BIAB setup with separate mash and sparge kettles

Hi,

new licenced user here. I'm sorry if this is obvious or has been answered many times before, but I am wondering how to set up BeerSmith for my system.

In my BIAB setup I have two 17 liter kettles. I use 8-11 l in the first one for mashing (depending on amount of grain). Before the end of the mash, I heat an appropriate amount of water in the second kettle, and after the mash move the grain bag to the second one for mashing out (or you might call it a batch sparge). After a while I remove the grain from the sparge kettle, and then collect the contents of both kettles in one of them for the boil.

I want to set up this procedure so BeerSmith can estimate the appropriate temperature to get my desired mash and mashout temperatures. However, using an ordinary mash step it tells me to add the water and then heat, and it doesn't look like the batch sparge option works for me either. Is there a way to set up my procedure in BeerSmith, or is it too eccentric?

Regards,
Morten

My first recommendation is to forget that you are using a bag.  Essentially, you are using a mash tun and separate sparge vessel.  Concentrate on the mash vessel in your equipment profile to get you mash temperature estimate to reflect your actual results.  Essentially, this means setting the volume and specific gravity based upon this kettle.  BeerSmith considers BIAB mashing to mean full volume, so it really does not take into consideration your type of set up.

Next, focus on your mash profile.  Do not select the BIAB mash with full volume, since this will automatically calculate your infusion volume as the full volume of water needed.  If you have your thermal expansion number set to anything other than 0%, then the volume BeerSmith will calculate will be as hot liquid.  If you set your initial infusion volume based upon the water to grain ratio you want, BeerSmith will use that to calculate out your water volume.  The program uses the sparge volume to make up any difference in mash liquor you need to reach your pre-boil estimate.  I would recommend that you make sure the 'adjust temp for equip' option is on, and set the mash tun temperature to be equal to your strike temperature in your recipes.

Now because you are using a bag and will probably get a lower amount of water retained with the spent grains, you will need to calculate out your typical grain absorption rate and adjust this in the BeerSmith global settings.  This can be found by clicking on 'options' > 'advanced' > 'grain absorption'.  You will note that the program gives a separate figure for BIAB brewing but since you are not doing a full volume mash, it will not apply. 

For your mash out, the figure the program calculates for temperature will be based upon adjusting the mash liquor, grains and kettle up to the target temperature.  Thus, you will need to watch this for a few brews to get the offset you will need to accurately estimate the sparge water temperature to get to your target.  Luckily with mash out, the temperature is not really critical and a few degrees will not adversely affect much as long as your mash pH is under 6.0.

I think I covered most of the critical points, but feel free to ask questions on anything which I may not have described clearly.

Thank you for the quick reply! I think I get it.

When I set up my mash profile, I set a certain amount of water in the saccharification step. When I apply the profile to my recipe, a different volume comes up. Is this because it preserves the water/grain ratio and uses the recipe's amount of grains to calculate volume? I assume I can then edit the mash step, inputting the volume I want (if I want to override it)?

The setup you suggest seems to do the trick - except, as you noted, I need to figure out an offset for the sparge water temperature. I must admit I usually don't watch that temperature so closely anyway, so that's not a problem.

Thanks again!

mortenalver said:

When I set up my mash profile, I set a certain amount of water in the saccharification step. When I apply the profile to my recipe, a different volume comes up. Is this because it preserves the water/grain ratio and uses the recipe's amount of grains to calculate volume? I assume I can then edit the mash step, inputting the volume I want (if I want to override it)?

Click to expand...

Yes, the program uses the water to grain ratio and adjusts the actual in the recipe to reflect the amount of grain in the batch.  This keeps this value constant, which is important if you are setting for a minimum water to grain ratio, such as 1.25 oz per lb of grain, where going too low could potentially cause incomplete solubility of the starches and poor conversion to sugars.  You can always edit this if you want within the recipe.

Ok, I see! I need to pay attention to the volumes in my preparations since I'm often running close to the limit of the two units (sparge vessel in particular). I have spreadsheet on the side that works pretty well for predicting the levels througout the process 

Early in my brewing, I had severely undersized stock pots when I was brewing.  My first few BIAB brews (2.25 gal), I did a mash, moved the bag to a second pot for the sparge and drained it into the mash pot before adding some more hot water to the sparge vessel with grains to get to my needed volume.  I had to do two separate boils for those first few all-grain attempts before getting a full 5.5 gal kettle.  Went to full volume and have been there for almost all of the last 220 or so brews.