'll have a look. (either here or over on Biabrewer) .
or expand on the recipe you've given with the figures for:

Brew length or volume into fermenter
OG required
Your pot diameter
your efficiency figure used

Cheers

Yeasty

Apologies, I missed this or I would have replied.

[TheFlatulentCow]

I bottled/Kegged this brew tonight, I managed to get a Corney and 13 bottles full. It's got a good Christmas spice smell to it but not much in the taste. The colour is a lovely amber and very clear and the FG ended up at 1006 giving an ABV of around 4.7% . I really appreciate all the help and advice given thanks.