Small batch BIAB or MT

I'm wanting to start some 1-2g all grain batches so I can brew a bit more often, experiment, and brew beer styles for homebrew club competitions that I may not want 5g of. I am wondering what the best method would be to do this. I have a 5g mash tun already and I also have a pot that I would think would be a good size for 2g BIAB. What would you do?

I have been debating this for the exact same reasons. The more and more I look I think it will be possible. but to answer your question more directly I was going to go with 12qt pots and brutus 20 style setup using ebay solar pumps.

Yeah just do the biab. Should be really easy at that scale.

I think you would be well served to try BIAB for the small brews. The investment is small and it saves on some clean-up time. If you decide later on that you want to go back to a more traditional method of brewing, you can invest in a small mash tun set up at that point.

I've been wanting to experiment with small biab batches myself. I've only got 5 batches under my belt, and don't want to start replacing equipment yet. I watched a buddy do a 1 gallon all grain in a 20 qt pot, and was inspired.

Definitely BIAB. I took first place at NHC 2014 finals for category 7 with a Dusseldorf Altbier and I only BIAB. Just make sure your kettle is large enough to full volume mash, and check out the BIABacus calculator at biabrewer.info – it's the best BIAB calculator available, and it's always right on the money.

Thanks for the tip!

I was in the similar situation almost a year ago. I had a 5 gallon pot I was using to brew extract batches. As a novice, they never turned out quite the way I wanted so I just decided to do 3 gallon all grain BIABs. Mainly because I also wanted to experiment with my water, ingredients, fermentation variables, etc. and also brew for my LHBC competition too. I've actually had more fun making the smaller batches and tinkering around with recipes. I suggest at least give BIAB a try before you buy more equipment, especially if you're only looking to brew up to 3 gallons of all grain.

Do you sparge with BIAB?

The BIAB method is about simplicity. You don't need to sparge. The mash is a lot thinner than a traditional mash, and that helps with your efficiency. You may want to mash a little longer, and stir, but if you do it the right way (full volume) a sparge is a step you should skip.

Full volume = mashing with all the water you will need for the entire brew = end of boil volume + evaporation + grain absorption. The BIABacus calculator makes this all very simple.

You can still do a sparge if you want for possibly greater efficiency. In the case of my Altbier, I actually dropped the efficiency on purpose so I was using more grain since it's a malty beer. Mashed with less water, and topped up the boil volume after pulling the bag.

Thanks for the replies!

I have a 10g set up and an extra 5g cooler. Even with all this stuff it did occur to me that for what I'm trying to accomplish, (small batch, quicker, or experiment brews) that biab might be the way to go. I am going to try to find the proper bag for my kettle and give it a go.

I love this thread.

it's really easy to make a bag yourself that custom fits your kettle. use swiss voile fabric from a fabric store. it's 100% polyester. in the end, your kettle should be able to fit inside your bag. ideally the bag tapers in at the bottom so that it drains inward. biabrewer.info also has a template for making your own bag based on your kettle dimensions. i had my wife sew it up with polyester thread, and she even taught me how to do it myself, but you could also take the 2 cut pieces to a tailor and have them stitch it. a drawstring at the top is helpful / necessary, and i use stainless steel binder clips to clip it to the kettle while i stir, but you could also use a bungee cord around the kettle. when i've forgotten to clip, the bag has slipped into the mash and spilled some grain. whoops. never had an issue with scorching the bag even when the burners are on, but i also stir when they're on.

i know there are some guys here that make bags, but i don't have any experience with them because i've always made my own.

jekeane said:

Thanks for the replies!

I have a 10g set up and an extra 5g cooler. Even with all this stuff it did occur to me that for what I'm trying to accomplish, (small batch, quicker, or experiment brews) that biab might be the way to go. I am going to try to find the proper bag for my kettle and give it a go.

Click to expand...

I'm in the same situation as you-- looking to do just 1 case of bottles at a time. I have a fine mesh bag that fits my 5-gallon cooler really well, so I'm going to try mashing in the bag in the cooler with the same water ratio, heat the sparge water in my pot, and once mashing is done just dunk the grains in the sparge water in the pot. Should be a piece of cake. First attempt will be tomorrow.

laserghost said:

The BIAB method is about simplicity. You don't need to sparge. The mash is a lot thinner than a traditional mash, and that helps with your efficiency. You may want to mash a little longer, and stir, but if you do it the right way (full volume) a sparge is a step you should skip.

Click to expand...

Laserghost - I'm curious to know why a BIAB mash will be thinner than traditional mash? I never used the traditional method of brewing, does that method use more grains for a 3 gallon brew than a BIAB 3 gallon brew?

I usually place a cookie sheet over the kettle and then place my bag on it to drain. I'll give it some good squeezes and then pour 170* water over it "Sparge". I do that for two reasons. 1 - So it looks like i know what i'm doing, and 2, gives me another 10 minutes to keep drinking!

Also, doing a small batch, I suggest buying 22 oz bottles. When I do 3 gal, I'll fill about 9 bottles. Plus, a month later I tell the SWMBO "I only had 2 beers!" :rockin:

Thank you, Oginme. That make's perfect sense. I think I may have been over-thinking my BIAB process. I would do the 1.25 qts per 1 lb of grain for mash. Then sparge with the remaining water to hit the full volume boil. That's why I was a bit confused. I did not associate traditional BIAB with full volume mashing. I guess I could just avoid sparging and just mash the full volume to make it easier.

