[majorvices]

BIAB efficiency need not be lower than 3 vessel.

Note I said "can" be lower. Not "must" be lower.

A little off-topic, but I have never heard it called a "3 vessel" home brewery. I'm assuming HLT, MT and BK. A three-vessel commercial brewery (MT, BK and WP) I am familiar with. Just sayin'.

[DBhomebrew]

BIAB efficiency need not be lower than 3 vessel.

Note I said "can" be lower. Not "must" be lower.

A little off-topic, but I have never heard it called a "3 vessel" home brewery. I'm assuming HLT, MT and BK. A three-vessel commercial brewery (MT, BK and WP) I am familiar with. Just sayin'.

How's multi-vessel, traditionally-lautered?

[Megary]

The selling point of BIAB, to me, is the simplicity of it all.  Add grains to a bag, dunk in the pot, mash, remove.  Done.  One pot to clean, one volume of water.

Obviously, you can add all kinds of steps to that routine to try and improve efficiency, but every added step is one step further from the beauty of the process.

I would only get hung up on efficiency if it were inconsistent from one brew to the next, a point already driven home earlier in this thread.

[spurviance]

Are you crushing it to an almost flour consistency?  That bumped up my BIAB efficiencies to 75-80% from the upper 60’s.


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[tommymorris]

BIAB efficiency need not be lower than 3 vessel.

I BIAB in my BK and consistently achieve 92% mash efficiency on a typical 1.042 wort. Single room temp dunk (batch) sparge in a bottling bucket. I open the bag in the sparge and give it a good mix. Equal runoffs. Easy, gentle squeeze of each runoff as well.

I don't chase high efficiency numbers. Consistency and predictability is my goal. Consistency and repeatability in process allows for a high degree of predictability. My realized output is typically within .001 in gravity and ~1.5oz in volume of my intended recipe.

Tightening and dialing in my process has landed me with high efficiency as a fortuitous secondary outcome.

This is very interesting to me.  So, what you are saying is you take the bag out of the Kettle, have a bucket ready and dunk the bag into the bucket?  The give it a good stir and squeeze?  I never thought of that.  Can you half the water and do a second sparge or dunk?  I guess you could also have sparge water (170 degrees or so) at the ready, put the grain bag into a separate bucket or vessel, rinse it, dunk it, squeeze it and then transfer that to the wort in the kettle?  I am very interested in how this might work, as my numbers never come close to what they should based on Brewfather's estimates.  I know I won't hit them exact, but I think I might give this a try.

Yep, pretty much.

Mash in kettle. Pull bag, let hang via a self-locking pulley on a fixed line above. Let hang ~15m until stream breaks into drips. 'Squeeze' via twisting the top of the bag. This is a small, gentle, easily repeatable amount of pressure. When this stream breaks into drips, letting the twist out will stop the drip. This gives me ~.08gal/lb absorption. Move bag to room temp water in a nearby bucket. Flame on. Open bag, stir well, close bag, pull. Let hang, twist, etc. Pour sparge into kettle.

Repeat as desired. Take any precautions, such as pH control, one would for a 3-vessel system. Each sparge will give diminishing gains over the last.

I do this too. Except I heat my sparge water (I have done it both ways; heated and room temp). I don’t squeeze the bag. I have in the past, but it gets my hands wet and sticky so I don’t bother.

My efficiency is about 85% based post boil volume and gravity.

Regarding heated versus room temp sparge water, heating the sparge water gives you a slight head start on getting to boil since the sparge water is much warmer. I don’t think believe there is any difference in quality of the resulting beer or efficiency. I do it as much out of habit as anything else.