Well........what happened? Has every biab brewer succumbed to the poisons of their creations? Does anybody still do this? And more importantly, does it really work? You know just like "real" brewing
Curiously Intriqued,
MojoBrew
Of course people are still doing it - the thing is its become popular enough so that this sort of "introductory" thread is less necessary - and because I wrote it when BIAB was still a pretty local Australian phenomenon, I didn't use BIAB in the title, so now people who go looking for it tend to skip past this thread
might even ask the Mods if I can change the thread title to include the acronym.
After reading this topic last fall I thought I would add my 2 cent's. Last fall my wife made me a bag that my 8 gallon pot fit into. The first batch I brewed was a black IPA. As all 3 of the brews i have done with this meted I added 5 gallons of water to my pot, brought it up to temp. according to beer smith and dough in and adjust the temp every 15 min, the last 2 try's I have only had to at the 45 min. mark. On the black IPA I hit 67 percent efficiency. The 2nd brew was a oatmeal stout I did for a club demo and got a 74 percent efficiency. This week I brewed a dry stout In witch I got a new malt mill and ground all the malts with a mill setting of.030 and got 84 percent efficiency, I am very happy with all the results I have gotten. and will continue using this BIAB because it really shortens the brew day. Just have not been brave enough to try it on pale beers but I will soon. Oh buy the way after I raise the bag to drain I add additional water to bring the pot up to 6.5 gal to do a full boil. Also thanks to every one that has posted on this it has brought to light a fun easy meted to make all grain beer. I know a couple of club members a getting ready to give it a try.
Dont be afraid of pale beers with BIAB - they work perfectly well. I have a kolsch sitting in my no-chill cube waiting for me to ferment it that was a BIAB beer and I have made a number of pale lagers with BIAB. All fine beers no better or worse than they would have been if I had made them on my RIMS.
If you are topping up your kettle... try pouring the water over the BIAB bag as a kind of a sparge. It wont work all that well, but it will rinse some sugars out and bump your efficiency a little. I normally dot recommend that people sparge with BIAB - its an added step that really doesn't pay the effort back with much reward. BUT - you are adding the water anyway so you might as well do it via the grain and get a little extra bang for your buck.
The way you do it is a nice way to be able to do BIAB if your pot is a little smaller than ideal - there are a number of guys around who are taking it even further and doing their batches at quite high gravity in stovetop sized (5G) pots. and diluting at several steps. Pre-boil, post boil, into the fermenter. Similarly to the way an extract brewer would. Its not ideal and not what I suggest people do - but it is definitely possible and capable of making good beer.
No way to heat up large amounts of water to sparge/dilute?? - no problem. You can do it with hot tap water or even with cold water. Both work perfectly well - you will be quite surprised at how well cold water works for sparging. It does cool your wort down and heating to a boil takes longer - but there are no quality issues and it keeps the requirements for pots and heat sources down to the optimal BIAB number of just one.
TB
PS - I would like to rudely cross promote another board. One that is dedicated to BIAB brewing. If anyone thinks its unsuitable for me to do that here, just let me know and I will remove this bit.
Try looking at
www.biabrewer.info if you are interested in this type of brewing. Then bring what you learn back to the BN and share the wealth.
