A great success for my latest BIAB

I think the first will be to name my new recipe – light IPA is what I think it is. A month ago I had my second attempt in making a beer using a BIAB method. The first time I tried was a disaster, but this time it worked! There are several differences in the two BIAB, key one is which grains I used and the temperatures of the mash.

First though, the tasting:

As you’ll see on the right, the colour is very, very light. I used crushed pale malt only and that kept the beer very light, yellow, almost clear. The aroma is very fruity and floral, reminding me of grapefruit which I guess came from using some great Citra hops I got from Amazon for dry hopping.

The head is light and fluffy, as you would expect from a higher than usual carbonation, similar to other IPAs. The flavour is bitter and light, but have a little after taste and some “flatness” to it, maybe due to the low ABV (only 3%).

All together this new “light IPA” BIAB is a great beer to drink, too great actually as you get through a couple of pints in a blink and it still packs a bit of a punch. I will definitely aim to make this again using the same recipe, but adding more dextrose at the beginning of the wort to get the ABV up to 5-6%.

Second, some BIAB learnings:

1. Keep the temperature low this time, very low even, during the mash resulted in a very dry beer with a nice bitterness.

2. With low gravity mashes, more dextrose must be added at the beginning of the wort boil and no point of adding more after the boil.

3. Again, be very careful with temperatures. Mashing is done at 64°c-68°c, and shooting off high will ruin the mash (first BIAB) and aiming low on the temperature scale (second time) will result in less fermentable sugars, but will still be drinkable.

I hope that explains a little more about what I’ve been doing. What experience you have with the mashing temperatures and what tricks do you have to keep temperatures more stable?