BIAB: 100% Wheat Beer - pt1 setting up

[lancsSteve]

My first attempt at doing Brew In A Bag - an approach which intrigued me as it seemed to make it possible to brew 'impossible' beers - e.g. ones where conventional lautering would require either HUGE additions of rice hulls or oat husks and their attendant costs.

So I thought I'd have a punt at a 100% wheat beer...

Setting up the kit

I have a Brupacks Mashtun/boiler and decided to use that for mashing and boiling - here's the setup with the manifold. I've used this as a boiler before as well as its more usual employment as my mashtun (it's suitably insulated with camping mats coverred over with a layer of easy-clean-and-shiny mylar)


As I was doing a wheat beer and wanted to do a temperature-stepped mash I needed to keep the grain bag off the hot element - a little improvising and job done - thank you pizza baking tray for stepping up to that challenge:



And then finally the bag - a ritchies mash-and-sparge bag


All ready to brew - added water and heated it to 50c...

Recipe - Weird Wild West Wheat

Grains
3.25kg Malted Wheat
350g Crystal Wheat
75g Chocolate Wheat

Hops:
10g Centennial (11.4%AAU) Pre-boil / first wort
12g Centennial (11.4%AAU) 15 minute

Additions:
Whirlfloc - 5g, 15 minutes

Yeast:
US-05

[Manx Guy]

ooh!

Looks good

I like the sound of this...

I've heard about people using 'Rice Hulls' or 'oat husks' in grain bills with high amounts of wheat and in some wheat grain bills that also oats in them (like Wit)

But I have to admit I don't actually know what Rice hulls are (apart from the husks from a grain of rice) or where to get them...



I look forward to hearing how this turns out!

I like a 'American style' Wheat... My local offy has a special on Okells (Local IoM Brewwry) Maclir - which I'm growing very fond of!

Check it out if you see it on the chelves of your local offy!

Guy

[lancsSteve]

OK - so here we go with the mash , filled boiler to near brim and heated wqater to 55c then added in the grains to the bag:


Lid on and left to stand for 30 minutes at 50c for protein rest with element off (it's a heavily insulated tun and lid so little heat loss)

Raised the temp to 68c and stirred constantly while raising the temp. Got it up to 67c and then lid back on and left to stand - intended this to be an hour but ended up being two as had stuff to do.

At the end was all good, pretty dark too:


RECIPE FORMULATION STAGE:
So as there were no all-wheat recipes and I wasn't sure which direction to go with this one I thought I'd do a taste test to choose my hops. Had Aurora (super styrian) or centennial (super cascade) to hand which I was thinking of using.
So before starting the boil I was going somewhat in the dark on this so I drew off a little of the wort from the tun into two heat proof glasses and then dropped in two hops from each of the varieties I was considering, topped with boiling water and left them to steep a wee while. I then tried each one alonjg with a small mug of wort to see which hop aroma / flavour worked best with the wort. I thought the centennial went far better so decided to use this for the hop and go US wheat syle rather than a more UK / European style. I found this step really interesting and useful and both more intuitive and empirical in testing flavour /aroma and the 'feel' of the flavours.


I did have challenger and safale-04 as a backup idea of a UK all-wheat bitter but thought the american citrussy notes would work better with all wheat. For a future brew I'm considering all rye and either UK style or German Alt / Rye Bread type beer... BIAB makes these kind of beers seem possible!

Mash out:
Or lifting the bag as it's known:


Followed by adding my 10g centennial and turning the element on to bring it up to boil then boil for an hour.

After 45 minutes I added extra centennial's, chiller and protafloc.

Chilling produced a CRAZY cold break:


After cooling and leaving it to stand and settle with lid on it was pretty clear:


So time to run off:


Which, after an easy brew was where my problems started...

[lancsSteve]

I've heard about people using 'Rice Hulls' or 'oat husks' in grain bills with high amounts of wheat and in some wheat grain bills that also oats in them (like Wit)

But I have to admit I don't actually know what Rice hulls are (apart from the husks from a grain of rice) or where to get them...

http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/catalog/de ... UNM2146439 - oat husks but not cheap, have used them before - you need a LOT and they tend to float. Not found anywhere selling rice hulls yet.

It's still a PITA to lauter whereas in BIAB that's nbot an issue BUT as I'll get on to it's not without its problems this way!!!

[lancsSteve]

SO all gone so well, time for a proper problem - see that last pic? Notice how sludgy that is coming out and how slow... Stopped within a few seconds and was well and truly stuck...

WHY?

