jonstewartstwin

Recipes 

I've made a half dozen 5 gallon batches...extract and partial mash...5 gallons just ain't enuf... i'd like to switch over to biab, and make 10 gallon batches... how large a brewpot do i need? 44q? 60q? i want plenty of room... thx!

mfraier

Recipes 

You need one bigger than that. i would think somewhere around 90qt or so pot would be what you would need. You need a 40 qt pot to do a 5.5 gallon batch.......

Remember BIAB is all the water and grain in the pot at the same time which takes up a whole bunch of space.

You would also need a really strong bag to hold the weightof the grain and water after the mash, and a pulley to get it out.

ntfinkbe

Recipes 

I just did my first biab last weekend and it was a 10 gallon batch with around 25lbs of grain. I have a 60 qt kettle and it worked great. However u might have to add a little water after the mash if you can't fit all the grain in there. I had to drain a little out when putting my grain in at the start but I ended up where I needed to be

smokewater

Recipes 

Do you already have a 7-8 gallon pot? If so you could sparge in it and add that water to a 12-15 gallon pot for a 10 gallon batch.

This calculator should help you decide. Plug in the different size pots and grain bills and it gives you strike water amounts that the pot will hold with the grain. You can use a smaller pot or bucket to sparge and pour that additional wort into the bigger pot for boil volume.

http://up.jamesnweber.com/_brew/biabcalcs.html

jonstewartstwin

Recipes 

60 q is about 15 gallons... so after i pull the grains out, sparge until i get up to 10 gallons? i'm sure i won't be able to fit 25lb of grain AND 10 gallons of water at once, right? (i'll check out that calculator too...)

jonstewartstwin

Recipes 

ps, does your 60q kettle have a valve, or do you siphon to ur fermenter? if you have a valve, did you buy it, or install it? if bought, what brand? thanks so much!

ntfinkbe

Recipes 

I've got a1/2" ball valve from bargainfittings.com with a dip tube. Great business btw.

Yes you can fit 10 gallons and that much grain in a15 gallon pot but you have to account for grain absorption. I think I had around 13 gallons when I added the grain and it was a little too much. So I drained some and added the right amount later to account for the boil off.

ntfinkbe

Recipes 

Oh btw the valve is a weldless one.

smokewater

Recipes 

That's why a two pot process is good if you already have a smaller pot. Any volume you lose to grain absorption you can make up with the higher temp sparge volume. Its a good idea to mash close to the max volume of your pot. Otherwise you have more air space between the grain and the lid and it will not hold temp as well. You don't want too big of a pot or you will need to insulate it.

My process is something like this doing 5 gallon batches in a 7.5 gallon pot:

1. Start with 5.5 gallons of water
2. Mash grain for 60 minutes at temp
3. turn on heat, stir like crazy and bring it up to 170 for 10 minutes
4. Pull bag and put it in 2 gallons of 175 degree water for 10 minutes.
5 squeeze bag and dump that into brew pot.
6. that usually gives me about 6.5 gallons for the boil
7. leave grain draining in the smaller pot and use those runnings to make up for evaporation during the boil
8. This gives me around 52 12 oz beers on bottling day

ODI3

Recipes 

Standard BIAB from my understanding, you need 2x the final boil amount.

for 5 gal batch, u need 10 gallon pot (i use 2x 5 gallon pots)

for 10 gal batch, u need 20 gallon pot.

There are methods to reduce that size using "maxi-biab", but 2x is the standard.