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Hey guys and gals, I thought I'd make a post about doing full volume BIAB on the stove top with a "small" pot. My pot is 18.7 litres and I do 21 litre all grain batches. This is also known as Maxi-BIAB. You create a high gravity wort from a thick mash and use top up water after the boil.

Since the pot is only so big I need to figure out just how much water I can fit in there with my grain bill. Once we know the strike water volume we can figure out the strike temperature based on the grain temperature, grain mass, and desired mash temperature.

One important thing to note... grain does not absorb water instantly. Therefore if theoretically your pot can hold 5 kg of grain + 13L water, if you just dump your grain in it will overflow. Because of this I usually understate the volume of my boil kettle a bit.

I am attaching my python script I wrote that does my calculations. Note that I also use Beersmith 2 but there is no way there to figure out my max water volume based on my BK volume and grain bill. My program does not account for heat loss in the kettle either. That should not matter as it is pre heated. Also, I know from doing math on the diameter and depth of my pot that it holds 18.7L and for every centimetre of depth it holds 0.706 litres. This kind of calibration will only work on a flat walled kettle or pot, not a keg with wavy walls.

Ok, for a grain bill of 5.450 Kg and my 18.7L pot. I am looking for a mash temperature of 154F and the grains are currently 68F. I tell it to use a total volume of 17.5L because it takes a bit for the grain to absorb the water and for the air to bubble out:

Mash In by Hot Pepper Daddy, on Flickr

I cover, lay a towel over the top, and monitor the temperature. On my last brew, even with the reflectix wrap, I had to add heat to keep the temperature up over an hour. No biggie, and I cought it in time.

I stir my mash a couple of times as it's pretty thick and we need as much efficiency out of this method as possible. I did a mash out last time, raising the temperature to 168F while stirring. I lift the bag and allow to drain through a colander over the pot then squeeze the crap out of it while wearing rubber gloves. We need that sweet wort! I'll then do a small rinse sparge of 168F water from my kitchen tea / coffee kettle (only one litre or so) and squeeze some more. I then move the colander and grain bag to drip over another pot. Oh, by this time I've already added my first wort hops.

I now bring it to boil as usual. The water volume is now around 11L. Before boiling I take volume and gravity readings to determine the mash efficiency. MY efficiency here is between 55-60%. My last brew was 60%. I actually add some boiling water from my kitchen kettle as it's coming to boil to increase my volume some. My glass top stove can't handle a full boil.

Before the boil is over I toss in my immersion chiller to sanitize. When the boil is over I move my pot from the burner and Immediately top up the kettle with cold tap water, adding probably 4-5 litres. This gives a nice kick start to cooling the wort. I then finish chilling and drain into my fermenter. I top up the fermenter my pouring a bit more cold tap water through the pot / spigot. Aerate, pitch yeast. Clean.

Please note my program requires a python interpreter to run. I use linux so I have it. You can run under windows if you have python installed. I was thinking about writing a javascript version but my webserver is down. I may do that down the road though.

This could be used to figure out volumes and temp for keggle BIAB batches as well, even for 10 gallon batches:
Or if you know your desired strike volume already:
-Rob

Wicked.

I can put this on a web server if you want and build a RAP UI that calls the script.

http://www.eclipse.org/rap/demos/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Very nice! Didn't realize we had some Python gurus in the club. At one point I spent most of my days elbow deep in Django. I might play around with this a bit and turn it into a web app as well.

I'd been thinking about doing some 1-2 gallon stovetop test batches. This will likely come in very handy.

Ahh, I love django. The formulas and functions are easy to port to Javascript for a web version. I initially just wrote this for myself and my webserver's toast.

I haven't done any python development yet.
But... What I love about RAP is I dont need to develop any client side code. I f'in hate javascript!

sleepyjamie wrote:I haven't done any python development yet.
But... What I love about RAP is I dont need to develop any client side code. I f'in hate javascript!

Get yourself familiar with jQuery and you'll learn to love JavaScript. Not so great for small projects, but if you're writing thousands of lines of code, it really cuts down on the amount of stuff you need to write yourself.

jeffsmith wrote:

sleepyjamie wrote:I haven't done any python development yet.
But... What I love about RAP is I dont need to develop any client side code. I f'in hate javascript!

Get yourself familiar with jQuery and you'll learn to love JavaScript. Not so great for small projects, but if you're writing thousands of lines of code, it really cuts down on the amount of stuff you need to write yourself.

Agreed. But if I can eliminate client-side programming all together it makes life a lot easier. RAP builds all the jquery stuff for me and i only need to code server-side.

sleepyjamie wrote:

jeffsmith wrote:

sleepyjamie wrote:I haven't done any python development yet.
But... What I love about RAP is I dont need to develop any client side code. I f'in hate javascript!

Get yourself familiar with jQuery and you'll learn to love JavaScript. Not so great for small projects, but if you're writing thousands of lines of code, it really cuts down on the amount of stuff you need to write yourself.

Agreed. But if I can eliminate client-side programming all together it makes life a lot easier. RAP builds all the jquery stuff for me and i only need to code server-side.

