BeerBorg

Just wondering what some of your methods out there? I have yet to do a traditional full volume BIAB. But i do get 75-80% eff using 1.5 qts per lb of grain and doing a sparge after i pull the grains from the mash. I know thats not true BIAB but it works. Ive also done a hot water mashout to get to my boil volume. I think ultimately i will try a combo of both. The BIAB obviously saves me time and cleanup. Im starting to like it more and more.

So anyone else? Im going to really look at this last batch I brewed to compare this thing like clarity and such to all the beers ive done with traditional all grain.

I've occasionally done a simple sparge when doing my BIAB but mostly, I don't need to. I do however do a pretty good squeeze.
You can always pour some of the hot wort over the grain to sparge instead of hot water but once you find what works for you and gets you to where you need to be, refine it and stick to it. You'll get thru your brew day better with less stress knowing that what you're doing will always work out or at least, come close to what you are hoping for.

Since my grain bag is too heavy for me to work with, I've used strainers to remove about half the grain into other grain bags in Lowe's buckets and let them drain and cool. Then I get my boil going while they drain and cool and squeeze them a bit to get all the goodness and pour that into the pot. I've simply got no way to make a hoist and pull 17 lbs of wet grain out in my set up and this is fast and just works for me.

For an LBK batch, I use a 2-gallon igloo cylinder cooler, transfer the wort to the 3-gallon boil pot, and then use a repeated batch sparge, transferring the bag between two 2-gallon pots and emptying each's sparge water into the boil pot to bring the boil to the full volume. This would need to end if the sparge water got below SG=1.010, but so far that hasn't happened.

There's a discussion about BIAB technique in this thread viewtopic.php?f=13&t=210

I don't have a pot big enough to do a traditional full volume BIAB. I mash with 1.5 qts per lb like you, and get great results.

How do you crush your grains? When I crushed my pre-crushed grains down to .025 mm one time I got in the mid 70's for efficiency. Every other time it has been in the 60's. Last batch, I set it at right around .035 only sending it through the mill once, and got about 65%. I'm not sure what crushing method works the best, and how fine you should crush???

I've been using the Barley Crusher for about a year set on factory default and I stopped checking my efficiency but I was getting about 76% sometimes over 80%. I only mill once but I do a good bit of squeezing to get all that goodness out so maybe that's why I'm doing better than some.
With the amount of grain funk in the bottom of my pot, I'm pretty sure my crush is good.

losman26 wrote:How do you crush your grains? When I crushed my pre-crushed grains down to .025 mm one time I got in the mid 70's for efficiency. Every other time it has been in the 60's. Last batch, I set it at right around .035 only sending it through the mill once, and got about 65%. I'm not sure what crushing method works the best, and how fine you should crush???

From what I've read, you're supposed to crush finer for BIAB to compensate for the lack of a sparge, but I think that's just a guideline. Seems like there's lots of different approaches to BIAB on this forum alone -- some sparge, some squeeze, some do full-size mashes, others mash with less....so it seems like the finer crush is not necessary, if you compensate in other ways.

I've done three, with different methods. None were full volume. I did two pour sparges with a colander, one dunk sparge in a pot. I always squeeze, using a dish on the bag in the colander. BIAB is very flexible.

I did BIAB until I set up a mash tun.

I was doing 5 gal batches in a 7.5 gal pot by mashing in the brew pot, pulling the bag and doing a dunk sparge for 10 minutes in a 5 gallon bucket.
I would sparge twice, then put a stainless bowl in the bottom of the bucket and use a pot top to squeeze the rest of the water from the grains.
Then I would rinse the grain and squeeze again, to make my boil volume.
Had very good success with this method and it made it pretty affordable to begin with!

i do 5 gallon batches, i brew outside under a roof, i installed a hook to hang (with wire) the mash bag for drainage
i have had :opps:y before. nothing a water hose couldnt fix.
i do a 15 min sparge, and a 90 min boil.
i try to get all the good stuff out of the grain before it goes into compost bin.

brewon

Spent grain makes for awesome bread. This Sunday when I brew, as soon as I'm done mashing, the wife gets 2 cups of it (that's not much at all) and starts on the bread. If I'm lucky, by the time I'm finished brewing, I'll have fresh bread ready. Double yum!

Beer-lord wrote:I've been using the Barley Crusher for about a year set on factory default and I stopped checking my efficiency but I was getting about 76% sometimes over 80%. I only mill once but I do a good bit of squeezing to get all that goodness out so maybe that's why I'm doing better than some.
With the amount of grain funk in the bottom of my pot, I'm pretty sure my crush is good.

Doing modified BIABs here. I also use the Barley Crusher with great success; one pass (gap set at credit card thickness) works great.

Thanks for the replies its cool to see what others do with their setup. I have a 9 gal kettle so I cant do full volume BIAB with my usual 5-6 gal batch size which need from a 6 to 7.5 gal boil volume. My crush is pretty consistant from my LHBS so with my 1.5 qts/lb I easily see 75-80% eff with a sparge. I usually do a hot water addition mashout with half of my sparge just to get the grains ready to come out and then sparge. If the mashout helps lock in better effeciency im all for it. Then im sparging or rinsing the grains with less water. I guess I could go straight to the sparge and see what kind of difference I get if any. Instead I can simply heat the mash with my burner to mashout temp but really the hot water addition is much quicker. Now to try out another BIAB. I thinking of an oktoberfest although its a little late to try and have one ready soon but I want to brew one.

My first batch was crushed at the store. For the other two I used a blender. The opinion on HBT seems to be that you can hardly over-crush BIAB. I dunk sparge to help control water volume.

I've always wanted to call it MIAB ... "Mash in a Bag" ... because that's what it is.

The brew part, to me, is the hop boil and cool down.

But, I call it BIAB, because that's what it's called by everyone else.

*sigh*