BIAB – Brew Day in Pictures

Nothing like a Sunday afternoon, with football on the tube, brewing!

Cleaned and Sanitized everything that wort would touch post boil.

Only had 2 glass jugs, so had to sanitize a small bucket that was once filled with honey!

Very simple all grain recipe with Munich, Pilsner and Special B.

BIAB, so crushed directly into the bag across the homer bucket. Added the dust from the bucket into the bag after.

Grains added to Monster Mill hopper. I use a drill on slow to power.

This looks pretty good, especially for BIAB. No rice hulls were harmed in the crusher!

Close up of crush showing good crush of endosperm and decent husk material

Doughing in. Bag is stretched across my 5 gallon kettle. It’s a little tight, but works.

I was very careful about volumes, each kettle addition of strike water was measured.

I doughed in low at around 122F, and raised the heat to reach 150F. Hot spots in the mash required continual stirring until I was comfortable with a stable temp. Once happy – let it sit covered for 60 minutes.

Weighed out 1.7 grams for my half pitch batch

Followed the 10X weight rule for rehydration water. Added the yeast to the warm sterile water.

This is the control yeast – at the Brewer’s Friend recommendation for a high gravity Pro pitch

Same process as A

Used the remaining yeast in the satchet, just under 6.6 grams.

All of the yeast was added to their constituent allocated water, and set aside for what would be about 2 hours.

Hop additions were weighed out and prepared for additions. I used 20 grams for FWH, and the remaining 8 grams for an aroma addition

BIAB is normally dunked for sparging, but my liquor pot was too small – I resorted to decanting and poring 175F water, followed by a hard twist and squeeze to get as much wort as possible.

It takes a bit for 2.5 gallons to come to a boil. FWH added in a sock. Will top up with cold water in the settle tank.

Finally reached a boil after about 20 minutes – had to use two burners. Skimmed off much of the froth as it came up.

Added whirlfloc, yeast nutrient and final hops at 15 minutes to flameout

I was too lazy to drag out my old immersion chiller. So put this into ice in the sink. Never got it below 90F in there as I ran out of ice. Still got good cold break!

Out of the norm, I transferred the cooled wort into my sanitary bottling bucket, through another paint strainer. Here I whisked for several minutes to aerate, covered and set settle.

Was not happy about such a high temperature, but knew that it would cool a bit as I transferred

My refractometer read at 16 brix, and the hydrometer read 1.060 at 86F. With temperature adjustment that should be right at 1.066. Right on target!

Using a graduated pitcher, I transferred wort 1 gallon at a time to each fermenter

I labeled each full fermenter and matched up the yeast batch.

Pitched the appropriate yeast. Rinsed each container with a few mils of remaining wort.

Everything in place with blow off tubes. Temperature dropped 9 degrees in the transfer process. So pitched close to 80F. That should stress the yeast a bit.

Because this was to measure pitching rates, I intentionally pitched warm, and will ferment at 72 to 73F. The gravity and heat should help torture a few extra flavors (good or off) to help amp up the results. Below is a short video – at the end shows the blow off activity. I blew off the sound… maybe next time? Please ignore the music by Jake Clayton slide at the end… I took out the music for copyright reasons. For the record – his stuff is really good.

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