Where we're heading. Recirculating BIAB

It's no secret... we do a lot of complicated mashing.  We make a lot of Belgian style beers, and a lot of lagers.  We believe in step mashing, and in all of it's benefits.   And to have success with the styles we brew, you have to step mash.  I don't care what you read on some forum.  A single infusion mash, will get you close, but it will not get you the exact mouth feel, spicy yeast character, and digestible wort (mout)  that you are trying to create. Can you make a tripel that is somehow light and effervescent, but still full bodied?  No, no you can't, not if you don't step mash.

Up till now we have had two approaches for a step mash.   Approach 1;  was to us the Cajun injector electric turkey fryer,  and use the heating element that comes with it.  We dough in low, and rise to each step, stirring like crazy while heating.  Now this approach has been very successful, but it is very labor intensive and we can only make 5 gallons at a time.   As you also know, we want to start making 10 gallon (11) batches exclusively as a team.

Approach 2 is to use the 100 quart Coleman Xtreme cooler and perform an infusion step mash.   The problems with this approach are; brew days take forever, brew days are very complicated, brew days require many processes and steps.  I spend most of one of those brew days on the computer doing calculations.   And as you all also know, the simpler you can make your brew day, the better chance you have at success.

So what do we do?   Time is now precious.  Two of our members are starting families, and as much as we all love home brew, we also value family above all else.  So, our time must be considered.  Here is the conundrum, we also want to perfect certain recipes and start competing next year.  We think some of what we are making would do very well locally, and possibly even nationally.   So we are in a quandary, a quagmire if you will.  But sports fans have no fear, thanks to John's birthday gift to the team, we have a solution.   We are  switching to recirculating brew in a bag in our keggle.   And here is what we know about our system,  Our keggle is not large enough to handle most 10 gallon batches with the no sparge method (full water volume method)  Especially since we brew lots of high gravity beers.   Our keggle is easily large enough to pull off almost any batch if we use the biab with sparge rinse method.  Our BDSA will take up 14.01 gallons of space while mashing.  The photo at the left is what we are building.  Of course we still need a few of the components, and we may be wrapping the keggle in reflect-ix insulation.   (alternatively, I may have it coated by a local insulation contractor with ceramic foam, and that will absolutely hold in the heat. It is also very expensive, so I will have to work out some kind of trade... free beer?)

The Great Brew Eh Pump has arrived!

Recirculating BIAB has some huge advantages over mash tun cooler brewing;

• Easier - no complicated sparging routines or calculations, less water transfer.   Less risk of screwing up a sparge calculation
• Safer - no risk of burning or scorching the wort. 
• Easier Step mashing - re-circulation during heating creates consistent temperatures in the wort and allows you to heat the wort from one step to the next while recirculating.
• Clearer Wort - Re-circulation - acts as a natural filter
• Faster Brew day - Brew in a bag is just faster, and our 231,000 BTU burner is extremely fast at heating the wort.  I'm guessing that brew days will be under 4 hours from lighting the flame to final clean up.  Even with complicated mash schedules.
• Familiar - My team learned all grain with the BIAB method.   They have learned 3 vessel oveer time, but they really know BIAB, their instincts are more focused on a BIAB brew day.   
• Easy to nail your gravity -  don't believe me... Well let's think it through... so what if you screw up a calculation?  What if your efficiency is too low.   With BIAB with a Sparge rinse... you just adjust or shorten up your rinse.. checking gravity as you go with a refractometer... you can hit your numbers and adjust your hop additions before the boil.   Meaning you can make the beer you intended to make every single time.  You can't do that with batch sparge.  Sure you may end up with a gallon, or half a gallon less beer... who cares if it is the beer you wanted to make.  

Look round eye, brew how you want.   But for us, this is by far the best, most consistent way to brew beer, at least for us.   It allows you to make adjustments during your brew day... heck even during your sparge.   It allows you to recirculate while heating your mash from one step to the next, protecting your mash from burning.  It saves you valuable time.  It is far more efficient.  And most importantly,  for us,  it conserves precious time, allowing us to enjoy this hobby even when we are busy, and life pressures are closing in on us.

Cheers. 

You can go all grain: or.... How to rule the world from your stove top:

If you brew on your own, how should you brew?  What is the most fun?  What makes the best beer? and what can you do on your own to make the very best beer with the most affordable equipment? Well if you are like me, you have an enthusiasm for brewing, you would literally brew 3 or 4 times a week.  Brewing is not a chore that you enjoy occasionally, brewing is your relaxation.  Cleaning doesn't bother you.  Bottling doesn't bother you.  It is all an escape from other pressures in your life, and the end result is hand crafted delicious beer.  And I am here to tell you the most affordable way to brew, and the most efficient, is to do small batch all grain BIAB no sparge on your stove top.  If you've been brewing extract, you probably own everything you need.