I've been on and off the client-side programming bandwagon a dozen times it seems.

These days I do a whole lot of Python (Plone) and Javascript (JQuery) development, and put as much as possible on the server but the shiny bits are typically JQuery. I guess I need to check out RAP. I love python. I've loved OO programming since I was introduced to it in the very early days of Java, but Java never came close to living up to its promise. Python is what Java should have been.

and thanks for the script, Rasp!

I don't know what you guys are up to, but I think I might be interested.

My only issue with tools like RAP, and it's because of the consulting work I do on a daily basis, is that "machine" generated code isn't always accessible (to keyboard users, people using assistive technology, etc.) and is often much more convoluted than it needs to be. Just looking at the input widgets example and all the inline CSS, etc. makes for some nasty looking markup. Fine for personal projects, but I couldn't imagine trying to maintain something like that on a large scale, it would be a nightmare…

Anyway, rant over. Sorry for highjacking this thread…

jeffsmith wrote:My only issue with tools like RAP, and it's because of the consulting work I do on a daily basis, is that "machine" generated code isn't always accessible (to keyboard users, people using assistive technology, etc.) and is often much more convoluted than it needs to be. Just looking at the input widgets example and all the inline CSS, etc. makes for some nasty looking markup. Fine for personal projects, but I couldn't imagine trying to maintain something like that on a large scale, it would be a nightmare…

Anyway, rant over. Sorry for highjacking this thread…

Yeah the only downfall of RAP is that it makes it difficult if you want complete control over the client side including UI design (you can use CSS but it's limited).

I'm actually using RAP on a large scale now (across multiple projects, teams, across physically separated locations) and it's working well. RAP is essentially RCP, which is what Eclipse is built from, and eclipse is built on OSGi which is a plugin framework. All the RAP UIs come together at runtime as OSGi bundles (ie: plugins), which makes development very easy on large scale teams. RAP has a place in the industry but it certainly doesn't solve all the web GUI problems. I like RAP because you can build rich web apps from a programmer-centric environment as oppose to designer-centric. The programmer-centric style is good for business and commercial apps which is pretty much all I build these days.

And java has come a long was since the 90s and early 2000s. Some of the projects that Apache governs these days are why Java is #1 in the enterprise (e.g. Camel, ActiveMQ, Aries, Tomcat, etc...). I'd really like to take a walk down the python road some day, just havent had the time.

ok ill stop thread jacking....

lets gets this puppy on the web!

sleepyjamie wrote:The programmer-centric style is good for business and commercial apps which is pretty much all I build these days.

Until the company gets complaints from users, threats of lawsuits from disabled users, government compliance guidelines to meet, etc. and someone like me comes in and has to sort out all the issues and rebuild the UI/UX.

jeffsmith wrote:

sleepyjamie wrote:The programmer-centric style is good for business and commercial apps which is pretty much all I build these days.

Until the company gets complaints from users, threats of lawsuits from disabled users, government compliance guidelines to meet, etc. and someone like me comes in and has to sort out all the issues and rebuild the UI/UX.

True, in those cases you would require a UI designer which could do more customization. Most of the projects I work on are for militarized systems and configuration which typically don't require fancy tailored UIs and typically disabled users don't apply.

so you guys gonna build a web proggy? id like to see this in action!

If someone builds something, I can add it to our site..Maybe to the main page and link to it from the forums as well.

sleepyjamie wrote:so you guys gonna build a web proggy? id like to see this in action!

I might pick at it over the next couple days when I'm looking for a distraction from writing…

jeffsmith wrote:

sleepyjamie wrote:so you guys gonna build a web proggy? id like to see this in action!

I might pick at it over the next couple days when I'm looking for a distraction from writing…

exzeelent.

would it be easy to deploy the python script on google app engine, and then have it linked to the forum?

sleepyjamie wrote:

jeffsmith wrote:

sleepyjamie wrote:so you guys gonna build a web proggy? id like to see this in action!

I might pick at it over the next couple days when I'm looking for a distraction from writing…

exzeelent.

would it be easy to deploy the python script on google app engine, and then have it linked to the forum?

I think I'd likely just put together some JavaScript to handle it and build a static HTML page. Much simpler.

Jimmy, this this forums framework allow for creating new pages using the site template? If so then I'll port the functions to javascript and we can link it somewhere.

Rasp wrote:Jimmy, this this forums framework allow for creating new pages using the site template? If so then I'll port the functions to javascript and we can link it somewhere.

It'd be easy enough on the main site to add a page via Wordpress.

jeffsmith wrote:

Rasp wrote:Jimmy, this this forums framework allow for creating new pages using the site template? If so then I'll port the functions to javascript and we can link it somewhere.

It'd be easy enough on the main site to add a page via Wordpress.

agreed.

jeffsmith wrote:

Rasp wrote:Jimmy, this this forums framework allow for creating new pages using the site template? If so then I'll port the functions to javascript and we can link it somewhere.

It'd be easy enough on the main site to add a page via Wordpress.

That's what my thought was. Then we could link to it from the forums if we wanted

Yeah we could build that area up with other tools and links.

I'm making a html/js version now; more later.