Make sure you account for the extra 1/2 gallon of kettle loss too. That's what bit me because I'm used to pulling the bag and ending up with everything in the pot and not having any "loss", and forgot to account for the 1/2 gallon below the spigot when I calculated my grain bill.
FWIW I used 0.045 gallons / pound as my grain absorption # and it worked out exactly that way, but I did full volume no-sparge (as in very thin mash).
See below for the whole story. Sorry it's long, this is all the notes I made for myself thrown out there to maybe help someone else. There is brewer pr0n at the end if you make it that far LOL.
So I brewed this simple 3 gallon lager as a test run. I just used up some stuff I had around.
4.5# 2 row
4oz Munich
3oz Cara-8
2oz Honey Malt
2oz Acidulated Malt
1/3oz 6.5% AA US Goldings FWH
1oz 2.2% AA Styrian Goldings @flameout
The hops were FWH and @flameout specifically because I am no-chilling this. The @flamout acts as both a flavor/aroma and partial (20 minute) bittering addition because of this. It will end up ~20 IBUs.
I wanted this to be a simple beer to see if anything is "off", due to process or due to the no-chill. I didn't want to bury any offness under a pile-o-hops. I'm probably going to pitch a pack of Mangrove Jack Bavarian Lager yeast in it just to be totally sure. If something is wrong, I want to know.
This was done as a 3.5 gallon target (I figured kettle loss at this point, I got the water amounts right) full volume Aussie style BIAB, no sparge. So his is the full rundown of my mash and how it went.
I put 4.25 gallons of straight up lake Erie tap water (which makes pretty good beer unless it's a BoPils) in there, treated with campden to get rid of my chloramines (which do not make good beer).
I used a couple of the silicon steamer mats to cover the bottom of the basket and catch more grain particles then the basket would have on its own. I found that they want to float the other day, so they need to be weighted down somehow. The easy answer for today was a couple of stainless steel table knives. I will probably get some silicon coated sousvid weights or something and use them to make it less of a "bodge" in the future. There are sousvid magnets that would probably work but I don't know what would happen if one fell off the bottom and landed on the burner, so I think weights are a better option. But bodge or not, this worked great and was much easier to clean the a BIAB bag when done.
I figured a 159 strike temp would get me to 153 target temp with this small grain bill, but it was 154... close enough. It took a bit less then an hour for me to hit strike temp in my 57 degree basement.
Set the M&B at 153.
I had ~4.65 gallons of total mash volume at this point.
The mash fluctuated a bit as expected, but actually more then I expected. The temps rose very quickly when the burner kicked on for its cycle. TOO quickly. The burner would kick out at 153, but the temps kept rising and would hit 156, I was in the room next door working, so I'd hear it kick on. I gave the mash a good stir every cycle. That was maybe 5 times total, including one at the end of the mash. But since it was fluctuting (at least on the bottom sensor) from 149-156 instead of 149-154 or whatever, I think I should probably set the burner to 1000 watts for the mash once it's up to temp, it shouldn't overshoot the top end as much that way. That said I'm sure the middle of the pot where the grain was stayed more stable then down there at the burner. But I think I probably am going to get a long probe thermometer and stick it through the lid so I can keep a better eye on it and dial that in.
After the 60 minute mash, I set the temp at 170 to do a mash out. Of course it cycled between ~166-173 or so, again I think if I set the burner to 1000 watts once up to temp it wouldn't overshoot as much. I mashed out this way for 15 minutes giving it a good stir half way through it. I didn't mash out to kill the enzymes, I did it to liquefy the sugars and get everything running freely. Because no-sparge. It is a kind of important step when you are doing no-sparge if you want to get better efficiency.
I need to try setting at 1000 watts once up to temp next time though. I think it will make the temperature swings (at least on the high end) smaller.
Then I pulled the basket and let it drain. I found that I could tip it sideways in the pot and still have it be self supported after it stopped on its own while "flat" and got more out of it. I didn't need to squeeze, the grain bed compacted very well on its own as it drained. I probably could have squeezed a little bit more out of it but I don't think I'd have gained much.
