First BIAB

With all equipment sourced and tested we took on the task of the first biab.

The recipe was planned something like this on beersmith:

4KG Pale Malt

500g Caraaroma

60g East Kent Goldings Hops @ 60min

30g East Kent Goldings Hops @ 1 min

We decided to do a 90 min boil and 90 min mash instead. Strike temp was 66 deg c and mash temp was maintained at 65 deg c for the full 90min.

We started with 28l of water and at the end of the mash sparged with 2l of boiled water. After the mash the bag was raised and we started the “to squeeze or not to squeeze” debate. We saw by gently squeezing the bag a huge amount of wort came out (almost concentrated) and decided to get everything out.

Pre boil gravity was 1048.

When we started the boil we noticed that the urn self regulates at boil temp so the temp fluctuated a bit with the boil 🙁

Added the hops to the biol as per recipe. After the boil we used the self made chiller with iced water and got the wort chilled fro boiling temp to pitch temp in +- 20mins (very chuffed with this!! )

Post boil gravity was 1055.

We strained the cooled wort to the fermenter through a strainer and cloth to try and catch the hops and grain parts. Turned out to be quite a battle as the hops clog up the strainer very quickly risking contamination with the repeated rinsing of the strainer etc. Will definitely rather make a hop bag next time.

Ended with roughly 22l of wort.

Pitched the 1l starter of US-05 at 24deg and off she went. Only the next day we realized we got the recipe wrong and added 1kg of caraaroma instead of the prescribed 500g. No wonder the gravity readings were so high!