When I brew on my own, I brew small batch.   I brew 2.5 gallon batches of beer.  Usually I brew 2.75 gallons and try to bring 2.25 gallons to package. So calling it 2.5 gallons is a misnomer.  It packages 2.25 gallons.  That is a case of beer.  I try to use minimal equipment, the less equipment, the less cleaning.  I brew in a bag utilizing the no sparge technique, When the grain bill is high OG, I generally partigyle my batch. That means I get 5 gallons of beer from a single brew day.   I use a small stainless wort chiller, in an ice bath. I bag my hops to reduce trub space. My fermenters are cake icing buckets I got from the bakery at Walmart. There is a bulb seal in the lid, so they are air tight. They are FDA approved and BPA free. To aerate I pour the batch back and forth between the kettle and the fermenter 3 or 4 times. To ferment I choose forgiving yeast, or I choose a yeast that benefits from higher temperatures. I do not generally control fermentation temperatures on small batches.  I probably should, but I have 1 small refrigerator/fermentation chamber and it is used for lagers.

Batch one boiling, Patigyle mashing away!
Two 2.5 batches from one grain bill!

Once I started brewing small batch, I found that I brewed a lot more than most people, usually 2x a week.  That is a huge reason my beer is so much better than most home brewers.  I brew more often.  I have more practice.  And I started producing more beer, with less stress,  Bottling became easier.  It is no big deal to bottle one case of beer.  Sanitation became no big deal,  I can easily lift and clean any of the things I use to brew small batch.  I can easily carry the fermenters around and place them on the counter.   I find that I can brew any style of beer easily at 2.5 gallons without any loss in quality.  One gallon batches of beer are not nearly so forgiving but I make them too sometimes for recipe development and to brew something fun or weird.

To keep costs down on small batch I look for style appropriate bittering hops that have high alpha acids.  (Example when I brew my English IPA I use Admiral or Target for bittering).  I think about the cost and expense of brewing a lot. I often brew batches that feature high alpha acid hops.  like my Two Hearted ale clone, or my Zombie Dust Clone.  These hops save you money by the very fact that they are higher in AA%.  My local home brew store sells hops by the 1/10th of an ounce.  So, I buy them there.   I adjust them up a bit because they are exposed to oxygen at the LHBS.  If it is a special hop centric beer, like my dIPA I order pre packaged hops in 1 ounce packages.  These are flushed with nitrogen and provide you the very best freshness.  I like BSG, they have been good to us, but I am also a fan of YCH Hop Union.  Both companies offer pre packaged hops.


I often re use my yeast cakes by planning several brews on one yeast cake, increasing the OG with each batch.  I do not truly wash yeast. I do a modified wash where I collect some of it in a mason jar, I let it settle. Alternatively, I pour off almost all of it into the new batch leaving behind only the chunky gross stuff in the bottom.  I get crazy fast and complete fermentation using this method.  An example, With Safale S04, I make a Centennial Blonde followed by an English IPA and finally by a Scottish Ale. With Safale US05 I make a Cream Ale, followed by a Bells Two Hearted Clone, finally a double IPA.   This saves you a lot of money. Specialty beers are made with yeast harvested from our larger batches of beer.  Learn to wash yeast, it will save you a lot of money.   There are so many videos on yeast washing.  Here is my favorite.  His approach is very similar to mine.

Crushing your own
malt saves you a lot.
And improves your
beer dramatically.

I get my grains in bulk,  We brew a lot. So grains don't last forever, and I brew a lot on my own, but if you search around at your local home brew stores, you will find that you can get a bag of two row for about $35.00 to $40.00. Even a bag of Munich or Vienna will only be about $50.00 with no shipping. I also have been known to toast my own grains and make my own crystal malt.  But for small batch there is really no need, it is so affordable to grab the specialty grains at the local home brew store.  I like Rahr, Weyermann, Cargill, and Muessdoerffer, oh and Dingeman and Warminster... and and and...

The process is straight forward.