I ended up with 4 gallons of wort which is exactly what I calculated, and the pre-boil temperature adjusted gravity was 1.033, which is about what I expected. So I hit ~70% efficiency which I will gladly take, that's about right for this process. So yes, you can very effectively do a full volume aussie style BIAB in this thing as long as your water and grain all fit. This one was easy since it was a low gravity beer.
It took maybe only 20 minutes to reach a boil, it was pretty fast.
I was feeling pretty happy with how smooth this was going, but this is where I suddenly realized I screwed up. I was intending on a 1.047ish/4.5%ish beer. But I figured that at 3 gallons for the grain bill. When formulating the recipe, I forgot that I was going to end up with more like 3.5 gallons of wort (0.5 gallon kettle trub/spigot loss).
I didn't forget that in my BIAB mash volume calculations though.
I realized this somewhere during the boil and said "DOH".
I decided to split it in the middle and let it boil down to 3.25 gallons instead, so I ended up with more like a 90 minute boil. That gave me a 1.040 temperature adjusted post boil wort. I could have added some DME, but whatever, I'll just be able to drink a hella lot of this after a bike ride and not feel bad about it, nothing wrong with a tasty (I hope) 4%ish beer. I'll see how much I actually get out of this thing if I tip it a little bit, maybe I can still get close to 3 gallons, I don't know.
I'm no-chilling this. My little wort chiller isn't little enough to fit in the M&B, it's short and fat and meant for a shorter/fatter pot, where the M&B is tall and skinny. So no-chill is the easy answer for now and I have no problem doing it, I know it works ok. I hate using lots of water anyways, especially since they jacked up the water/sewer rates around here this year.
To do it, I used the distilling lid that Williams sells, along with what they call a #11-10 foam stopper. The stopper is meant for making yeast starters as the "plug" for the flask. It is made to be autoclavable, so it can handle high temps. The distilling lid makes a tight seal as it's also meant to be used as a fermentation lid with a rubber stopper. The foam stopper will let some air in as it cools so it doesn't make a vacuum and crush up my mash & boil, but it will filter out any wild yeast like my wild house Brett and/or other bugs including real ones. That's what it's designed to do.
I sanitized the lid, and the stopper, and just for the sake of murdering everything for sure, I put it and the lid on for the last 5 minutes of the boil to steam sanitize it some more. I covered the whole top with some foil draped over the sides, just to discourage the cats from trying to jump on it. Same reason I have foil on the floor under the cart, the cats hate stepping on it or the noise it makes when they touch it, so it keeps them away.
I'm going to dump it into one of my mini-coopers tomorrow, but I have a rubber stopper that will fit this lid and I could put an airlock in it, so I might actually try fermenting directly in this sometime. Maybe even try it right on the kettle trub. As in no-chill, put the foam, toss some yeast in the hole, put in the stopper / airlock, and walk away. That would be super if it works ok. I think I'd do a vorlauf if I was going to try this (I didn't bother to vorlauf this batch, I can't imagine the kettle trub will be very much with this grain bill and there is 1/2 gallon of space down there). That's kind of what the zymatic does so I think it will work. Might be a bit hazy from whatever kettle trub doesn't come out when I vorlauf, but whatever. More vitamins.
This especially might be a good thing for me in the summer if I want a beer without brett.
FWIW, cleaning the basket out + my little mats took less time then cleaning up a BIAB bag. At least in my case, there is always some damn bits of grain that won't come out of the bags when I use them.
Pictures....
My cart... note the bodged red electric tape and blue stripe. That helps me align the reset switch with the hole in the cart. Spigot goes over blue line. And the anti-cat floor coating. LOL.
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My mash. That is ~4.65 gallons. So you can see there is plenty of room for more, I could easily do a 1.09 beer full volume BIAB @3.5 gallon target.
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Nice compact grain bed at the end.
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The fermenting/distilling lid with the foam stopper that I'm using for the no-chill.
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What the little silicon mats I used to filter look like. I stacked them, which gives a nice small mesh. With bonus mash paddle and bodgey stainless steel knives I used for weights, and a hydrometer hidden under the mats too. Because you all like mash paddles and hydrometers.
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