You are saying 3 or 4 qts/lbs for traditional BIAB. I just brewed a Citra IPA with 7 lbs total using 1.25 qt/lb. I mashed with 2.2 gallons and then sparged with 1.3 gallons to make a 3.5 gallon batch. If i were to do the 3 or 4 qts/lbs for traditional BIAB, that would put my 7 lbs of grain to 21 qts = 5.2 gallons. Am I using too much grain for a 3 gallon batch? Or is 3 or 4 qt/lbs ratio for 5 gallon batches? Sorry if I am high-jacking the thread with a few questions, but i think we convinced the OP to do BIAB!

I always run my recipe through BIABacus Calculator from biabrewer.info and it scales the amount of grain needed for your OG, and also outputs the required water volumes automatically. If you're calculating it all from scratch, you're probably going to need to go through some trial and error and take good notes to see what your grain absorption was for x amount of grain. Of course you need to know your evaporation rate as well.

The BIABacus Calculator looks scary at first, but if you grab a beer and start putting in your info, it gets easy pretty quick.

poptarts said:

I have been debating this for the exact same reasons. The more and more I look I think it will be possible. but to answer your question more directly I was going to go with 12qt pots and brutus 20 style setup using ebay solar pumps.

Click to expand...

This is what I have, with 16 quart pots for 2-3 gal batches. They're really not much bigger than 12qt.

BeerFireBrew said:

You are saying 3 or 4 qts/lbs for traditional BIAB. I just brewed a Citra IPA with 7 lbs total using 1.25 qt/lb. I mashed with 2.2 gallons and then sparged with 1.3 gallons to make a 3.5 gallon batch. If i were to do the 3 or 4 qts/lbs for traditional BIAB, that would put my 7 lbs of grain to 21 qts = 5.2 gallons. Am I using too much grain for a 3 gallon batch? Or is 3 or 4 qt/lbs ratio for 5 gallon batches? Sorry if I am high-jacking the thread with a few questions, but i think we convinced the OP to do BIAB!

Click to expand...

It all depends upon your efficiency, boil off rate and target OG. When I said typically 3 - 4 qts/lb, I was looking at some of my recipes of 1.040 to 1.050 OG. The higher the OG, the more grain required and the lower the water to grain ratio. On some of my higher OG recipes, my water to grain ratio is down to about 2.6 to 2.8 qts/lb (my efficiency is around 82% on those heavy grain bills).

Looking at your numbers, you are using 3.5 gal of water for 7 lbs of grain. If you were doing a full volume you would have 2 qts/lb of grain. How much are you losing to grain absorption and how much is you boil off? Sorry to slip into metric here but that is my standard system, I am making 10 liter batches (10 liters into the fermentor) and using about 16 to 17 liters of water for mash/sparge, losing a little over a liter into the grain and about 3 to 4 liters to evaporation during the boil. I leave around a liter behind in the kettle with the thick trub and hop residue.

I've looked at the biabrewer.info site and I really don't like that forum style unfortunately. I can barely make heads or tales out of it.

I agree about the forum style, but those guys invented BIAB and are super helpful. If you can stand to read a few of their introduction posts and get a hold of the BACUS, it would only be helpful for your brews.


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I don't do full 5 gallon batches for some of the reasons you are stating. I'd like to run a lot of batches to gain experience and to try different things. I've got way more beer than I can use running 4 gallon batches that end up with about 3 gallons of finished beer.
I use a 5 gallon igloo cooler and a BIAB bag in it. I can keep my mash temperature steady this way, do step mashes if I want to, and its a little less messy separating the wort from the grains. When I did BIAB in my pot I couldn't help but spill wort all over my smooth top range when I pulled the bag out. I had to clean that up before starting my boil.
I also had trouble maintaining my mash temp using the BIAB method in a pot instead of a cooler.
I do 4 gallon batches with my setup, so I have to batch sparge, but If you were doing 2 gallon batches the whole boil volume would fit no problem.
The only problem with the 2 gallon batches is it doesn't really go any faster than a 3 or 4 gallon batch using a kitchen stove.
You might get faster ramp times for your strike, sparge and boil, but you still are putting in
significant time for not that much beer.
I have 3, 5 and 6 gallon carboys I use for secondary conditioning and dry hopping, I've found that too much headspace in the carboy can lead to moldy looking growth on the top of the beer, unless you can keep it cold. So I run a 4 gallon batch in a plastic bucket primary, and rack off to a 3 gallon carboy secondary. If there are a few quarts of beer that don't fit in the carboy, I use 1/2 gallon jug, put these "dregs" in the fridge and blend this young uncarbonated beer with something else and drink it within a few days.
You can use 1 gallon glass jugs for fermenting, but by the time you settle the yeast you are only going to have 3 quarts of beer.
Cooling 1-2 gallon batches will be easier, just use your kitchen sink and some ice.
So there's pluses and minuses with smaller batch brewing. I've kind of found a middle ground that works for me. Unless I can find a need for 10 gallons of beer at one time, I'll
never go to that large of a setup.