Brew in a bag???

I have looked around the forum a bit. ( granted, probably not as in depth as I could or should have)
I have seen some of the partial mash stuff, including some great how to's.
Is the partial mash the same thing as Brew in a bag?
I would think the brew in a bag is a complete mash, no extract needed.
I am looking to make the jump to all grain but want to try out this idea of brew in a bag.
I currently only have a 8 gallon brew kettle and from some of the how to things i found on the interweb I saw I needed a 15 gallon pot? seems a bit excessive?
Any help would be great, even if its just pointing me towards a thread that already covers it.
I appreciate it fellas (and ladies)

8 gal will work. It is similar to partial mash just without extract.
Check out the thread it helped me decide to start BIAB
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/biab-brewing-pics-233289/

Go to ALL GRAIN and MASH section and look at the stickys

And Brew TV has a great video on BIAB. The episode title is "Jake's got a brand new bag" .

An 8 gallon pot will serve you well as long as you don't do "big" beers (15+ pound grain bill for 5 gallons.) Otherwise you'll have to mash twice and combine the wort for your boil and that's a PITA. If you like the bigger beers then get a bigger pot - you won't regret it. BIAB is a great nest step from extract (and many happily stay there with great results.)

Excellent. Thanks

amandley said:

I have looked around the forum a bit. ( granted, probably not as in depth as I could or should have)
I have seen some of the partial mash stuff, including some great how to's.
Is the partial mash the same thing as Brew in a bag?
I would think the brew in a bag is a complete mash, no extract needed.
I am looking to make the jump to all grain but want to try out this idea of brew in a bag.
I currently only have a 8 gallon brew kettle and from some of the how to things i found on the interweb I saw I needed a 15 gallon pot? seems a bit excessive?
Any help would be great, even if its just pointing me towards a thread that already covers it.
I appreciate it fellas (and ladies)

Click to expand...

I'm glad I missed that part about needing a 15 gallon pot or I never would have been able to do the last dozen or so 5 gallon batches with my 7 1/2 gallon turkey fryer. I'm limited to about 12 pounds of grain in my grain bill if I want to do "no sparge' but if I an willing to sparge (modified BIAB) I could probably fit 15 to 18 pounds of grain.

Last brew I did was a bit stout. Mashed almost 9 lbs BIAB style on my 20 qt pot. It was tight, but really not too bad. Granted I had to do a partial boil because my pot is small (for this reason I wish my pot was 8 gal like yours).

I also added 6 lbs of DME, which made it partial mash. I think with an 8 gal pot you could probably mash 12 lbs of grain and do some pretty standard AG beers. If you want to do especially big beers, add some DME. I think 8gal will be perfect for you.

As said 8 gallons is enough for most beers. Won't work.for bigger pure BIAB, but there are ways around that. The easiest is to just add a pound or 2 extract to bulb the gravity, but you can also batch sparge, dunk sparge, etc.