How to go from Extract to AG for < $10.00

[ravingcutie]

heh! it's an old nick name Nick gave me....

[monkeyplusplus]

Alright peeps, here' s some excerpts from my experience with the BIAB technique.

This was my:

Fourth batch of homebrew.
First all-grain batch.
First time using one of JZ's recipes (slightly molested with substitutions)
First time using my keggle.
First time using my turkey fryer. (it's never seen a turkey. only wort.)
...and of course, the first time using BIAB

Lots of firsts! It was, however, lots of fun. I've been planning on stepping up to the all-grain plate, and this method allowed me to get into it a bit quicker and a bit cheaper than I would have otherwise been able. I was also very impressed by the simplicity of the whole get-up. It actually took less cleaning and preparation than my previous extract batches. I'm bottling the stuff tomorrow, and if it turns out tasting as good as it looks, then this will become my standard method. It seems like a natural place to start for a new all-grain brewer, and a good foundation to build on for a more complex system.

Important note: there wasn't a lot of fine-tuning during this brewday - it was pretty shoot-from-the-hip. There was less of "I'd better turn on the heat so my mash temp stays exactly at 154" and more of "woooooooooo gimme another beer", so I don't have info on efficiency, or even an OG reading on the stuff. This was a 'for shits and giggles' kinda thing, but the beer that I transfered to the secondary a week ago tasted absolutely amazing. Next time I'll pay much more attention to the details, and report back with any salient info.

here are some photos:



This is me giving the grain bag a little squeeze to coax some more wort out. I had the same problem that GooberMcNutly mentioned with the wort running down the sides of the keggle. The 'lip' on the top tends to restrict the bag on its way up, and that contact allows the wort to run over the side. The only thing I could do at that point was to lift it all the way up and pretend that I never heard of HSA. I plan on modifying the design of the bag, rather than cutting off the lip of the keggle to solve this problem, since I'd like to have the ability to set the lid on it in the future.



During the (90min) boil. I'm the drunk 'tard to the left.



Cooling phase - this was also the first time using my immersion chiller. I tried to give it a bit of a whirlpool at the start of chilling, but there's an awful lot of equipment in that keggle.

So far it's worked out beautifully!

[Thirsty Boy]

nice photos Brian,

The wort running down the outside of the kettle is a problem for everyone who uses a bag in a kettle thats been converted like yours.

The only way I've seen anyoe get around it is too make the bag so narrow that it doesn't "scrape" out... and that makes the bag so narrow that the mash physically suffers and efficiency heads south fairly dramatically.

But.... this is a new enough way to mash that I'm sure that not nearly all teh permutations have been tried, so if yu come up with good one, let us know.

If you look in the pictures in the first post of the thread, you can see that Col's converted keg has had te top cut completely off; and he has tacked the section with the handles back on later. He did this specifically to give a nice smooth side like you would get with a commercial pot. Thats a great solution.

One other thing you can do is to just drill some drainage holes in your kettle so that wort that runs out the side drains back inside the vessel rather than down the sides. right near the edges.

Welcome to the club. Be sure to llet us know how the beer turns out.

Cheers mate

Thirsty

[katzke]

Do you think this is the same material you are using in Australia?

http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog.jsp; ... rce=search

[monkeyplusplus]

It certainly looks like what I used - as long as it has a fairly fine mesh, I'll bet it'll work fine.

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Do you think this is the same material you are using in Australia?

http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog.jsp; ... rce=search

Hard to tell from the picture, but the description looks spot on. It would certainly be good enough for Government Work...

[katzke]

Good-day Thirsty Boy,

I spent most of last night reading the subject. Never went to the thread on the Aussie site.

Does it have more info like how fine to grind the grains? Any images of the grain? Any other important info?

Have done some trading with one person and have a friend in Australia and find words get in the way sometimes. Like your Haberdashery is our Fabric Store, unless you quilt then it is a Quilting Store.

[Thirsty Boy]

The thread on the Aussie site is a monster - there is a LOT of useful stuff in there. You will end up understanding the process really well... because you will see every last bit of it thrashed out over and over again Rolling Eyes

Its worth a read, but you will need to set your patience dial to its highest level.

You are of course more than welcome over there, but if you'd prefer I'm happy to answer any questions you have right here.

As for crush..... whatever your homebrew shop does for you is fine

If you crush yourself, whatever level you have already been crushing to will work perfectly well, but if you wanted to, you could crush MUCH more finely.

People who brew in a mash tun worry about crush levels because they have to be able to lauter and this involves setting a grain bed and worrying about stuck sparges etc etc. A BiaB brewer doesn't have these worries.

Perhaps drawing the line a little short of crushing your grist completely to flour ... I'd say that you couldn't crush a BiaB grist too finely.

Cheers

Thirsty