BIAB guide

twerg_85

Hi all,
I'm a complete newbie, but I decided to put up a step by step guide as to how I brew my beer. Hopefully this will help some others get started and the more expert brewers can comment or correct my mistakes !

For info, I've done 2 brews so far. Efficiency was measured at 65% (but I ended up with less beer than planned, so this may be wrong) and ended up with 5.8% and 5.3% beers.

1. Decide on a recipe and collect / measure all the ingredients you need.
I use water (tap), grains (mainly malt), hops, yeast and whirlfloc (makes the beer clearer). Haven't used any flavourings yet.

2. Put your pot on the stove top, measure the required amount of water into your pot, place a small colander on the bottom (your grains will rest on this so they don't burn on the bottom of the pot), pop a lid on and turn on the heat.

3. Meanwhile, heat your oven to a very low temperature. Clean and sanitize your thermometer.

4. Put your grains in your bag and when the water in the pot reaches your 'strike temparature' (my recipes have used 154F), put the bag in thepot (it should sit on top of the colander), stir it thoroughly and pop in the warm oven (lid still on). You can turn the oven off, and leave it for an hour to soak (this is called mashing).

5. After 1 hour, remove pot from oven and put back on the stove top.
Remove the bag (allowing it to drain well into the pot) and the colander and bring the wort (this is what we call the starchy liquid you've just made) to the boil. Remove the lid when it reaches a boil and keep it simmering (on a rolling boil) for as long as the recipe requires (normally one hour).

6. Add your hops according to the recipe, normally you add bittering hops near the start and aroma hops near the end. I add a whirlfloc tablet with about 10 mins to go in the boil.

7. Remove the pot from the stove (turn off the heat !) and taking care not to shake the work too much, cool it down to your 'pitching temperature' (this is the temperature you will add your yeast at).

8.When it's down to the correct temperature measure the original gravity (OG).

9. Aerate thoroughly, pour into the fermenter and toss the yeast in on top. Cover the fermenter and leave it somewhere cool (next step is to get a mini-fridge to properly regulate the fermenting temperature).
Leave it for 2 weeks or more !

10. I've dry hopped (added hops to the fermenter for about a week) and you could add flavourings here too I guess. Fermenting is finished when the gravity remains stable for a few days, or just leave it 2-3 weeks.
When done, measure the final gravity (FG) and bottle (see other posts here ofr advice on batch priming etc.)

11. Leave the beer in bottles for another few weeks (including a week in the fridge), then sit down, relax and enjoy your brew !

Equipment used
Weighing scales
Large Stockpot
Colander
Heat source (hob and oven or dedicated boiler)
Thermometer
Sanitizer
Bag for holding grains
Something to stir the grains with - I use a big wooden spoon
Small muslin bag for holding the hops. Something to weigh down the bag is also useful (metal spoons, marbles etc.)
Method of cooling the wort (sink and cold water or buy a special chiller)
Hydrometer
Sieve
Fermenting bucket with lid and airlock.
Equipment for bottling

Notes
1. I make 8L batches of beer. My recipes so far have used about 2kg of grains.
2. To determine the amount of water required, you need to factor in 2 things - the grains will absorb some water and some more will boil off.
You can measure the boil off rate by putting x Litres in your pot, boiling for an hour and seeing how much is left (or boil for half an hour and double the loss).
The absorption rate varies, but seems to be about 1L/kg of grains.
Also, some will get left behind in the fermenter when bottling I guess.
3. I heat the oven to 60C. The goal here is that it will stop the pot from losing much heat, rather than to actively warm it up.
I use starsan, but search on here for the thin bleach/vinegar option.
4. I bought a sparge/mash bag online (about €15 ?), but many sites say that you can make a bag from sheer curtain material or similar.
Actually, let it get slightly above your strike temperature, as the temp will drop when you add cold grains to the warm water.
5. The mashing is where the warm water has extracted sugar from the grains. To get maximum benefit, you want to let as much water as possible drain from the bag back into your pot. There are mixed views on whether/how hard you should squeeze the bag.
you can also 'sparge' here which basically means pouring some warm water through the bag which will rinse down into the pot. Don't forget to allow for this extra water when measuring the amount required in step 2.
6. You might also want to add some flavourings at this stage ?
7. This step currently takes me about an hour or hour and a half. You can buy a 'wort chiller', or improvise with a 2L bottle of water frozen in the freezer.
I put the pot in the sink and pour cold water around it. I then drain and re-fill the sink when the water has warmed up too much.
You can also gently stir the wort, but you don't want to introduce any air into the mix at this stage.
Crucial here is that ANYTHING that touches the wort after boil needs to be sterile. You also want to avoid any dust/fleas/wild yeast in the air getting in.
9. I pour the wort back and forth from the boiling pot into the fermenter from a height (going through a sieve one of the times). About 5 times gives it a good airy froth. I use dry yeast, so I just toss this on top and then give it a big shake.You can look up liquid yeast or re-hydrating yeast if you want.