I'd give two reasons and suggestions from this experience:
1 - very gummy and lots of protein and gunk from 100% wheat grist - though the break was not really any bigger than the previous BIAB I'd helped my bro-in-law (Mr C) with which is on another thread in this forum

So the real reason I would say is:

TOO FEW HOPS for a hop bed - would have been fine with low alpha hops and lots of them e.g. simcoe or cascade but there were only 20g of centennial

AND

TOO SMALL A HOLES ON HOP STRAINER this was a mash tun manifold not a bigger-hole hop strainer which made a problem much worse.

So - what to do? Toipping didn't work - wort everywhere, time to get out some syphone tube, quickly use some star san on it, cross fingers and suck the gunk through:


Had to suck twice as a hop blocked even that tube once and use the quick-starsan sanitisized collander to catch the hops - meant a LOT of break going through - and I mean a LOT of break :



Chucked in the US-05 and left it - good fermentation after 12 hours, seriously rocky head and a lot of airlock activity after 24...

Will see how it turns out, will def NOT use high alpha hops again with BIAB in the future and will use boiler with hop stopper not mash tun with manifold but all in all seems pretty good.

21 litres with OG 1.041 so efficiency of 69%
Estimated FG 1.009
4.4%

[simco999]

Mmmm - this is always going to be a problem with BIAB - (which I am a fan of BTW) - no grain bed to filter etc. I was thinking just use muslim bags for the hops and trust that irish moss will help clear the wort. Any thoughts on this guys.

Oh and congrats on your 1st BIAB - did my first last weekend - already planning my next.

[RdeV]

Hmm, I can see your problem- you've incorporated a manifold in the kettle instead of a pickup!
BIAB does away with any lautering hassle by the simple process of lifting and draining the bag, so doesn't require a manifold to lauter. With it you've got dozens of inlets below the layer of kettle trub, no wonder they blocked up. Pull it all out, google pickup tube, replace, happy days.

Hope this helps!

[subsub]

I was thinking just use muslim bags

Where do you get them from, the local mosque?

[lancsSteve]

Hmm, I can see your problem- you've incorporated a manifold in the kettle instead of a pickup!
BIAB does away with any lautering hassle by the simple process of lifting and draining the bag, so doesn't require a manifold to lauter. With it you've got dozens of inlets below the layer of kettle trub, no wonder they blocked up. Pull it all out, google pickup tube, replace, happy days.

Hope this helps!

Pickup? Take it that's a term for a hop strainer...

I've used this before as a boiler and run off through the manifold with no probs with a 3V system with a LOT more hops as a hop bed.

The pizza tray was a top idea and good fit but yeah, bad call on the manifold. but with the amount of trub and lack of hops it was a bad call this time.

So WON'T be using it for BIAB again but instead my hop stopper - which is like the topmost one of these

[RdeV]

Yeah, something like that could do, or this sort of thing, there's plenty of variants. Alternatively, a false bottom.

[simco999]

I was thinking just use muslim bags

Where do you get them from, the local mosque?

Oops - Muslin.....

[lancsSteve]

Mmmm - this is always going to be a problem with BIAB - (which I am a fan of BTW) - no grain bed to filter etc.

Yeah - certainly more crud but with a decent hop bed not a big problem - which brings me on to:

I was thinking just use muslim bags for the hops and trust that irish moss will help clear the wort. Any thoughts on this guys.

I'd DEFINITELY NOT do that - my big issues here were from too few hops and too small a holes in the manifold/hop strainer thus not having an effective hop bed to strain the extra crud of BIAB. The brew I did before (baBIABias) had loads of low-alpha hops in and came out very clear so grain in g=bag good, hops in bag BAD.

[simco999]

Thanks for the advice - I'm new to this - I read the other day the definition of an expert is someone who has made all the mistakes its possible to make in a very narrow field.

I like that.

[lancsSteve]

So - here it is from secondary - the end of the barrell after cornie-ing the rest up:



No chill haze even when cooled to fridge temps!

Tastes... WEIRD! Nice weird but weird - it was flat of course and desperately needs carbonation. Mouth-filling creamy texture with a good hint of chocolate maltiness to it and an assertive centennial hopping. NOTHIN like any wheat beer I've ever had - should be interesting to see how it is once carbonated.

Still very impressed by the clarity - both for the technique and the recipe.

[bosium]

Nice work LS, pushing the boundaries as always!


Where's the write-up of your pilsner? How did the floor-malted pils malt work out?
I have 92g of homegrown saaz and 5kg of the floor-malted goodness to use up