First BIAB - went well, and raised alot of questions!

[G S]

Hi all,

Thanks mostly to the massive amount of advise here and the Aussie site  I've just completed my 1st All Grain brew (or at least got it into a fermentor). Had taken pics of the processs, but now can't get them off my piece of $^$#^ phone, so will do without for now.

After getting the whole lot done I've a bunch of questions about what I probably should have done, so will start by explaining what I did.


Aim was to make an english bitter, IBU low thirties, nothing too fancy, just a beer I could make from scratch myself.

Grain Bill
2kgs of UK Pale Ale English Malt - I'd worked out I needed 1.8kgs but LHBS said just to throw it all in.
200g of Crystal Malt
Crushed for me by LHBS

So heated 10litres of water to 75 Deg C, put grain into water, in bag, and gave it a good mix around.
Measure temp, was 70 Deg C, so added 500mls of tap water, was then 66 Deg C, gave it another good mix.
Lid on the pan, wrapped it up in old towels, blanket etc
Left it 60 mins
Unwrapped it, temperature was 63 Deg C

Pulled out bag, let it drain, measured depth, got 10.25 litres by my calcs (at 60 Deg C).
Wondering if I actually put in more than 10 litres, I counted 5x 2litre jugs, plus the 500mls temp adjust, but didn't measure depth to double check. Or is there that much expansion, or did I really only leave 250mls in with the grain?

Took a sample, this measured 1035 OG at 60 Deg C, which when converted to 20 Deg is I think quite a lot, 1050+?

Anyway, put the bag into a bucket, couldn't find a green one, so a clean paint pail seemed good.
Added another 1.7litres of water at 70 Deg C and gave it all a good slosh and let it drain again.
This yielded another 1.5 litres, ish, with an OG of 1.016 at 60Deg C.

A took another sample here, and let it cool down to 20 Deg C. OG=1.046, this was before boiling it.
This seemed higher than I expected, and as it came up to the boil I realised i could probably get more in the kettle ( 17 litre, supposedly) than I thought. So I added another 1.7 Litres of boiling water from the kitchen kettle.

Brought it up to the boil, it looked like some kid of swamp monster from rotorua.
used a ladle from the kitchen to take the scum off the top as it started boiling, wasn't very succesful it getting all of it and probably took another 300mls of liquid out.

Anyway, boiled away, I only want to use one type of hop, and the LHBS only had one type suitable for an english bitter.
Willemette Pelletts, AA=4.5 %, a 100g bag.

I don't have accurate scales, so typed the numbers as best I could into "the beer recipator", cool name, playing with the vols and effeciency until I got something that looked like my OG.

Went with multiples of 12.5 grams of hops, which I did just just splitting a 100g pile of pelletts into halves again and again.
12.5 G at 60mins
25g at 30mins
12.5g at 15mins
and another 12.5g at flame out (just for luck that one).

Lost more water than i thought i would in the boil, so added another 1.7 litres about 5mins before the end, which brought it back up to 12 litres.
5mins to go put the lid on to sterilise it, furious boiling now, but no boil over.
flameout

glad wrap over the top, lid on, put it in a large bucket of water.
no water shortages in NZ, so hosepipe in the bucket, bit of a swirl going on, some ice blocks towards the end, and about 40mins later was down to 25 Deg C. I gently swirled the kettle a few times to help it cool, but was this a bad idea? It would have swirled up all the crud??

Poured it into a 15litre cube was wary of using thermo and contamination to check temp here, it no longer felt warm through the barrell, so threw in 1/2 pack rehydrated S04 (recommended by LHBS) and glad wrap over the opening of the cube.

took me 5 hrs by the time I'd finished, and got just under 10litres into the FV. mad.gif now I see why people like to do bigger batches!

the 10 litres of clearish looking liquid into the FV was a mission in itself. I'd read to pour it like a bottle of homebrew, slowly and steadily so as not to mix it up. fine in theory, but the pot was getting pretty heavy so it got mixed more than I would like.

I poured 2litres of some pretty sludgy looking stuff into a jug which is now settling with some gladwrap over the top. After a few hours there's about a litre of clearish liquid on the top of it.

I had about 500mls of "green mud" in the bottom of the kettle.


The final OG when I'd finished was 1.046 which still seems high, and I'm not sure I've got enough bitterness in there.
Any feedback?

Would it be worth boiling some more hops in water, letting it cool, and putting it in the FV?
Or should I just leave it and taste it in 4 weeks time.

