My plan for all grain on the cheap

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aidan

aidan

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My plan for minimal equipment all grain brewing is to do stovetop BIAB split between 2 pots, a 12L (3 gal) and 17L (4.5 gal).

I've just posted on my blog about my plan: Getting ready to do All Grain on the cheap

I reckon I should be able to manage full 5-6 gal batches with this approach - what do you think?
 
Let me start by saying, I've been in a place where I really wanted to move to "the next level" and couldn't justify the expense of doing it, so I get it. And there are definitely people who make award winning beer using methods that make yours sound like the Miller-Coors brewery. That said, I cannot brew good beer doing what you suggest.

I've done the two pot method, and I just couldn't ever get it to work right. One pot would boil over and, just when I thought I had it under control, the other one would boil over. Then, once I got that one under control, I'd realize that its boil over had put out the flame on the first pot, and that one had stopped boiling. By the time I was done, the stove was always a mess, the wort was usually caramelized to hell, and I was pissed.

In addition to the frustration involved, remember that using two pots of unequal size means that your hops will be utilized differently in each pot, making it difficult to anticipate how hoppy or aromatic your beer will turn out. And, for the same reason, you won't be able to follow recipes.

Finally, cooling your wort efficiently will be tough unless you buy two wort chillers (which will be expensive and, if they're sized to fit your small pots, won't be useful for when you do upgrade.) Sure, with two pots you can throw them both in the sink with ice, but that's a very slow method of cooling a 4.5 gallon volume of liquid. As a result, you'll be at a greater risk of developing DMS and DMS precursors. The risk will be more significant if your sink is not large enough to fit both pots at once. And the final nail in the cooling coffin is that chilling beer in your sink (or bathtub for that matter) is an invitation for infection.

Here's a link to a $44 dollar turkeyburner and 30Qt. pot. That's a little more than half what I spend to brew my Double IPA, or approximately the cost of brewing a standard all-grain pale ale. Consider skipping your next brewday and spending the money of that pot and burner instead. If you decide you want to forge ahead with the two unequal pot method, that's fine too, but know the option is out there.
 
I'm with pericles, you can get a larger pot for cheap and save yourself some future headaches.
 
I've made a half dozen batches in a two pot set up. I have 16Q and 23Q pots. I tried making full 5G batches, but it's just too much grain for this set up. Now I do half batches (2.5G-3G).

I mash in my 23Q pot with 1.5Q/lb. After it's done, I pull the bag out and let it drip for as long as I can. Sometimes I do a light squeeze too, but this seems to give me more trub (which I'm fine with, given that I double crush and so will have tons of trub anyway).

I bring enough water for "sparging" in my 16Q pot (usually over 170). I put this hot sparge water into my primary bucket. Then I dunk the grain bag in this water, tea-bagging and letting it soak for 10 minutes. Take it out and let it drip for as long as possible.

I add the mash water to the "sparge" water in the primary bucket, give it a stir, then split the wort between the two pots for two mini-full-boils.

As mentioned above, the hop utilization is weird, since you have to split the hops into 1/3 and 2/3 additions (or whatever proportions you have between you two pots). I usually just eye-ball this, but a scale and some simple math would be very useful.

Edit: Oh, and I cool my boiled beer outside (yay Canada!). This works very well in mid-winter (-40 is a little on the chilly side). It is less effective now, during spring, but it still works. You make do with what you have (thus this whole post).
 
The two boils might affect your hop utilization -- slightly. My biggest concern is if you're boiling two batches of beer at once on the same stove you might damage your stove. You're talking about running two burners for hours on end (mash, sparge, heating to boil, boiling) where you are covering two burners and running them for long periods of time. Assuming you have an electric stove, all the heat and weight from the wort can melt the casings on the wires that connect to the burners and cause shorts. I blew out a wire, two switches and a coil element from using just one burner. Making the repairs myself still cost over $100 just in parts. So it ended up being less economical to use the stove. However, your stove may be more hearty than mine or you may have a gas range. If you do have an electric stove, you may want to see if they make canning elements for your stove. It provides better support for heavy pots and heats better.

