I’ve been doing BIAB several years on 1st an anvil 10 and for the last 15-16-ish months, an anvil 18.
What brews? 10 gallon systems can do a 6-7%abv beer with care, but going up in grain amount decreases efficiency from there. It would help to understand your process too.
First, I’ll +1
@Minbari. You need a fine, consistent crush on your grains for BIAB. Think “credit card” width between the rollers. If the grain won’t feed at this depth, you either need to widen the gap and double crush or get another grain crusher. Pils, 2 row, Munich, Vienna tend to run through my old 2 roller at a slightly larger gap and needed double crushing. Rye on the other hand is much smaller and wouldn’t even get crushed in the first setting needed for my old 2 roller to do normal sized grains. I got past this with a new grain mill.
- use rice hulls. They add no flavor to the beer, and allows the grains to flow & drain better. This will be really useful if / when you add in sparging. Still helpful even if you don’t sparge.
- I usually pick up a few gravity points on the wort with a 10 minutes at 170 mash out and another 10 lifting the basket and washing the wort through the grains.
* Verify your temperature control. If you got to mash out and the temp drops unexpectedly, it won’t ‘help’ the gravity. I say this because on my anvil
18 I typically reduce the power setting to about 45% to avoid E3 errors. If I forget to increase the power at mash out, the temp won’t hold.
- if you aren’t using a refractometer, get one. Monitor the mash and adjust the recirc. flow as needed to avoid a stuck mash. Mash until you’re hitting your numbers, not for a set amount of time. If it takes 90 minutes to hit the target, mash 90 minutes. I usually begin the mash out when I get 2 consistent refractometer readings in a row with no increase in gravity. Make sure you are using the refractometer correctly and know it may be off of your hydrometer(s).
- Temperature in the center of the grains can and will be lower than right by the heating element and right on top where the recirc wort is warming the grains. I see about a 2-4F temp difference...
- The anvil folks advised to lift the basket completely out periodically, reseat, stir the grains, restart the recirc. This helps.
Using these - except the rice hulls, on the Anvil 10, I got a consistent 60-63% efficiency, or about enough to take a typical recipe quoted online with a 72% efficiency, and add +1 pound of base malt to get very close to target gravity. I didn’t start adopting rice hulls until working with larger grain bills and rye.
- Now, I use the Anvil 18 mostly for 6 - 6.5 gallon batches. I do a slightly larger batch to accommodate for the sediment at the bottom of the kettle. When I t/f to the fermenter, I typically have a minimum of 5.5 gallons of clear wort, most of the time 6 gallons. If I do everything right, I can eclipse 78% efficiency with typical 11-13# grain bills.
- consider a sparge. Even a small one. This helps efficiency. I now mash and boil in the anvil 18, but I keep sparge water in the anvil 10. It lengthens the brew day, but I get better efficiency mashing the grains and the beer is a better product. On the A18, I typically mash in 6.75-7.25 gallons of water, and sparge about 3-4 gallons depending on the grain bill, how big, etc.
