Finally my ingredients have arrived (actually on Monday, so I had to wait patiently for a week), and I had the means to delve into the 
world of BIAB.
First I want to say that it is great, exciting, tiring and a very long process. I can only imagine what a full all-grain brew day might lo
ok like. in this post I will only go over the actual brew day, but in the next few days I will write more about BIAB (Brew In A Bag) and how I made the conversion from extract etc. so to the brewing:
I mashed 1 kg of pale malt, 400g of chocolate malt and 100g of roasted barley for 90 minutes. Had a few temperature glitches, but most of the mash was 66-69C, I just hope I haven’t ruined it. The grains were mashed with 4 litres of good old London tap water, filtered through a Brita jug, and at the end of the mash I had roughly 3 litres (75% efficiency).
From there the brewing went pretty much the same as I usually make Black Ale, but this time I made 2/3 of the amount, and needed to adjust all of the quantities. The wort b
oiled for an hour, with Fuggles hops (3.48%, 23g each time) at 0 minutes and 45 minutes. At the end I actually put the pot in an ice bath (the kitchen sink) and added another 3 liters of room temperature water. It seems that my habit of sieving the wort straight from the pot w
hile hot was creating a haze, and it is important to bring the wort below 35C before introducing any oxygen (in the form of stirring, of pouring to a new container). The wort reached 28C in about 15 mintues (which I was very happy about), and measured 1058 Gravity – too high for my usual Black Ale, so I added another litre of water, making the wort 5.5l (I lost another litre in the wort boiling stage), done some raking (moving from one vessel to another to introduce oxygen), and the result is OG=1048, more than enough for now.
After that was the seal and the cleanup, which was also longer than expected. All and all, the brew day was roughly 4 hours, far cray from my usual 1-1.5 hours extract based brew days. I enjoyed it, but doing so cramped in a closed flat on a British winter day wasn’t great. I will try and so again, but i doubt it will become a regular in our flat based on the constraints. I’m thinking of trying more extract brewing with grains steeping, so on that later on.
That is it for a brew day, more about BIAB later, cheers.