The Brew Bag Blog — BIAB making

In a recent article discussing different methods of brewing, the author differentiated "all-grain" from Brew In A Bag. I had to read the sentence twice. BIAB does not use extract, does not come in a kit, (although Brewer's Best is now offering six BIAB kits that include the hops, grain, priming sugar, yeast, and caps) and utilizes the same mashing schedule as the "all grain" method. Now here's the kicker - to make beer using a brew bag you start with grain, that's right, BIAB uses nuttin but grain! I'll tell you what's happening across the USA - new and...

The utilization is influenced by the vigor of the boil, the total gravity of the boil, the time of the boil and several other minor factors. The vigor of the boil can be considered a constant for each individual brewer, but between brewers there probably is some variation. The gravity of the boil is significant because the higher the malt sugar content of a wort, the less room there is for isomerized alpha acids. The strongest bittering factors are the total amount of alpha acids you added to the wort, and the amount of time in the boil for isomerization. Understandably then, most equations for IBUs work with these three variables (gravity, amount, and time) against a nominal utilization. As mentioned earlier, the utilization for alpha acids in homebrewing is generally accepted as topping out at about 30%.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter5-4.html

What began as a simple problem ended with a great product that has already been used by many brewers with positive results - and re-orders!  When I started brewing a few years ago, I did what most folks do - I watched, asked, and watched some more. On February 12, 2011 I bought my first extract kit and gave it a whirl. That first one was a Bavarian Hefeweizen, mostly because my wife likes that style, and I was working the plan towards mutual happiness. It turned out OK, drinkable, not bad, really. It was worth doing after all, and...