First BIAB advice

[Scott Phillips]

Hello all,

Did my first BIAB all grain brew last weekend. It is a clone of Pot Kettle Black. Big shout out to Karl from allgrain.co.nz for great service.

One issue I'm having is with a heck of a lot of sediment. I conducted the mash as normal in the bag, Koppafloc as a 15 minute boil addition, then sparged the grain bag with about 9L of water. Cooled using a copper coil immersion chiller then straight into the fermenter. Yield of 22L but at the bottom of the fermenter there is about 4L of sediment.

A couple of things I have thought of to reduce sediment:

1. Use two grain bags so there is two layers.

2. When transferring the cooled wort into the fermenter pour it through another sanitised grain bag.

3. Cold crashing - the recipe calls for it to be bottled Sunday coming. Should I siphon off into another fermenter, leaving behind the trub, then cold crash? For how long? And will there still be enough yeast in there if I do this to carbonate the beer sufficiently once its in the bottle??

Any thoughts on the above would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

Scott.

[Julian Melville]

I guess one other thing to think about is your bag. My first couple of BIAB brews were done using a bag that was just way too coarse, and it was letting through all sorts of material. My new bag is possibly a step too far in the other direction - double layer and very fine, and my efficiency seems to have suffered a bit.

[Steve b]

Hi there my suggestion to you is go back to karl and get a bazooka tube and add it to the bottom of your pot they work a treat also slowly drain into fermenter using a stainless steel siv to catch anything extra . I always leave the bottom 5-7 ltrs so I dont get any off flavours comming through the beer .once on the fermentor just let it do its thing secdonarys are a waste of time and can cause more harm than good the sediment will settle in the bottom nicely leaving crystal clear beer . Also just before you bottle cold crash to 0deg and add some geletine mixed with about 75deg water and whirlpool. leave for three days this stuff works way better than copper folic and can be brought from pak n save . Sparging the grain is also not that effective best to do full recirculation with march pump for tye entire mash saves alot of hassle . Put it this way the more you handle your beer the more chance of getting an infection. CHEERS