Wine And Beer

Enhancements To The BIAB Beer Brewing Method

Now that you know more about the basic Brew In A Bag beer brewing process, there are many ways you can enhance the process in an effort to increase efficiency. If you have tried the BIAB brewing process and managed to hit pretty good efficiency, then these suggestions may not be worth trying, which is the whole point of BIAB beer brewing: simplicity. However, it can be fun to experiment in beer brewing, so here are a couple ways that might just improve your beer.One of the first things you can try is to get a better crush on your grains. You can ask your home brew shop or online supplier to double crush the grains when you purchase them. You could also purchase or make your own grain mill and take care of this at home. Making a grain mill is yet another beer brewing do it yourself project, and you can find many detailed examples online at beer brewing forums.A finer crush of the grains means you will get better efficiency. Plus, since you aren't sparging, you needn't worry about the finer grains clogging up your filter or manifold and causing a stuck sparge. The grain bag you use should be a fine mesh to ensure the grains don't slip through into your wort. If this happens, you can always use the bag as a filter by covering your drain tube with it and passing the wort through the bag.You can also add the step of sparging back into the equation. You can do a full batch or fly sparge if you want to, but you can also do a simplified sparge known as dunk sparging that is common to BIAB brewing. Simply place the bag into a pot of sparge water (heated to no more than 170F) and let the grains soak for 10 minutes. Then, add the sparge water to the kettle.You could also place the grain bag in your bottling bucket and pour the sparge water over the grains to rinse. This makes pouring the water back into the kettle a little easier via the pour spout. Some who BIAB decide to mash in a tun. They use a converted cooler that they already had, but you may decide to go ahead and convert a cooler for this purpose. If you decide to try traditional all grain home brewing at some point, you will need a tun anyway. This allows you to mash a larger grain bill, and can provide a better mash that results in higher efficiency. This isn't too big of an additional step, plus it won't take up too much additional space, so it just might be worth trying.Of course, if you add this step, you aren't too far off from traditional all grain home brewing, especially if you add in the sparge step. You are getting a little further away from true BIAB brewing, but that's what makes beer brewing so much fun. You can add many different variables to the equation in an attempt to make better beer.One other thing some BIAB brewers do is build a pulley with a hook so that they can suspend their grain bag over the brew kettle after mashing to make sure they get every last drop of goodness from the grains. This makes draining a 10, 15, 20 pound or heavier grain bag much easier, especially considering that they will suspend it for 10 minutes or more. Of course, this is more so for larger grain bills that come with bigger beers and bigger batches, and is more likely to be needed by someone who has the capability of brewing outside.