Iโm looking for eBIAB best practices.
- During the mash, do you ever lift the top screen off the grain bed to agitate the grain?
- With the recirculation pump going, how much wort do you let sit on top of the mash by adjusting the overflow height and pump speed?
- Do you stir/agitate the grain bed during sparge?
Any resources appreciated!
Buddy and I just brewed our first batch on a brand new S40 and found that heating sparge water on the stove in batches was a real pain.
I'm wondering if we could heat our sparge water by submerging the stainless steel chilling coil in the collected wort and set my temp to a few degrees above my desired temp then run my sparge water through the coil at a super slow rate (like 1L/min or less).
I did the math (q=mcโT) and it theoretically should work if I'm running it from the hot water tap at 50c and sparging at 75c. Has anyone out there tried this before?
Aud tot felul de pareri pro si contra achzitionarii unui apartament in Cluj/Floresti,Metroloitana. As vrea sa stiu argumente pro si contra daca exista.
Recently got a converted 10 gallon Gatorade cooler for a mash tun, and have only used it twice. My current set up is that and a 7 gallon brew kettle, which I'm using to heat up the water and add to the mash.
My process for my last two brews has been heating up enough water to to hit ~1.5qts/lb and mashing for about an hour, then heating up the remainder of my water needed to hit my pre boil volume and introducing that to my cooler. I'll let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes, then transfer to my kettle to begin boiling.
Am I wasting my time doing the batch mash process? Should I just mash with my full volume of water?
Looking to brew something refreshing, tropical, somewhat bitter and brewable in almost no time.
So far I stuck to traditional methods, so summing my plan up already feels wrong:
- 1 hour mash (still need to come up with the grain bill)
- make hop tea simultaneously (hops also to be determined)
- no sparge
- no chill, just put the beer in a keg, dump in hop tea, hook keg up to a regulator at just a few PSI to prevent the keg pulling a vacuum
- once keg hits 35 C pitch Voss kveik
- after a day add dry hops and set a spunding valve to 20 PSI
My questions:
- do you see any obvious problems with this?
- will I get proper hop flavor besides raw bitterness with the hop tea + dry hop?
- what hygiene precautions are needed for no boil?
- will the keg be sanitized by dumping in the hot (but not boiling) wort? Or am I better off bringing it to a short boil after all? Or, just Star San the keg?
- any other crazy time saving ideas that will not impact the result too much?
Extract -> BIAB -> K-RIMS is my journey.
As an ex BIABer, I'm very used to 'squeezing the bag', as the concept that it somehow 'releases the tannins' has been disproven. Plus you get better efficiency.
Having switched up to a K-RIMS system for my past four brews (since I had the equipment more or less, so why not give it a go?) my default instinct has been to (instead of squeeze the bag) 'press the mash' in the tun after sparge. It may sound obvious now, but I'd been super confused why I'd get way more in my boil kettle than expected.
Derp: I'm pressing the mash in the tun (with a pair of thick rubber gloves) to get out every last bit, since.. "because BIAB brain". Normal calculators don't account for this.
When I made the realization that my BIAB habit was bleeding over into a more traditional setup, it made me think : "Why doesn't everyone do this"? For example, on my last Belgian Quad that had 18 lbs of grain, I'm getting up to an extra 1.5 gal out of the mash by just 'pressing it down' like dough. Safe to say that extended my boil time by a bit...
Is it that until BIAB no one thought of doing this? Is there some negative characteristics that this could cause? I've been doing research, and while at the homebrew scale I'm not finding much, it sounds like some pro brewers do this.
Genuinely curious why this isn't more of an accepted practice?
It's a bad habit (or is it ๐ค) but feel like the coffee tastes better this way ๐
Grainfather is nerfing their own app. I donโt get this. Iโve always used the sparge water counter and now itโs gone. Doesnโt even show up on the screen of the controller anymore.
Brewing today and never got the alert to start heating my sparge water? Whatโs the deal with that? Now it wonโt be ready by the end of mash out.
UPDATE: Brewing today and saw the alert was back!!! Thanks Grainfather!
I have been brewing for a little while now, but I had no idea I was supposed to balance my water chemistry. After a little research I finally figured out my water profile and how to correct it for my desired style. My only question now is, do I add all the salts to the mash water before sparging? Or would I split the water salts proportionally between the mash water and sparge water. Thanks in advance!
I have gone through a few batches on my brewzilla, and am looking to simplify my process further (for cleaning and time requirements).
I have a brewing bag and am curious if anyone has used one of these electric systems in this way, how your results have been and how you would typically set it up.
Tinkering with my efficiency, and wondering if I'm going to screw anything up by recirculating some of my wort after first sparge volume back through with a second sparge. Trying to get more out of the grains without overshooting my target boil volume!
Is this likely to help, hurt or make pretty much no difference?
I'm using a robobrew, sparging with an initial 7L, mashing in 19L due to large deadspace below the grain pipe!
As per the title, I get my grains delivered weighed out from Malt Miller, so completely forgot to add the porridge oats from my cupboard. Realised when batch sparging. The grain temp was about 70c when I added them, I got my boil underway with my runnings and let the sparge and oats sit for 30mins, before draining and continuing my boil. Will this make much difference? What can I expect?
My old boiler gave up the ghost (buffalo 40l) and I'm thinking of getting another. I saw a grainfather sparge boiler from The Malt Millers which has been converted for BIAB already (saving me the hassle). Has any got one and if so, can I do a rolling boil effectively?
Im trying to change from batch sparging to fly spargning. My equipment is an all in one system, and I use a BIAB occasionally. The kettle has a false bottom that that bag sits on top of. The system has a hole vertically down through the bottom. I drain the wort from here. The outlet is connected to a hose that I use to transfer to a boiling kettle with. On top of my grist I will put another false bottom and drop sparge water down on this.