The most important question is whether the equipment will fit your long term needs. Will you ever need to mash in a container of more than three gallons? Is there a foreseeable situation where you won't be able to brew inside any more? Do you see yourself wanting to expand your brewing set up in a way that will require larger or thicker kettles?

I can appreciate being frugal but if you're going to shell out the cash for a couple pots now but then have to buy a propane rig in a few years it may be less frugal than you think. Just to be clear, I am not anti-stove top or BIAB. I still do the majority of my brews BIAB or stove top heating with a cooler mash tun (but they are smaller batches). My point is to consider your future needs along with your current needs.
 
I do the half-batches on the stove, but have done a few on gas stoves that were 5-gallon. I never had a boil-over problem, but YMMV.
 
pericles said:
Let me start by saying, I've been in a place where I really wanted to move to "the next level" and couldn't justify the expense of doing it, so I get it. And there are definitely people who make award winning beer using methods that make yours sound like the Miller-Coors brewery. That said, I cannot brew good beer doing what you suggest.

I've done the two pot method, and I just couldn't ever get it to work right. One pot would boil over and, just when I thought I had it under control, the other one would boil over. Then, once I got that one under control, I'd realize that its boil over had put out the flame on the first pot, and that one had stopped boiling. By the time I was done, the stove was always a mess, the wort was usually caramelized to hell, and I was pissed.

In addition to the frustration involved, remember that using two pots of unequal size means that your hops will be utilized differently in each pot, making it difficult to anticipate how hoppy or aromatic your beer will turn out. And, for the same reason, you won't be able to follow recipes.

Finally, cooling your wort efficiently will be tough unless you buy two wort chillers (which will be expensive and, if they're sized to fit your small pots, won't be useful for when you do upgrade.) Sure, with two pots you can throw them both in the sink with ice, but that's a very slow method of cooling a 4.5 gallon volume of liquid. As a result, you'll be at a greater risk of developing DMS and DMS precursors. The risk will be more significant if your sink is not large enough to fit both pots at once. And the final nail in the cooling coffin is that chilling beer in your sink (or bathtub for that matter) is an invitation for infection.

Here's a link to a $44 dollar turkeyburner and 30Qt. pot. That's a little more than half what I spend to brew my Double IPA, or approximately the cost of brewing a standard all-grain pale ale. Consider skipping your next brewday and spending the money of that pot and burner instead. If you decide you want to forge ahead with the two unequal pot method, that's fine too, but know the option is out there.
Click to expand...
You have a lot more economic options available over in the States than we have here in NZ, turkey fryers are not a common item here and if you did find one there would probably be another zero added to the end of that price.
 
Eckythump said:
I've made a half dozen batches in a two pot set up. I have 16Q and 23Q pots. I tried making full 5G batches, but it's just too much grain for this set up. Now I do half batches (2.5G-3G).

I mash in my 23Q pot with 1.5Q/lb. After it's done, I pull the bag out and let it drip for as long as I can. Sometimes I do a light squeeze too, but this seems to give me more trub (which I'm fine with, given that I double crush and so will have tons of trub anyway).

I bring enough water for "sparging" in my 16Q pot (usually over 170). I put this hot sparge water into my primary bucket. Then I dunk the grain bag in this water, tea-bagging and letting it soak for 10 minutes. Take it out and let it drip for as long as possible.

I add the mash water to the "sparge" water in the primary bucket, give it a stir, then split the wort between the two pots for two mini-full-boils.

As mentioned above, the hop utilization is weird, since you have to split the hops into 1/3 and 2/3 additions (or whatever proportions you have between you two pots). I usually just eye-ball this, but a scale and some simple math would be very useful.

Edit: Oh, and I cool my boiled beer outside (yay Canada!). This works very well in mid-winter (-40 is a little on the chilly side). It is less effective now, during spring, but it still works. You make do with what you have (thus this whole post).
Click to expand...
Sounds like the way I would do it. Good idea using your fermenter for mixing the wort. I would even consider using it for sparging as I know from experience that sparging in an undersized pot can get messy.