Cheers,
F.

sharingan

twerg_85 wrote: »

Hi all,
I'm a complete newbie, but I decided to put up a step by step guide as to how I brew my beer. Hopefully this will help some others get started and the more expert brewers can comment or correct my mistakes !

There are a few mini-BIAB guides out there, if you used some that you found useful, you should share them (what influenced you). That said, you have a few innovations here of your own, that I found interesting.

2. Put your pot on the stove top, measure the required amount of water into your pot, place a small colander on the bottom (your grains will rest on this so they don't burn on the bottom of the pot), pop a lid on and turn on the heat.

You will want to line the pot with your bag at this stage. Its easier doing it now, than when you have hit 65-70C

4. Put your grains in your bag and when the water in the pot reaches your 'strike temparature' (my recipes have used 154F), put the bag in thepot (it should sit on top of the colander), stir it thoroughly and pop in the warm oven (lid still on). You can turn the oven off, and leave it for an hour to soak (this is called mashing).

I take it that your bag is tied in some way? Lining the pot with the bag, and adding your grains directly to the water, will make for better efficiency - it minimises doughball formation, and the circulation is important.

That said, warm oven mashing is a very clever idea for mini-BIAB. Maintaining mash temp is a key weakness of mini-mashes. If you can get your oven temp into the 60C range, that should keep your mash temp very stable.

5. After 1 hour, remove pot from oven and put back on the stove top.
Remove the bag (allowing it to drain well into the pot) and the colander and bring the wort (this is what we call the starchy liquid you've just made) to the boil. Remove the lid when it reaches a boil and keep it simmering (on a rolling boil) for as long as the recipe requires (normally one hour).

Keep the lid off when you are raising the temp. There are some undesirable volatile components like DMS and DMS precursors that boil off. If your lid is on, they will condense and fall back into the beer.

6. Add your hops according to the recipe, normally you add bittering hops near the start and aroma hops near the end. I add a whirlfloc tablet with about 10 mins to go in the boil.

Beer schedules normally count down, usually from 60-90 mins, down to 0. Bittering hop additions go in at 60 mins, flavour additions at 30-10 mins, and aroma additions at 10-0 mins. This schedule assumes a fast chill after 0, to get to pitching temperatures, which you can do with small batches in a sink with frozen PET bottles/camping freeze packs.

Tip: add your hops in muslin bags that you can extract at the end. You can squeeze them too to recover a lot of wort, which helps to keep your final volume up, which is important with small batches.

9. Aerate thoroughly, pour into the fermenter and toss the yeast in on top. Cover the fermenter and leave it somewhere cool (next step is to get a mini-fridge to properly regulate the fermenting temperature).
Leave it for 2 weeks or more !

You can solve a lot of problems by aerating very thoroughly. Big drop into the fermenter, plus a good 10-20 min stir.

Equipment used
Colander

You can use a cake tray too.

Heat source (hob and oven or dedicated boiler)

For mini BIAB and induction plate is great. For larger boilers, I find the buffalo 40L great for making 22-25L of beer (final volume, usually some amount of wort recovery, sparging, squeezing etc.)

Something to stir the grains with - I use a big wooden spoon

Wooden spoon is *okay* - they do absorb a lot of stuff. Fine for mashes, but dont aerate with one - nasties can hide deep in the wood.

Small muslin bag for holding the hops. Something to weigh down the bag is also useful (metal spoons, marbles etc.)

I find that my hops sink below the surface once they absorb all the water.

Method of cooling the wort (sink and cold water or buy a special chiller)

For larger batches, and those of you with water metering/issues wasting water, consider the camping cube approach for passive chilling.

Notes
2. To determine the amount of water required, you need to factor in 2 things - the grains will absorb some water and some more will boil off.

With larger batch sizes you can ignore the boil off if you are not too particular about your recipe. With mini-BIAB, I have boiled off 2-3 bottles of beer by accident (oops - strong though).

3. I heat the oven to 60C. The goal here is that it will stop the pot from losing much heat, rather than to actively warm it up.

This is a really good trick, and should work with large pots too if your oven can take it.

4. I bought a sparge/mash bag online (about €15 ?), but many sites say that you can make a bag from sheer curtain material or similar.

Voile is what you want, and it is great stuff. Ask for off-cuts in a fabric store.

Actually, let it get slightly above your strike temperature, as the temp will drop when you add cold grains to the warm water.

Most guides will call for 71C strike temp. When you add grains you will drop it down to mid 60s.

5. The mashing is where the warm water has extracted sugar from the grains. To get maximum benefit, you want to let as much water as possible drain from the bag back into your pot. There are mixed views on whether/how hard you should squeeze the bag.
you can also 'sparge' here which basically means pouring some warm water through the bag which will rinse down into the pot.

For small batches, you can probably get everything you want just by squeezing. Squeeze the crap out of it. Squeezing has had many problems attributed to it in error (tannin extraction requires heat and pH).

6. You might also want to add some flavourings at this stage ?

Take it handy with flavourings, especially for small batches. You are adding hops, that will do. Very easy to overpower a beer if you are not careful.