BIAB Brewing Primer for Beginners article

[Beer-lord]

Taken from another forum but a decent run down for those who may have some generic questions about BIAB brewing.
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/BIAB-Brewin ... lk+Feed%29

[JohnSant]

Thanks Beer-Lord I'm planning going to BIAB sometime soon. I have to pay my taxes (income and property) and sales tax for new car before spending for new brewing equipment.

[FrozenInTime]

Anudder site

Anudder one again

[FrozenInTime]

Holly mackeral, been quite a while since I double posted, guess I was overdue...... LOL

[mashani]

One thing folks/these things never tell you is that you can do partial volume BIAB brewing as long as you are willing to top up with extract. They make it sound like you can only do full volume brewing.

But basically say you want to target 5 gallons but only have a 16Q pot. So you can just do whatever volume of grain you can get into that 16Q, all your specialty grains and whatever base malt you can, and treat that wort as partial mash, then just do your hop boil in that wort and then to achieve full volume/target OG, do a late extract addition and water top up in your fermenters.

That's how I do 5 gallons since I can't boil 5 gallons on my stove in a reasonable amount of time. I do AG BIAB at 2.5 gallons, and what I described for more. It works great (just use good quality fresh extract for your late addition).

[swenocha]

I do the exact same thing, Mash...

[Chuck N]

I know this is going to make me sound like a snob (which I am but not in this case) but the main reason I like BIAB or AG if I did it that way is that I can say I 100% made this beer. The only other thing that anyone else contributed to my beer is the growing and processing of the hops and the barley/malts. Adding extract to my beers - to me - feels like allowing some one else to contribute to my beer.

Now don't take this the wrong way. I'm not criticizing your procedures. And I have absolutely no room to criticize your beers. I know from experience that incredibly good beer can be made using extracts and jumping from PMs to BIAB was a major jump for me and one that I'm still trying to work the kinks out of. This is just me.

But I have the same problem with trying to get five gallons of beer to boil on my stove. Can't be done no way no how. So what I did was just go to a smaller batch. I can get three and a half gallons to a boil and end up with just under three gallons of wort. So I adjust any recipes to three gallons and go from there. Then I add water to the wort - usually about a half gallon - to bring the volume up to a full three gallons.

There's nothing that says you have to make five gallon batches of beer. Heck, if LOML wouldn't get mad at me I'd cut my batches down to one gallon and brew every week.

[mashani]

Oh I love to do 2.5 gallon AG BIABs that are "all mine" as such, but I'm just time conflicted due to being a 24x7 IT person (which is also why I often brew in the middle of the night!). And sometimes I want more beer. So sometimes I will do all extract to shave off hours. Or sometimes I will do the PM thing with a BIAB base to get 5 gallons, because I want 5 gallons of beer for the same amount of time spent.

So, I just do what ever I need to do just to get 'R done, as long as it makes good beer.

[Kealia]

I understand all points made, too. There is a certain satisfaction level that comes from brewing 100% from scratch, but I don't hesitate to use extracts when I am pressed for time either.
In fact, one of my favorite brews from last year was my IPL which was 100% Pilsner malt extract from MoreBeer. I don't think of extracts any differently than I hops, really...they are both just ingredients in my creations.

[mashani]

I love MoreBeer pils extract. I think it's just Briess Pils (nothing but pils and some carafoam), but it's so much fresher then the canned stuff, I think they get it directly from Briess and sell it in a matter of weeks. And to me a 75-90 minute pilsner mash with a 90 minute pilsner boil is a hella lot of time to spend, I can rarely pull it off, so most of my beers that use pilsner use it. Got 4# of it on the way to use in a Vienna malt based BIAB + extract 5 gallon Maibock I'm doing soon. I'll use that stuff in any Belgian, it makes great Belgians, it ferments well.

[KokomoSam]

I like this description for 2.5 gallon stove top BIAB...

http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=153