My plan is to keep 2 - 3 cm of water on top of the grist so it flows uniformly down. I also plan on letting the wort drain through the hose and hold it up to a level that supports the 2 - 3 cm of sparge water on top. This way the setup self adjusts with regard to water in / wort out. I saw a guy set it up like that on youtube and it seems like a nice straightforward way of doing this.
So far so good, but I'm worried that this setup will result in uneven washing of the grains as I imagine that the sparge water will just run straight down the around where the hole is...
Does any of this I write make sense? lol
Budget wise a sparge water heater is much more affordable, they seem to have temp controllers and I assume come to a full boil also ? But I'm not sure. Does anybody know if it's possible to brew in one ?
A couple days ago I opened a recipe I was working on the previous day, and I noticed the calculated mash water volume had dropped by ~1/3 of a gallon. At first I thought I was just misremembering, but I had also filled it out in a Bru'n Water spreadsheet. I went back through old recipes and checked against my logs, and most had changed.
Some digging around in the changelog and under Fixed I found:
> Now using cold boil volume rater than hot (including expansion) when calculating water for "No Sparge" water calculation method, this will reduce the total water calculated by 4%, you might want to increase the grain absorption rate to compensate
I did the math by hand and confirmed that it had indeed previously been doing that. Further digging around, I found this post with more info, and with a response by Brewfather's creator.
So, if your current no sparge equipment profile has been tuned so your pre-boil volume is correct, be advised that you may need to adjust it.
As a side note, I was a bit confused because the incorrect calculations had seemed to be working for me. I had imported all my recipes from Beersmith, and the water volumes all lined up, so I never really looked further. But, looking again, I notice that the default grain absorption in Brewfather (.383 qt./lb.) is different than the default in Beersmith (.96 fl.oz./oz., or .48 qt./lb.), and the latter is closer to what I observe. It just so happens that the different grain absorption plus the off-by-4% error almost exactly canceled each other out.
I do BIAB, but for bigger beers my kettle is not big enough to do a full mash, so I'll dunk sparge a few gallons.
Should I treat both my mash and sparge water, or just add all the salts to the mash?
Example: Total water needed is 10 gallons, and I use 7 gallons in my mash and 3 gallons in my sparge. I have my water treatment salt amounts calculated for 10 gallons. Should I add all of those to the 7 gallon mash, or split the salts 70/30 between the two waters?
Thanks.
I've done 7 batches of all grain now, and though my efficiency has improved some, it's still not great. I think it's around 68-70%, I never quite hit my target OG. I know one solution is just up my grain bill, but I'm also interested if y'all have any tips to improve my efficiency, or if I'm doing anything just plain wrong. Here's my method:
- Crush grain at default barley crusher setting - I think it's .039 - about the thickness of a credit card
- Pre-heat 10gal rubbermaid cooler with boiling water
- Add strike water at appropriate temp, add crushed grain, stir for a minute or so then let sit for 60mins. I've started using a thinner mash (1.5qt/lb) because it seems like maybe that improves efficiency a bit. I'm usually within a couple deg of my target mash temp.
- Vorlauf, then empty liquid to kettle. Add remaining sparge water at ~175deg, stir for a couple minutes, let sit 10 mins, then vorlauf again and empty to kettle.
- Begin boil
Is there anything in there that stands out that I could be doing wrong or inefficiently? Any tips?
I'm about to do my first all-grain batch tomorrow and have been trying to figure out if I'm going to do batch or fly sparging. I work at a brewery and have seen fly sparging done on a large scale as well as my buddy's homebrew setup. I don't have a separate HLT but was going to just trickle water in through a sieve to simulate the fly sparging. But if batch sparging is nearly as efficient I will probably just do that since it's easier/faster. Any input would be appreciated, cheers!
So I am kinda new (1y into homebrewing). I have around all grain batches under my belt. And as the tittle says my bag got completely clogged... For the second time. When it first happened I didn't know what was wrong. But now I think I get it. So I do recirculation using a magnet pump while mashing. And after 45 min the bag got clogged so hard that when I lifted the bag out of the mash tun using a pulley practically 80% of the wort stayed in the bag..... How do you combat that? I usually squeeze the bag but even so It toke me 20min to get it all out and it was messy.
PS: I get a lot of particles still in the boil, even though I do vorlauf and biab? Why is that? Should I mill coarser? Thanks guys and gals
Update: SOLD!
Hey AtlBeer, Iโm selling my all grain brewing system which includes:
- Two 10 gallon Rubbermaid coolers (mash tun with false bottom and HLT)
- 9 gallon boil kettle with gallon graduations (up to 7 gallons)
- chugger brew pump
- sparge arm
I have a new electric BIAB system, so I am selling this to free up some space. I also have silicone tubing and ring clamps which I would include if the potential buyer is interested.
Asking $250 to a good home.
Hi, So I've only done the malt extract kits before and bought an all-grain kit. All I have is a kettle so I've no clue how I'm going to sparge (not that I really understand the process anyway). Is it going to be possible for me to do the brew without buying the equipment?
Thanks.
Iโm getting ready to get back into brewing and Iโm trying to figure out how to prepare sparge water.
I found this immersion water heater on Amazon. I was thinking of getting that and a 5 gal cooler. Would that work or is it a bad idea?
Can I utilize something like the item below to filter my wort during sparge. I would recirculate the beer through the grain sack, but also run it through the y filter.
I am worried that the material of the y filter will screw up the flavor.
Thoughts are appreciated
