BIAB w/Hot Water Rinse Settings

[cfmatthews]

Hello -

I've been brewing using Brew Smith for a while but never have managed to get a clean setup for BIAB and my brew method. I'm wondering if anybody can suggest how to setup the kettle and mash.

My typical brew:
15 gallon brew pot
8 gallons of water heated to Strike Temp (varies)
BIAB bag and grains added and mashed for 60 minutes (or so)
Mashout approx 168F for 10 mins
1 gallon of 165F water used to rinse the grains after mash, this water flows into the brew pot
Remove BIAB bag w/grains
Bring water to a boil, adding hops, other items per recipe
Boil for approx 1 hour, per recipe
I typically end up with about 6.5-7 gallons
This yields about 6 gallons INTO the fermenter after leaving the bottom of the brew behind in the pot

I do struggle to get the kettle and mash settings to work out volume wise, which results in a lot of mucking around. This means that my strike temperature can be difficult to determine using the software, and I have to base this on historical brews.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Chris

 

[BeerSmith]

Typically a BIAB is done with a full volume mash and no sparge/rinse at all. So what you are doing is more like a traditional mash/sparge but just with a lot of water in the mash and a very small sparge.

To get it to match up you would need to use a traditional infusion mash in the software and then adjust the water/grain ratio for each step in the mash profile itself to get the amount of water you want in the mash. Then what's left would appear in the sparge step.

Brad

 

[Oginme]

There are a couple of ways to make an equipment profile to mimic your actual process. The first thing is to remember that the software does not know what you are actually doing.

Make a BIAB profile for your equipment and take your 1 gallon of pour over sparge water and move it to "Top off water to kettle". now the software will adjust your mash water to reflect that missing gallon of sparge water. You then use that gallonf of top off water and pour it through your grain bag as a sparge. (The software is not looking and will never know.)

Adding a note to the recipe that the 'top off water' is to be used for sparging can be done if you want a reminder.

I would highly recommend taking volume readings of your preboil volume to help calculate how much water is retained in the grains and using that figure to update the grain absorption value for biab mashes in the global settings. (it really should be moved to the equipment profile, as has been requested.)

Llet me know if this helps you any with your process.

 

[Kevin58]

I use this to set up all my new equipment profiles. Ignore that the title says Beersmith 2... it works for BS3 also. Don't cut corners setting up your equipment profile. And don't expect it to be perfect the first time out. You will make adjustments along the way to dial it in.

I have also linked to a mash profile setup for BIAB.

BeerSmith Tutorial: BIAB Mash Profile Setup

Author: Marshall Schott In this second video, the focus it on setting up a mash profile for Brew In A Bag (BIAB) brewing. Hopefully this is enough information to get you hitting your numbers and ma…

brulosophy.com

 

[GigaFemto]

I use Oginme's approach of calling the sparge water "kettle top-up". I treat all the water with salts, heat it to strike temperature, then I remove the sparge water and go from there. It works well for me, although some other posters here think this in an unacceptable workaround.

--GF