Mad_Scientist wrote:Here it is PP. I moved the 10 L sparge over to "Water Added Before the Boil", as I am just guessing that is where you want to see it.
Thanks a heap Richard. I have taken half today off and am trying to take the rest of the week off to try and structure and write all this Maxi-BIAB stuff out clearly. Not much fun losing, again, so much money and another weekend but I'm a bit over writing the same stuff in slightly different ways each and every week and the poor new guys having no way of finding it easily. Thanks for making things easier. Hopefully Pinchy will be the last brewer here who has to struggle to find the right information in this area.
Pinchy wrote:Thanks for all the help guys! Sorry if these are silly questions; But what does the AA% stand for on the Hop Bill? Also what is the VIK that exceeds my kettle size?
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For anyone reading this, the following is not stuff you can absorb in two seconds. It will require your concentrated attention.[/center]
Pinchy, this is going to be the last one on one help post I do here for a little while as they take several hours to write and I've been doing this for many years now. What I want to do is try and take some time out to write an structure some things so that guys like you won't have to struggle so hard to find the right info.
Here's what I want you to do...
1. Let me know that you read my last post here and that you also read the 'paragraph 4' I refereed to and the three links given there. It's important for me to know where you are up to. I'm going to assume you have read those. If you haven't not much of the below will make sense.
2. Start a new topic called "What does AA% stand for?" Say that I asked you to start the topic. It is a very good question and one that isn't answered well. When you start that topic, I will reply there and talk about garlic.
3. As for VIK exceeding kettle size....
If you go back to the BIABacus file you originally posted here, you will see that your VIK in Section K was higher than your kettle capacity - 34.09 L is greater than 33.7.
In Mad-Scientists file, you will see a few changes to your file. He has got the 34.09 down to 32.73. He did this by typing a 'Y' into the first field of Section G. If you delete that 'Y', which I'd like you to do, you'll see that we are back to 34.09 L. You'll also see that the red warning at the bottom of Section W changes from "VIB approaches Kettle Limits" to "VIB exceeds Kettle Limits."
You'll also see that the red warning at the bottom of Section K that said, "Advanced trub management has been used - See G and/or H" will disappear.
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You are asking too much from your kettle.[/center]
As soon as you step into a situation where you want more from your kettle than it can handle, you can be stepping into a total mess or you can become informed and make some intelligent decisions on how you should handle the fact that you cannot full volume brew in a single vessel.
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There are only two way of increasing how much you can get from a kettle. Only one method is effective.[/center]
Dilutions - Can be effective or even advantageous if done intelligently.
Diluting a wort has only one major cost. It will always cost you more grain (and, somewhat debatable, more hops). Dilutions at some stages can actually add quality to the wort. Dilutions with shit quality water will not add quality and could severely affect the integrity of the brew.
Sparging - Almost always a waste of time, effort and equipment.
The basic premise and known fact of BIAB is that you can mash and sparge simultaneously in a single vessel with no penalty. We know that adding all the water required for a brew to the grain right at the beginning of the mash instead of at stages has no downside, in fact it has advantages as a higher amount of water is exposed to the grain for a longer period giving greater solvency (efficiency) of the mash/sparge.
Pure BIAB, (full volume, simultaneous active mashing / passive sparging, single vessel, single infusion brewing), FVSAMPSSVSIB
, is a truly sensible, beautiful and extraordinarily efficient way to brew.
If anyone advise you to sparge when doing BIAB, ask them why? What will you gain/save? And what will it cost you?
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How a Sparge Can Save You - (It won't.)[/center]
If we work from the truth that the more water you can expose to your grain
(preferably all of it) at the start of the brew day (mash in), the higher efficiency you will get, then the obvious premise is to throw in as much water as you can to the 'mash in'.
Let's do that.
Now at the end of your mash, pull the bag. How much space have you gained by pulling the bag? On a normal gravity brew, the answer is bugger all - maybe there is enough room left for you to sparge your spent grain bag with 2-3 litres of water. But, there is no advantage in doing this if your kettle was big enough at the start to handle that 2-3 litres.
Get it?
....
Thanks to the experiments done here at BIABrewer.info, we know that it is how much water we expose to the grain that makes the most difference (maximising time is good too as we get in pure BIAB but let's ignore that) in efficiency - search his site for 'washing machine'.
So, sparging can be one of the silliest thing to do. It will cost you the following...
1. A second heat source - maybe just your kitchen kettle or gas burner on your kitchen stove. That's not too bad.
2. A second (usually third) vessel. That will be a kitchen kettle and/or a large saucepan.
3. Two bag pullings and squeezings.
4. More time. That time they muck around with sparging would have given the exact same result, if not better, if they had just done a full-volume mash and let it sit for 90 minutes or whatever.
There is only one scenario where sparging might be of benefit and that is so rare I'm not going to talk about it here so...
DO NOT SPARGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you want to, then feel free to post to this thread and tell me why you are doing it. Send me a PM so I don't miss it.
(On a mini-BIAB/stovetop BIAB, a sparge can be easy/practical and won't do any harm but even then it is really taking things to extreme.)
...
Apologies, the above is not written very well. But, as I mentioned above, I took half a day off work today and am trying to take the rest of the week off to get this whole maxi-BIAB debacle settled. Maxi-BIAB is a totally stupid term floated here that I for one never wanted. Still struggling to think of a more appropriate one.
Sorry for the crap post above but that has taken four hours to write, seriously. and it is silly for me to write any more on a single thread.
PP
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I'm glad some of that scramble I wrote above made sense. I was originally hoping to be able to write a nice, easy to read thread but got a little frustrated when I realised that is actually going to take a lot of work. Good on you for wading through the above 
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