I live at 5400 feet above sea level so water boils here at 202° F instead of 212°, I think that is a big player. Yeah, I'm trying to dial in several things.Īmbient temp of course varies, humidity here is usually always low and probably not a major factor. This method is a lot more labor intensive than extract - but I like the ability to make my own recipes so I think this is going to work fine for me! It's in the bucket now in one of my converted wine refrigerators and has some good fermentation going on now at 50 F. The only small hitch was that I didn't really know what my actual boil-off rate would be so I over guessed on that and had to boil a few extra minutes to get the proper post boil volume and hit the proper post-boil gravity of 1.088. I hit my my pre-boil gravity dead on at 1.072. I hit the mash PH dead on with 5ml of lactic acid.Įven though the temp in my garage was 60 F, the Reflectix insulator I made for the kettle kept the mash at the proper temp only losing 1 degree per 30 minutes. I was amazed at how close everything worked out to compared to the Brewsmith recipe builder. I did spend weeks reading and trying to understand all of the nuances of all grain before trying this. But if all goes well then most likely a mill is also in my future, not only for mill control but overall grain costs.Īll-in-all for my first attempt at all grain BIAB I think it went pretty well. I have looked at the grain mills, but starting out I think I'll give pre-milled grains a try just to see how things turn out - it goes back to finding storage space for all the stuff when I'm not brewing. With any luck I should be good to go with the city water with maybe only having to add a little acid for the lighter brews. The city water here is very good and slightly alkaline (I'm waiting on the water report from the city), I also have a PH test meter and refractometer (I think it will be quicker than the hydrometer) coming today.
I'm currently not having any problems holding temps for my partial mash brews or extract steeping grains, I think I have a pretty good handle on that - but there will obviously be a learning curve when going to full volume mash. The more I research I do, the more I'm thinking that BIAB is is the way I'm going to go. I'm just wondering if I can use the grain bill recipe for the standard all grain method directly for use in a BIAB recipe or if it needs to be modified due to mash efficiency? I have been reading up (Charlie Papazian) on all grain brewing using the standard method and pretty much understand all the how's and why's.īut I'm thinking that I will either stick with extract or go the BIAB route. However I still don't have the room to (or want to) store a full up all grain setup but I do have the room for a burner and single pot big enough to do a full boil 5 gallon BIAB in my garage. I currently have an extract lager brewed, fermented, and now lagering at 37° F. That has now changed for at least one of my issues.
The reason for both is that I never had the room for controlled refrigeration or the vessels and burner setup required for all grain. One is a Lager brew, and the other is all grain brewing. In my experience (your mileage may very), I use the Foundry as a EBIAB (Full Volume, No Sparge) system, and just use more grain to make up for efficiency losses that naturally having with no sparge.I have been extract/partial mash 5 gallon brewing for a couple of decades and while I'm quite happy with my results there are two things I have never tried. That is why many will run into poor efficiencies when trying a sparge-based process. (Maybe a gallon, which isn’t really enough to accomplish a good sparge and rinsing of sugars from the grain). Anyhoo, if you compensate for the large deadspace (not mash tun loss, I’m talking recoverable deadspace), you won’t have much sparge water. Therefore, when you mash, you will have a very thick mash that will be difficult to mash properly and homogenize, resulting in poor conversion. If you don’t have this deadspace factored in your profile, it will calculate less strike water needed.
This is the amount of space inside the Anvil but outside the malt pipe that your mash is never going to touch. With the 6.5, I factor in about 1.5 gallons of deadspace. As an earlier post mentioned, you have to consider all the deadspace you have around and under the malt pipe when you calculate strike and sparge water requirements. Back to OP’s question - I have a 6.5, not a 10, but I have not had great success with any amount of Sparge process on the 6.5, when using the Malt pipe.