Is my 2 litres of sludge, now separated into a litre of wort and a litre of green mud, useful for anything?
Too risky to pour it into the FV now?

All in all though a very rewarding day, thanks indeed to the kind people here who have given me enough advise to be dangerous !
I just hope it tastes good in 4 weeks time.


Only then can i stand on the top of my upturned FV, beat my chest, and shout "I man, I make beer".


that was all last night, its all fermenting nicely this morning, whoooo hoooo !!!

[Reviled]

Sounds like everything went pretty well mate, by beer recipators calcs you got about 83% efficiency to get an OG of 1046, which is damn good for a first AG and quite probable given the small grain bill...

I also calculate your IBU at about 49, which is heaps for that OG so I would expect quite a bitter beer, not that itll be bad, just hope you like hops ;o) You will need to invest in some accurate scales at some stage cos measuring by eye with hops is really inaccurate and will result in you not being able to acheive consistent results...

In regards to the trub (the muck at the bottom of the kettle) this is a hotly debated issue, some say pour it all in, some say make sure you get the least amount possible, I personally pour most of it into the FV and find that by the time fermentation has finished its settled to the bottom with the yeast so I dont get much if any into my kegs anywayz...

The litre or so that you saved is good for yeast starters when you eventually dabble with liquid yeasts, but for now I would give it a quick 10 min boil to resanitise and throw it into the FV with the rest, its another bottle or two of beer so may as well not waste it :o)

Good stuff mate, welcome to BIAB!!

[G S]

Thanks for all that.

Have had another play with the recipator getting my head around it, and can get the same effeciency, FG's etc.

But am still showing my IBU should be 36, not the 49 you got.

The Willemette's were 4.5% AA, just realised if I enter the 'p' for pellets i get IBU=39, so a bit higher, but still not 49.

the additions were:
12.5 g at 60mins
25g at 30mins
12.5g at 15mins
and another 12.5 at zero.

Trying to figure out if I missed something in the software?


Re the trub - what is that stuff? looked like really mushy peas, but heaps of it, some must be what's left of the hop pellets? When i chilled my first SG sample, before adding hops, there was a similar white crud forming at the bottom. Is this the stuff they call 'cold break' ?

Hot break being the foam that forms on the top when it first boils? also got some green frothy stuff at the top here, but only for a few minutes after adding the pellets each time. I didn't remove that, should I have done?

Are 'real' hops going to be alot better? (of course they are !)

apologies for the newbie Q's.

cheers
Gordon

[Simon David kelly]

Close ... the mushy pea soup on the bottom is both the hot and cold break with hop residue. It's clumps formed by bonding due to heating of protiens then when you cool it back down another bonding occures to take out more ... if you use and agent like whirlflock, irish moss etc you get more bonding during the cold break.

Two schools of thought on skimming ... I don't .. others do ... try both and see what you think, obviously on the same recipie. It's just potiens and hops ... protiens a needed for head retention, so i whisk it back in with the stirer during the boil. When you chill and give it a whirlpool it all goes back in. I skimmed a beer and found i had bad head retention. Did the same brew without and got better head :o) ... if I had the time and money I'd experiment with that stuff to see wheather it was just luck.

[Simon David kelly]

Check these two out good discusion on both head and boil.

[Patrick]

Sounds like a great first effort. Don't worry too much about what ended up in the fermenter, on my first batch I just poured everything from the kettle into the fermenter! Tried filtering it but the strainer got blocked so ended up just chucking it in. The beer came out pretty good all the same.

As long as you sanitized everythying that came into contact with the post-boil wort, you should be sweet as.

[Tom Innes]

Sounds good to me. I have stressed over the cold-break material sometimes too but the beer has always come out OK in the end. I once read (or heard) somewhere that "brewing is a very forgiving process". Obviously to make a really top beer you need to get things right but at the level you and I are at I think the trick is to relax and enjoy it. This will be a nice drop and you will feel great when you pour the first glass!

BTW, I find most of the hot-break material disappears by the end of a 60 or 90 minute boil. I usually give it a skim at the very end to pick up the stuff that is still there. Then again, sometimes I don't - and it still comes out OK, so there you go ;-)

[G S]

thanks folks, the whole exercise is really a scary of example of 'shit you can learn on the internet' ! - Problem with learning it from reading about it is not knowing what to stress about and what's just going to be fine either way.

Simon's post reminded me - i bought some irish moss, but forgot to put it in !! so that's on the list of stuff not to worry about, at least this time!

hoping to catch up with Reviled some time and see how someone does it for real, but as you say, got to sit back, and enjoy each drop