made my own BIAB

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So will this work? How's the stitching look?

Oh, and made me a hop sock spider thing too. Super easy.

This weekend, I'm hoping to do my first 10 gallon batch with this. 23lb grain bill.

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Looks good. Just bought a big bag to fit my keg at my LHBS for ~7 bucks. Works great in my kettle. I wouldn't try to lift the grain out of there using the bag though.
 
thanks. i guess there aren't many biab guys around here. maybe i'll take this to the biab brewery website, as i'm really curious if this can handle 30# or so of grain...
 
I (and the wife) made a BIAB bag a couple weeks ago. I'll try to remember to take a pic tonight. I'd been using the 5 gallon paint strainer bags, but they were just too small and I got poor efficiency. I still use the 1 gallon bags for hop bags, though if I do something with lots of hope (more than about 3 oz) I'll need to use 2 bags, I think.
 
it'll hold the grains with no problem as long as your stitching is sound. did you use nylon thread? if not then go over it with nylon thread. The hard part will be lifting the grains out. Even that isn't going to be that hard.
 
I've done BIAB batches with up to 22 lbs of grain 6 gal batch and I lift that out if the keggle with just the bag. Hardest part is fitting the bag through the opening.

My bag is double walled and stitched at the top rather than the bottom.

That said, if you get the real tight weave voile material and you use the right nylon thread and stitch (which from your pic the stitch looks good) then I would be fine with lifting however much you can lift with out worry on the material.
 
I've done BIAB batches with up to 22 lbs of grain 6 gal batch and I lift that out if the keggle with just the bag. Hardest part is fitting the bag through the opening.

Yes. The reason I bought a steamer basket and recut the top of my keggle was so I could uniformly lift the bag out. I constantly had issues with the bag getting caught/stuck/dragging against my brew pot. Furthermore, it was difficult/irritiating/hot to grab a bag full of 170 degree grain and squeeze/move it.

So I love BIAB because of the simplicty of the system and the time I save- I added a steamer basket to resolve the shapeless bag issue.

Food for thought.
 
Oh yeah even before the steamer basket, I used a rope and pulley to lift the bag. The rope has loops with a "S" hooks in it and use the "S" hook to link the lifted bag at different heights.

Going back to the shapeless bag issue, lifting 23 pounds of wet hot grains and *holding it* so it can drip into your pot- pain in the ass.

Consider a way to lift and hold the bag so you don't have to.

Doesn't sound like I like BIAB, but I'm loyal. Sparging is so... 20th Century.
 
Indeed, I am a big fan of the steamer basket approach. It does require an additional purchase and possible modification of the pot for the steamer to fit. Or it could just fit too.
 
Retrofit said:
Oh yeah even before the steamer basket, I used a rope and pulley to lift the bag. The rope has loops with a "S" hooks in it and use the "S" hook to link to lifted bag at different heights.

Going back to the shapeless bag issue, lifting 23 pounds of wet hot grains and *holding it* so it can drip into your pot- pain in the ass.

I use a A frame ladder and 2x4 with a hook to let the bag drain.
 
I made a single layer bag from polyester voile from Walmart. I double stitched my seams (once straight, once zig-zag). It's holding up just fine and has been used for several 20+ lb grain bills. I don't use a basket, handles, etc. - I just pick it up and drop it in my strainer bucket.
 
i do have a sewing machine. mine was a $5 sheer voile curtain from the dollar general store. i didn't use nylon thread though. i read over on biabbrewerinfo.com that polyester was a good thread. i'll try to pick up some nylon tomorrow and go over everything again.

i have a pulley and rope system ready, and will likely use the ladder/2x4 approach. i'm planning to brew the lake walk pale ale on saturday - shooting for 70%.

i went BIAB to save some time. cleaning out the cooler and heating sparge water was killing me. my wife is about to have a baby, so i am concerned about shortening brew day.
 
i do have a sewing machine. mine was a $5 sheer voile curtain from the dollar general store. i didn't use nylon thread though. i read over on biabbrewerinfo.com that polyester was a good thread. i'll try to pick up some nylon tomorrow and go over everything again.

i have a pulley and rope system ready, and will likely use the ladder/2x4 approach. i'm planning to brew the lake walk pale ale on saturday - shooting for 70%.

i went BIAB to save some time. cleaning out the cooler and heating sparge water was killing me. my wife is about to have a baby, so i am concerned about shortening brew day.

poly thread will work.. just making sure it wasn't cotton thread. Nylon is better than poly but at least poly won't rot like cotton and fall apart while mashing :)

double crush those grains!
 
I regularly do 20-23 lb 10g biab. I normally have a friend to help lift it out, otherwise I drain off a good bit of the wort into a bucket so I don't have to lift/hold the bag as high. As someone else said the biggest problem is fitting the bag through the keg opening and mine is cut 12" or so.
 
so we did 23 lb grain bill for an oatmeal stout. had a solid mash temp for an hour and squeezed the bag and let it drip for about 10 min, but really feel like i should have done a sparge of some sort. the wort coming out of the squeeze was SO sticky...it really needed a legit rinse, but i was too lazy to have heated up the second vessel. the bag didn't have enough of the truncated dome shape to make the extraction easy with the keggle 12.5" opening...but we got it out eventually. i highly recommend the use of neoprene gloves for any brewing. the efficiency was right on where i expected it..70%. i crushed my own grain with the corona mill and really should have milled it a touch finer, it would have made me feel better about the whole process. the bag held together great all in all.

i gave the bag away to the fellow i split the brew with so that he can get started in all grain.

i may try to make another bag for my 5 gallon batches and make it more of a truncated dome. also, don't buy the cheap walmart pulley. get a GOOD pulley. otherwise, i think i'll stick to the cooler MLT i have and work on nailing down that process. but i'm glad i have tried it for now.
 
the more I think about it... for BIAB cutting the keg along the top weld around until you get to the handles and then going up on both sides to leave handles would work better. it would open the top up a LOT making bag extraction easy and still leave handles to carry the keggle.. like in this video
 
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Your bag looks good, I would suggest a much finer stitch, like 20/inch zig zag...I also like to run it through the machine twice till the stitch is almost thread to thread with 40-50 stitches per inch, this way the seam will be as strong a the voile material and will be almost indestructable. A well stitched bag should easily hold 40 lbs of grain and likely double that amount IMO.

I believe poly thread is the correct recommended material. Poly thread is quite strong and long lasting...perhaps not as strong as nylon, but with a very fine stitch it is very strong.

Perhaps a heavily tapered bag with a very narrow bottom would help for extracting the bag out of a narrow cut keggle.
 
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