• The day before brew day 
• I dechlorinate the water with 1/2 of a  Campden Tablet.
• That is all you need for de chlorinating your water
• I crush the grains
• On brew day
• All of the water goes in the pot
• Every recipe is different use your brewing calculator to determine your water needs.
• If you don't have a brewing calculator, Here is a simple water calculator.
• The water is treated to adjust the pH.  
• I am a fan of Five Star 5.2 stabilizer for small batch
• I am a fan of Acidulated malt for small batch pH adjustments
• The water is heated lid on to strike temperature
• My false bottom/cake rack is put in the kettle
• The grains are placed into the bag and lowered into the water
• After 5 minutes I check my pH, if it is too high, I add some acid malt to lower it.
• I don't even crush the acid malt.  I just add .1 to .2 lbs to get the pH corrected.
• The heat is turned off once the grains go in.
• I step mash a lot, but that will be handled in a later post.
• I also have a valve on my kettle, so I can recirculate with a pitcher if I want. 
• The grains are recirculated or stirred every 15 minutes, and the lid is left on during the mash.
• I don't care if I lose a couple of degrees, and you shouldn't either.  
• It really doesn't matter if your mash falls from 152 to 146 F. 
• If it falls too much, turn on the heat and stir, but undershoot your target temp. 
• At the end of the mash it is just like any other batch of beer. 
• Bring to a boil
• Add hops
• Add extras
• Chill (ultra fast on a small batch)
• Aerate 
• I aerate small batches by pouring them back and forth between the fermenter and the kettle (which I rinse out first)
• Pitch yeast
• You may not need an entire package of yeast. 
• You can seal up the rest and use another time. 
• Ferment -  if I need to keep a small bach cool, I ferment it in a laundry tub. 

home roasted grains .. lager... continued crazy from the kitchen

So I brew a lot.  I brew a lot with my brew crew, but we also all brew some on our own.   This brew day was on my own.  An all grain standard american lager with home roasted grains.   I have been reading recently on barleypopmaker's blog about roasting your own grains and about making specialty grains right at home.   It is a great read.   I have also been reading on makingbeerthehardway about malting.  But we are experiencing a richness of malt right now due in part to the support of BSG and Rahr.  So malting will have to wait for another day.   I want to encourage you again if you haven't checked out BSG, you should.  They are the premier wholesaler of products to your local home brew store.  But if you know what they carry you can encourage your local homebrew store to order it for you... and they carry everything.

So, back to home roasting grains.   I believe that fresh ingredients make a huge deal...kinda...  here is what I mean.   Fresher hops are always better, fresher specialty grains are always better,  fresher base malt... doesn't matter that much.  After all, kilning, and drying grains were originally methods of preserving grains.  They last for years, when properly stored.   Or so I have heard... I brew so much I wouldn't know.  a 50 lbs sack of grains lasts about 2 months around here.  inspired by barley pop maker I decided to follow his process for making golden roasted malt, I took .5 lbs of two row and paved it on a cookie sheet.  I put it in the oven for 20 minutes at 300 f.  The whole house smelled amazing.

No flavor or aroma can truly describe the snell.  Bread and nuts and roast.  Amazing. 

It should have been a 20 lovibond grain.  I thought it looked like 20.  But i was way off.  It had to be closer to 60 lovibond.    My oven must be a beast.   Because my standatd lager looks like a bock.  But I am undeterred, I will be roasting more grains myself. But I will add them to the mash differently, later in the mash to control color.   And I will be using an oven thermometer when I roast.     Making adjustments and learning is essential to getting better. 

I followed my standard brew in a bag with sparge rinse procedures.    I mashed at 152 for 60 minutes, then sparged to volume.  I then began the boil as normal. Added noble hops 3xs, chilled with 50 l ft of dual coil action. 


The brew came out way darker than anticipated.   So what to call it... it isn't technically high enough to be a bock, but it is clearly way way to dark to call a standard american lager.   So Im open to suggestions.

By the way, I hope you when you chill your stuff, you save as much of your water as you can.   I use the water from chilling to clean my gear.  To sanitize the fermenter,  to clean other brew gear. I'm not exactly a big environmentalist but... one planet, one chance...

Double Brew Sunday... All in the kitchen...

Yesterday was a big brew Sunday at my place.   It wasn't supposed to be all Sunday.   It was supposed to be Saturday and then Sunday.  But the kitchen faucet went kaput and replacing the faucet became like the struggle to re build the bridge over the river Kwai. (on a non brewing side note... who uses construction adhesive to hold down a sink faucet? who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea?)  After my sink faucet adventure brew day became Sunday.

First Brew a good ol extract Cream Ale.  I "mashed" corn and rice, 1 lb each, inspired by all of the recent posts regarding "Cream of Three Crops".   Brew day went smooth, till I realized my brew partner had the wort chiller.   Solution?   I went and bought some filtered ice, a 10 lb bag to be specific.   After brewing I sanitized everything, including the bag and poured the beer right on to the ice.   3 gallons of 190 F wort onto 1.18 gallons of ice.  Instant cool.   Well not instant but pretty quick.   Pitched US05 dry.  As of this am it isn't bubbling, but that is par for the course with US05.    Should be a good lawnmower beer.  I'm going to try to keep the fermentation cool, under 65.  Hoping it finishes clean and refreshing.

