This week marks a special occasion in the history of drinkmatron.prjct.info. We finally got Drink Matron Labs off the ground with our first experimental batch of beer: Get Off My Lawn Old Ale.
So we sat down on Saturday evening, cracked open some tasty beers and got started brewing. GOML is an all-grain beer, so we had to mash the grains. This was the first time I’ve ever done an all-grain beer and didn’t have anything remotely resembling a mash tun to mash the grains in.
Enter the Australians
I style of mashing has become hugely popular on the Australian homebrew scene called Boil In A Bag (or BIAB) where you essentially steep the grains in 150ish degree water for around an hour to activate your enzymes. This is convenient because you don’t need a separate vessel from your boil kettle and the grain is enclosed in a big bag that you can easily pull out of the kettle and do as you please with.
Unfortunately, you need to keep a constant eye on your temperature and wrap your kettle several blankets to keep your mash at the appropriate temperature. By the end of my mash schedule, my mash had cooled down to 140 degrees, which is not terrible, but not ideal either.
In the end, we locked it away inside Mr. Beer and let that yeast get to fermenting. Stay tuned to hear how it turned out.