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BIAB/RIMS

bcull

Apprentice
Joined
Feb 4, 2012
Messages
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Location
Waterloo, Ontario
I have an idea to "improve" on the BIAB system by recirculating the wort from the bottom of my pot by pump back to the top of the mash.  Also, I intend to do a sparge by  pumping hot water to the top of the mash, with the bag suspended,  following the last step and thereby bring the wort up to boil volume.

Has anyone else done this?  Can you advise on what the efficiency was?

I will keep you posted.
 
I have done just that on my last brew.  I have a 15 gallon SS brew pot with a SS steamer basket full of holes.  I made the BIAB Bag to fit the basket, that way I can lift the basket and not the bag.  I did not circulate continuously only during the time I was adding heat.  It was cold, in the low 30's, so I would lose about 5 degrees in 30 minutes.  I did do a "sparge" at the end but that was mainly an attempt to clear up the wort; I have been getting a large amount of fine trub that I have not been able to clear until late in fermentation.

This is not really a sparge and I question if helps or not.  The "sparge" water is off the bottom of the brew / mash pot and is already full of sugar, so am I really washing / extracting more sugar or am I actually at risk of trapping some of the extracted sugars back into the grain bed. ? ?

I will probably do it again, just because I have a pump to use.  I did not notice any chance in efficiency or clarity, so I don't know if it made any difference.

Good Luck.

David
 
I brewed today using the pump very briefly, but noticed that the pump was adding HSA, so disbanded the idea.  I rinsed the grains at the end and had a measured efficiency of 86%.  Very pleased with method.

Check my blog at http://lotusneuron.blogspot.com

Barry
 
I've been pleased with my BIAB/RIMS hybrid. My mash tun is a 5-gallon Igloo cooler lined with a fine-mesh bag sitting on a mesh basket. I use a small pump to recirculate the wort through a heat exchanger submerged in a 3-gallon coffee maker.

I keep the water in the coffee maker about 100 F higher than the target mash temperature and circulate the wort at about one quart per minute. There's nothing magic about using the heat exchanger, it just buffers the temperature swings better than applying heat directly and circulates the wort through the grain bed to reach and maintain an even temperature. I use a couple of digital thermometers to track the temperature of the heat exchanger water and the mash. I suspect using a coffee maker for the heat exchanger is cheaper than using propane. It also lets me brew in the house until the wort is ready to boil.

Once the mash is complete I disconnect the pump and attach a hose to run the wort into my boiling pot. When the wort level approaches the top of the grain bed I drop the pump into the coffee maker (which has been raised to about  1700 F) and begin pumping the heat exchanger water (now the sparge water) onto the grain bed.

About 15 minutes before the end of the boil I drop the heat exchanger (now the immersion cooler) into the pot to sanitize it. At the end of the boil I drop the pump into a pot of ice water and chill the wort to pitching temperature.

While the wort is boiling, I dump the grain out of the mash tun bag, clean the bag and the tun and sanitize them with starsan. I pour the cooled wort into the sanitized mash tun (with lots of splashing) and run it into my fermenter (more splashing) and add filtered water to hit my desired OG.

The system works well. My efficiency is whatever it is and I enjoy the beer. The system is cheap, easy to build, and easy to use. It would be simple to add a thermostat to maintain my heat exchanger water at the desired temperature and to control recirculation during mash rests, but it works to my satisfaction manually. The heart of the system is the pump, available from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/temperature-approval-coffee-process-application/dp/B004HHW0FU) for $14.50. It's small and will clog if the grain is not kept in a fine-mesh bag, but it doesn't cause foaming and potential hot side aeration. I'm assuming foaming is associated with a higher capacity pump which must be restricted, forcing the impeller to agitate the wort and cavitate.

Dan
 
There's a tiny little error in my previous post. I drafted my reply in a word processor with a superscript "0" to the right of my temperature figures to indicate "degrees". When I pasted the text into the forum, the superscript formatting got lost, so my figures for temperature became, "... 100 F above my target mash temp." and my sparge temp came out as "1700 F". NOT what I intended.

So, I maintain my heat exchanger water about 10 degrees F above my target mash step temperatures and I pump the heat exchanger water (now the sparge water) onto the grain bed at about 170 degrees F.

If anyone took my temperature figures at face value and sparged at 1700 degrees F, please send me a photo of the pressure vessel you used and let me know how the beer turned out.

Here's a thought for others who have used a computer to outsmart themselves:

I hate this damned computer.
I wish that I could kill it.
It never does just what I want,
But only what I tell it!

Dan
 
"to indicate "degrees""

Hold down alt and press 0176, °.
 
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