Second Brew,  A real partial mash American Pale Ale.   A frustration I have with on line forums is this... there is no control over recipe posting.  As a brewer who primarily brews partial mash brews it is very frustrating to log on line, search for a recipe and find "partial mash" recipes that are really just extract recipes written by someone who doesn't understand mashing, and who thinks that throwing more specialty grains into a recipe is the key to improving a beer.   To that end I am posting all of my PM recipes at Brewtoad.  just type in Real Partial Mash.  They will come up.  I think I have 9 or so of them posted so far.



The second brew was a blast.   I didn't want to use my big mash tun, so I went to Wallyworld and found 2, 2 gallon beverage Jugs on sale for $5.90 each.   Boom, you can mash up to 10 lbs of grain in 4 gallons.  And in reality they are a little bigger than 2 gallons, probably 2.25.  They worked like a charm, no modifications needed.  They are small enough to lift and move around, they lost no heat.   I'm not even going to add ball valves.  Although, I may add a lever lock valve to each of them.   I mashed 3.5 lbs of Maris Otter, 3.5 lbs of American 2 Row, and .5 lbs of Crystal 60.  After a 45 minute mash I vorloffed and batch sparged.  I collected about 4 gallons of wort.  Since I didn't have the wort chiller, I just did a partial boil.

The runnings were a beautiful deep orange color.  Add 2 lbs of DME and you have a 1.046 beer.  Not bad.  After boil about 1.056.  Hopped with Warrior, Cascade and Centennial.  Cooled just like above.   Aerated and pitched US05.



I did all of this in my kitchen.  In 6 hours, and you can too. I like all grain brewing.   I like extract brewing.   There are many many extracts that are great.   But extract always leaves me wanting more complexity in the taste, and all grain should really be called all day brewing.    I know you full time BIAB guys say that BIAB takes the same amount of time as a Partial Mash.  And I know, you're correct.  But I enjoy Partial Mash.  I know my results will be predictable.  Partial Mash rocks, and you can do it on your Countertop.

Let me know what you think, and if you have a recipe to convert, let me know.  I'd be happy to help.

Safale US 05 ... always a slow start, always good finish

US05  the workhorse of the home brew world.  You can make darn near any clean ale with the stuff.   I use it a lot.   I wash it, I use it again.  The washed yeasts are always great starters, and great clean finishers.  But every time I pitch a new sachet, even if i re hydrate, it takes 24 hours to really get going.  

Hey, I'm not complaining, the chico strain is great, but I think it is important to put it out there.  Dry US05 is a slow starter.  So there is your public service announcement for the morning.  

Risen APA 16 hours after pitch. 5.5 G in a 7.5 Glass Carboy

 

Risen APA 28 hours after pitch.

Cajun Injector worked like a charm

All these guys online talk about the need for massive BTU systems.  They tell you you can never get a quality boil with an electric Turkey Fryer.  I'm here to tell you, they're wrong.

We brewed this weekend with the Cajun Injector Electric Turkey Fryer.   IT HAD NO PROBLEM BOILING 6.5 GALLONS OF WORT.   Boiling Full Volumes of Wort is a real key to brewing better beer.

Now in fairness we did a partial mash, and heated our sparge water on the stove.   Then we did a near boiling water addition to bring our wort to volume and to temperature.  But once we were at a boil the Fryer did fine.  We left the lid on, but ajar.  This created a very large gap for ventilation of Steam and the dreaded DMS.

You can see for yourself in the video at the left.  It is boiling away.  The brew in the pot is our "Risen APA"

Even the guys who are the most scared of DMS would have to agree that is more than enough ventilation to allow for steam and DMS to escape.

Here is another video of the boil with the lid off.  Not quite as vigorous but still just fine for brewing beer.  This affordable kettle should be a tool that any brewer who wants to step up to BIAB or Partial Mash should consider.   There is just no reason to spend thousands of dollars on your brewing system.   Use your head, buy stuff that makes sense.  

The electric turkey fryer came...

My Brew Partner just received the Cajun Injector Electric Turkey Fryer.  7.5 Gallon Capacity.  It only has a 1650 Watt heating element which will produce roughly 5600 BTUs of heat.  So once it's boiling it should be fine.  It will certainly produce more BTUs than we are losing.  But we may need to add a 1300 watt immersion heater to get to a boil quickly.  That would take us to around 10000 BTUs.  It takes about 7200 BTUs to boil 6.5 gallons in an hour.  So we should reach boil from 170 (mash out) in under 30 minutes.  I can live with that.  We may also insulate the side walls.  Either way, it is a counter top BIAB system capable of 5 gallon batches, and easily capable of full volume partial mash and extract.

update:  the turkey fryer was awesome for Partial Mash.  It should be just as great for Partial Mash and Extract.   Im Sold

Let the awesome brewing begin.  Our focus will be on accessible American Style Ales, and Pale Ales.  For the Fall we will brew some festbier, and some porters.

Can't wait to try this thing out.