I wouldn't expect hops utillisation to be a major issue since currently with my partial mash and extract batches all the hops go into one small boil, so if anything, my hops utillisation should be improved.

I've been managing fine with cooling the 12L pot in ice water, I can get it cooled in about 20mins, so I figure I should be able to cool a 17L pot in about 30 mins.
 
I bought my 8gal aluminum boil kettle off amazon for $25 shipped, so i would bet you can find something to that effect but slightly more expensive. Its made to be a tamale steamer but works great as a BK.

Have you thought about going the electric route? A water heater element isn't very expensive either. That would eliminate the need for a propane burner.
 
ReverseApacheMaster said:
The two boils might affect your hop utilization -- slightly. My biggest concern is if you're boiling two batches of beer at once on the same stove you might damage your stove. You're talking about running two burners for hours on end (mash, sparge, heating to boil, boiling) where you are covering two burners and running them for long periods of time. Assuming you have an electric stove, all the heat and weight from the wort can melt the casings on the wires that connect to the burners and cause shorts. I blew out a wire, two switches and a coil element from using just one burner. Making the repairs myself still cost over $100 just in parts. So it ended up being less economical to use the stove. However, your stove may be more hearty than mine or you may have a gas range. If you do have an electric stove, you may want to see if they make canning elements for your stove. It provides better support for heavy pots and heats better.

The most important question is whether the equipment will fit your long term needs. Will you ever need to mash in a container of more than three gallons? Is there a foreseeable situation where you won't be able to brew inside any more? Do you see yourself wanting to expand your brewing set up in a way that will require larger or thicker kettles?

I can appreciate being frugal but if you're going to shell out the cash for a couple pots now but then have to buy a propane rig in a few years it may be less frugal than you think. Just to be clear, I am not anti-stove top or BIAB. I still do the majority of my brews BIAB or stove top heating with a cooler mash tun (but they are smaller batches). My point is to consider your future needs along with your current needs.
Click to expand...
My stove is an electric ceramic top so I don't think that the weight would be an issue.
 
impur said:
I bought my 8gal aluminum boil kettle off amazon for $25 shipped, so i would bet you can find something to that effect but slightly more expensive. Its made to be a tamale steamer but works great as a BK.

Have you thought about going the electric route? A water heater element isn't very expensive either. That would eliminate the need for a propane burner.
Click to expand...

I've thought about making a heatstick and I think that would be what I would have to do if I wanted to boil a full batch in a single pot on my stove. But then I thought if I go split pots I dont even need a heatstick or an immersion chiller.
 
Definitely give it a shot! I just did my first BIAB all-grain yesterday with 2 pots, a 20 and a 24 qt.

I mashed 8lbs of grain with 12qt of 163 degF strike water in the 20qt pot and hit the 152F mash temp exactly. I insulated with towels and stirred every 15m. I lost about 2deg every 15 min, and kept boiling water in a small pot to bring back to 152 (about 4-8 qts.).

Meanwhile, I heated 3.5 gallon sparge water to 174 in the 24 qt pot (it's a pressure cooker, used the lid to heat faster).

I heated while stirring to 170f mashout, which I think really made draining easier, but hotter!

I drained into the mashpot, but didn't bother squeezing, as I then went directly to sparge pot. I teabagged it a few times, stirred, teabagged it some more, then squeezed what I could into the sparge.

I then poured the two runnings, back and forth a few times so they were identical, and split between the two pots equally to boil. I split my hops equally between the two pots.

I thought I needed extra time to boil off, but I ended up short about 3 quarts. I didn't need the 30 minutes before the 60min hop edition boil.

I calculated about 70% efficiency, but was really just trying to get through the process. Grains were well crushed by Northern Brewer, as I indicated to double crush for stovetop mashing.

Edit- I added the contents of the smaller pot to the larger one at the last 10 minutes of the boil before adding coriander and then orangepeel for my Belgian wit. As I said earlier, I overboiled to 4.25 gallons with a OG of 1.048, with an expected 1.044. I chilled in the one pot using my double sink to maintain a constant-flow ice waterfall.
 
another thing I was thinking I could do is to a higher gravity boil and then top up with some additional water in the fermenter - aynone use that approach?
 
