alcibiades

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Can I BIAB a 10 gallon batch in a Keggle. I'm thinking 23 pounds of grain, no sparge (or I could lift the bag and pour 180 water through it as a sparge...).

For 23 pounds of grain, at 1.5 quarts a pound, I would need 8.6 gallons water. My only worries are 1) grain bag water displacement and 2) getting the huge bag of grain out of the keggle without ripping the bag on the cut top 3) ripping the bag generally.

any experiences trying a BIAB 10 gallon batch?

alcibiades

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has nobody tried this??

The Pol

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Well, obviously with 23 pounds of grain and ALL of the water to do true BIAB, you wont fit it.

You need 10 gallons of water
PLUS 2 gallons absorption (give or take)
PLUS 2 gallons boil off (give or take)

That alone is 14 gallons of water total... PLUS the grain.

Total volume about 16 gallons: FAIL

So, you CAN do this if you do some sort of a sparge after you pull the grain bag out, or top off the BK prior to the boil.

R2-D2

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I BiaB for 5.25 gallon batches. No experience with with 10 but it sounds like a lot of grain. Maybe double bag it?

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adamjab19

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Especially if your keggle is dirty.....

Seriously though 10 gallons of BIABing is a lot to deal with. The weight alone would be an issue. What type of bag? Who/what is lifting it?

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alcibiades

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i have a huge bag i got from BMW - i think its plenty big for 23 pounds of grain. I'd be lifting it...im a relatively big guy, but i think its gonna push me to my limits.

Yeah, i was thinking either sparge through the bag (id need a partner), or just top off with water if/when i came a gallon short. I don't think I can pull off a beer bigger than 1.055, which is fine.

Its just so tempting to try to fit in two brew days into one..I think ill jump in headfirst - ill post my surefire failures on brewday on this thread when i do.

wilserbrewer

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A keggle is pretty much at its limits for a standard 10 gallon batch. But I guess if you are optimistic, throw in a few extra pounds of grain to account for comprimised efficiency, and also come up w/ a method to sparge a few gallons through the bag over the kettle...sure it could be done.

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lustreking

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I don't do the traditional BiaB. For a 5 gallon batch, I mash in with somewhere between 4 and 5 gallons of water, and then just top off with water before I boil. I do this to maximize the amount of grain I can fit in the pot that I use for BiaB (I think it's a 35 qt turkey fryer pot). I didn't see any loss of efficiency from doing it this way as opposed to the full volume mash.

However...

I don't think I'd recommend doing a 10 gallon BiaB mash in a keggle for a couple reasons.

23 pounds of grain will probably weigh over 40 pounds when wet.

If your keggle is like most people's (with a smaller opening than the diameter of the keg), I think that it would be very hard to get the full bag out of the keg with that kind of configuration.

I also think that, with that much grain, you'll have issues getting it to drain well. Just think about the grain in the center of that big mass in the grain bag. I have a feeling that you'll take a fairly substantial efficiency hit because of that. Remember how I said it was going to be heavy? You'll have to hold it for a while.

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CharlosCarlies

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Do you keg? If not, you could just do a 7 or 8g batch.

The Pol

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23 pounds
Plus ABOUT 2 gallons of water

That is about 39 pounds of soggy grain, better get a chain fall.