First BIAB advice

[Dave Brown]

Hi all, did first biab last night,     3hrs 20 mins for the completion.

 

26Litres of starting h2o for this receipe and got only 14 litres in the fermenter with 2.5 litre mark of sediment(used floc). Seems a lot of sediment......OG 1060. 1. Can I water down to get more wort?  2. How can I reduce the sediment( can I strain the break).  cheers Dave

[Druid]

Legend...  Check out the Newbie thread: http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/forum/topics/newbies-1.

 

There are more peolpe following that thread so better chance of an answer.

[JoKing]

There are 2 things you can do to reduce your sediment:

 

1 - Leave the cooled wort in your kettle for a few hours before siphoning off the top into your fermenter.

 

2 - Siphon out of that fermenter into your other one, and leave the crud in the bottom of your first one.

 

3 - Leave it in there, and don't worry too much about it!

 

So long as there is not hot break or too much hop material in there... there's not a lot to worry about. Welcome to the fantastic world of all grain home brewing... long may it last.

[Pilgrim]

And don't forget Joking's Wort Recovery method. When I was doing BIAB I would run off the last of the wort, not caring if I got some trub with it, into a large sanitised Pyrex jug. Then I covered the jug with clingfilm and put it in the fridge for an hour or two. The trub will settle to the bottom and you can then pour off the good sfuff into the fermenter.

I used to get quite a high boil off rate but put that down to the fact that I was using a 56ltr pot which has quite a large surface area. Don't worry about it though, you're only boiling off water and that can be replaced by topping up later to get your required gravity.

Best of luck with your AG brewing.

[Dave Brown]

I left the wort in the boil pot overnight and the bottom 1/3 was all break.May need a massive jug to seperate the res andt overnight again in the fridge.

Should sparge I suppose to get the volume up or add water and malt?At 1060 I added 5 litres of water.

 

Come back.

[Reviled]

Hey Dave

 

Good on ya for taking the plunge.. A few bits of advice for ya.

 

26 litres down to 14 is a massive loss, sounds like you got a rather high OG as well, this could be either that you are boiling too hard and evaporating off too much during the boil - or perhaps you are losing too much water to the grain? What do you do with the grain bag after you remove it from the kettle? Do you set it aside, dunk sparge, squeeze or sparge it? I personally sparge it with a few litres of 80*c odd water - then add this back to the kettle. My boil volumes are usually about 26 litres leaving me with 21 litres

 

Second thing with the sediment, sadly BIAB does produce alot more of this sh*t than other methods of brewing, but the only detriment I have found is that the beer takes a little longer to clear after fermentation. Most of it gets eaten up during fermentation also so is most likely serving as a nutrient for the yeast! I personally don't worry about it and usually have a couple of litres of the stuff.

[Dave Brown]

I didnt sparge just lifted the bag out and let it drain in a colinder.Boiled the crap out of it with all 3 burners on full so thats where a lot would have gone.Ur thoughts??

[Reviled]

Did you let it drain into a bucket and collect everything that drained off? Or just ditch it? Cos that will account for a couple of litres which you can add back to the brew while its boiling. And yeah, generally you should be able to turn your burner down once the boil gets going. A rolling boil is all you need, it doesn't need to be going nuts!

[Dave Brown]

added the run off back in so it must be the hard out boil off, got the malt for another go, guess that means ive got the bug after 18 yrs of kit brewing.