ScoRas said:
Definitely give it a shot! I just did my first BIAB all-grain yesterday with 2 pots, a 20 and a 24 qt.

I mashed 8lbs of grain with 12qt of 163 degF strike water in the 20qt pot and hit the 152F mash temp exactly. I insulated with towels and stirred every 15m. I lost about 2deg every 15 min, and kept boiling water in a small pot to bring back to 152 (about 4-8 qts.).

Meanwhile, I heated 3.5 gallon sparge water to 174 in the 24 qt pot (it's a pressure cooker, used the lid to heat faster).

I heated while stirring to 170f mashout, which I think really made draining easier, but hotter!

I drained into the mashpot, but didn't bother squeezing, as I then went directly to sparge pot. I teabagged it a few times, stirred, teabagged it some more, then squeezed what I could into the sparge.

I then poured the two runnings, back and forth a few times so they were identical, and split between the two pots equally to boil. I split my hops equally between the two pots.

I thought I needed extra time to boil off, but I ended up short about 3 quarts. I didn't need the 30 minutes before the 60min hop edition boil.

I calculated about 70% efficiency, but was really just trying to get through the process. Grains were well crushed by Northern Brewer, as I indicated to double crush for stovetop mashing.
Click to expand...

Sounds like it worked fine for you. So will you use this approach again?
 
aidan said:
another thing I was thinking I could do is to a higher gravity boil and then top up with some additional water in the fermenter - aynone use that approach?
Click to expand...

I think you would get lower efficiency due to less water to grain ratio in your mash+sparge.
 
aidan said:
Sounds like it worked fine for you. So will you use this approach again?
Click to expand...

Absolutely, I think it will work fine for anything under about 9lbs of grain, I'll just scale recipes accordingly.

I forgot to mention how fun it was, and it only took about 5 hours including cleanup! The batch is fermenting like wild today.
 
ScoRas said:
Absolutely, I think it will work fine for anything under about 9lbs of grain, I'll just scale recipes accordingly.

I forgot to mention how fun it was, and it only took about 5 hours including cleanup! The batch is fermenting like wild today.
Click to expand...

Should work for me then. At the moment anyway I'm tending towards lower gravity session beers, I have a 3-3.5% ABV beer in the pipleline for my next one.
 
aidan said:
My plan for minimal equipment all grain brewing is to do stovetop BIAB split between 2 pots, a 12L (3 gal) and 17L (4.5 gal).

I've just posted on my blog about my plan: Getting ready to do All Grain on the cheap

I reckon I should be able to manage full 5-6 gal batches with this approach - what do you think?
Click to expand...

You should ABSOLUTELY go for it. I am committed to stovetop BIAB brewing, and when I switched to a split boil five batches ago, I found that the quality of my beer really turned the corner due to increased boil vigor. Not only that, but I was able to increase my batch size because of the increased volume of two pots. I get 4 gallons in the fermenter, and end up with at least 3 gallons of beer, or 32 - 37 bottles per batch.

My boil pots are 12 and 15 quarts, respectively. I also have a 20 quart pot that functions as a lautering vessel. I mash in the 15 quart pot, placing it in a preheated oven for the duration of the mash; I lose a degree or so in my mash temp, never more. Then I dunk sparge in the 20 quart pot and dunk some more in the 12 quart pot. I combine the 1st and 3rd "runnings" (from the 15 qt and 12 qt pots) into the 20 qt pot, mix, and then split again for the boil. It requires a bit of juggling and thinking on the fly, but it's actually a lot of fun and my efficiency has been 85% over the last three batches with a single crush.

It's difficult for me to get 4 gallons of wort that's over 1.060 OG, but I find that I prefer beers that start at 1.035 - 1.050 anyway. At the end of the boil everything goes back into the 20 qt pot for chilling with my immersion chiller. There's a little bit of pouring involved, so right now I'm paying attention to see if I can perceive any ill effects from hot side aeration. So far so good, five batches into this process.

I think that the process described above suits me precisely BECAUSE it requires a bit of work and extra attention. I am a brew nerd. I use a hop utilization app (Hopularity, for the iPhone), and a simple spreadsheet I designed myself to figure out gravity and efficiency. I plan each recipe carefully and take really good notes because I love taking apart the process and getting every little bit right.

YMMV, but I hope you'll explore the split boil. See if you enjoy the process, and see how the beer tastes.
 
Here's the split boil:



image-3122194160.jpg
 
i've done a couple stovetop split boils (using up to four pots for a 90 minute boil!) for 3g batches using a cooler for my mash tun, but i've started gathering the equipment to do full boils (partially because i'm sick of cleaning the stove!)
beers i've tasted so far from the split boils are still delicious
 
tonyolympia said:
You should ABSOLUTELY go for it. I am committed to stovetop BIAB brewing, and when I switched to a split boil five batches ago, I found that the quality of my beer really turned the corner due to increased boil vigor. Not only that, but I was able to increase my batch size because of the increased volume of two pots. I get 4 gallons in the fermenter, and end up with at least 3 gallons of beer, or 32 - 37 bottles per batch.

My boil pots are 12 and 15 quarts, respectively. I also have a 20 quart pot that functions as a lautering vessel. I mash in the 15 quart pot, placing it in a preheated oven for the duration of the mash; I lose a degree or so in my mash temp, never more. Then I dunk sparge in the 20 quart pot and dunk some more in the 12 quart pot. I combine the 1st and 3rd "runnings" (from the 15 qt and 12 qt pots) into the 20 qt pot, mix, and then split again for the boil. It requires a bit of juggling and thinking on the fly, but it's actually a lot of fun and my efficiency has been 85% over the last three batches with a single crush.

It's difficult for me to get 4 gallons of wort that's over 1.060 OG, but I find that I prefer beers that start at 1.035 - 1.050 anyway. At the end of the boil everything goes back into the 20 qt pot for chilling with my immersion chiller. There's a little bit of pouring involved, so right now I'm paying attention to see if I can perceive any ill effects from hot side aeration. So far so good, five batches into this process.

I think that the process described above suits me precisely BECAUSE it requires a bit of work and extra attention. I am a brew nerd. I use a hop utilization app (Hopularity, for the iPhone), and a simple spreadsheet I designed myself to figure out gravity and efficiency. I plan each recipe carefully and take really good notes because I love taking apart the process and getting every little bit right.

YMMV, but I hope you'll explore the split boil. See if you enjoy the process, and see how the beer tastes.
Click to expand...
Good to hear that it's working for you. What conclusions have you come to on hot side aeration? It seems to be somewhat contensious whether it is an issue at all on the home brewing scale.

Just wondering why don't you use your 20qt pot for mashing, you could mash more grain that way? I was even thinking to do a split mash also.
 
aidan said:
Good to hear that it's working for you. What conclusions have you come to on hot side aeration? It seems to be somewhat contensious whether it is an issue at all on the home brewing scale.

Just wondering why don't you use your 20qt pot for mashing, you could mash more grain that way? I was even thinking to do a split mash also.
Click to expand...

I don't really need to mash more than 7.5 lbs of grain for the beers I want to make. Plus if I mashed in my biggest vessel, I wouldn't have anything suitable to hold my sparge water.

As for HSA, I don't want to get cocky and say I've ruled it out, but like I say, so far so good. I try to pay attention to ALL the trouble areas that can lead to long-term flavor instability... sanitation, fermentation health, careful packaging, cold storage. Hopefully it all adds up to a product the beer gods can smile on.
 
I do electric stove top. I can get a full boil of 4 gallons- 5 gallons boils too, but is not very ferocious and doesn't give much leway for boil overs. I usually have 3 or 4 pots.
2- 5 gallons (one is a ball for canning, the other I got from a cheapo store for 10 bucks)
1- 4 gallon
2- 3 gallon.

I've used the canning pot for mashing. Since it is ceramic coated it won't corrode. I then pulled my paint strainer and put it in a large mixing bowl, then back to the pot and add more sparge water.
 

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