BIAB Brewing (with pics)

I do something different. I have two buckets where I drilled 30 small holes into the bottom of one of the buckets and then this get placed inside the other bucket. I them remove the sack placing it inside of the stacked buckets to let this drain. I use a plate or bowl to press down on the grain to help remove any remaining wort.

msa8967 said:

I do something different. I have two buckets where I drilled 30 small holes into the bottom of one of the buckets and then this get placed inside the other bucket. I them remove the sack placing it inside of the stacked buckets to let this drain. I use a plate or bowl to press down on the grain to help remove any remaining wort.

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I plan to do this on my next batch. I've tried combinations of holding it over another pot and I've got a smaller strainer basket, but it's not big enough to hold the grain bag completely so I've always ended up with a mess.

My other variance I've started doing is draining about half my wort into my old 6 gallon pot so that I can move my boil pot off the stove to lift the bag out. Before I tried lifting the bag out and I don't have enough clearance to the range hood and I always made a hell of a mess and scorched my stovetop. Not good.

I guess it's not true BIAB anymore, but it works for me. Just one more pot to clean.

SpacemanSpiff said:

I guess it's not true BIAB anymore, but it works for me. Just one more pot to clean.

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if the grains were in a bag while mashing then it's BIAB. As long as it works for you that's all that matters.

I have also used oven grates (bought at local thrift shops for $1-2) and placed these over my boil kettle. The grain bag still goes into the bucket with holes but then this will allow the draining to go right into the boil kettle.

I always feel so dang cool when I can buy something at a thrift store that I repurpose for my brewing.

:d

I have a question about step 6. If I somehow miscalculated my water volume, and have less than I think I need for the boil - do I top up right after the mash? Would the idea be to add enough water, stir, then take a gravity reading?

Yep, you can top off right before the boil to hit the correct pre-boil volume. I think some people do this when they try to stick with the 1.25 qt/lb ratio for their mash.

Take a pre-boil gravity reading. If on target, then adding water will dilute & you'd need to increase the boil time to increase the gravity, but be careful if doing that as you'd need to adjust your hop additions accordingly. Just be aware of the effect of the extra water & take that into account for the boil....

LateraLex said:

I have a question about step 6. If I somehow miscalculated my water volume, and have less than I think I need for the boil - do I top up right after the mash? Would the idea be to add enough water, stir, then take a gravity reading?

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I would sparge more rather than adding water to the kettle...ok for BIAB maybe dunk more....add the wter through the grain for the most BFTB,,,bang for the buck

Nice setup

The bucket with holes is one of the better ideas I've seen on draining the bag. I'm thinking a couple bars across the top of my keggle with the bucket on top and the grainbag inside. That way you squeeze without the burning hands and dribbling wort. Also, seems you could sparge a gallon or two of water through the bag of grain and squeeze again rather than doing a dunk sparge like I often do. Thanks msa8967.

I brewed this week and decided to place a cooking grate over one bucket and then placed the wet grain bag inside the bucket with holes drilled through the bottom. This way I could mark off how much drained into the bucket. Later during the session I ran a gallon of sparge water through these grains and collected the very weak wort. Boilled this down and had a starter wort of 1.035 to use for my next brew session.

I found some 2 gallon, 4 gallon and 6 gallon food grade buckets with screw on lids with rubber gaskets a couple months ago that were used for glucose, agar, etc. from a scientific supply. I have mostly used them for storing grain. But I just discovered that the 4 gallon buckets have a wide rim that fits perfectly in the top of the keggle with the rim of the bucket sitting on the rim of the keggle. I just drilled 30 1/4" holes in the bottom. That fits in a 6 gallon bucket that will hold the drilled bucket with the spent grain when it is done or can be used to drain and to sparge into and then that dumped back into the keg for boiling. This is all working out better than I had hoped. It will all get tested tomorrow with my Belgian Dark Strong Ale some of which will go into my first sour, an Oud Bruin. In fact, the two gallon bucket is a fermenter for that.

Thanks to all for your input and the sharing of ideas. HBT is like a big idea incubator.

Brew day! Here is how I drain/sparge. Making a galaxy ipa

Wow, how many pounds was that grain bill??

TBaGZ said:

Wow, how many pounds was that grain bill??

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That was only 12.5 pounds. I've done up to 18 pounds, but not without considerably more PITA.

JimTheHick said:

Brew day! Here is how I drain/sparge. Making a galaxy ipa

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I have a Galaxy IPA fermenting right now. Mind sharing your recipe?

Here's mine for a half batch:

5.5lb Pale Ale Malt
14oz Crystal 20L
8oz Carapils

.75oz Warrior @ FWH
2oz Galaxy @ Flameout
2oz Galaxy @ DH

US-05

mrgstiffler said:

I have a Galaxy IPA fermenting right now. Mind sharing your recipe?

Here's mine for a half batch:

5.5lb Pale Ale Malt
14oz Crystal 20L
8oz Carapils

.75oz Warrior @ FWH
2oz Galaxy @ Flameout
2oz Galaxy @ DH

US-05

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Mine was a bit of a grain. Clean out. 5.5 gal

8 lb Pilsner
1 lb Munich
1 lb white wheat
1 lb sucrose
8 oz carapils
8 oz c-20

1.2 oz warrior 60'
1.5 oz glacier 30'
0.5 oz galaxy at 20', 15', 10', 1'

05/1450 mix

CheerS!

Edit: I should have also said that 2 oz was all the galaxy I had. I ordered more from farmhouse and will be dry hopping with 2 oz and probably an ounce of Columbus.

So, I'm wanting to move to AG BIAB but I only have a 5 gallon brew kettle. Most recipes I'm seeing require about 10 lbs of grain. If I am mashing at 1.5 quarts per pound, can't I just use 15 quarts of water (fitting into my kettle nicely with a gallon to spare), heat up the temp to mash-off, squeeze the bag and then boil away a very concentrated wort? I can always add water to the primary fermenter to even out the specific gravity, right?

I feel like I'm missing something here but am wondering why I need to buy another big kettle when I just bought this one.

yes you can do that.. however you'll really want to move up to a larger kettle and start doing full boils. or you could always scale down the recipe for a 3 gallon or even 2.5 gallon batch.

Mysticmead said:

yes you can do that.. however you'll really want to move up to a larger kettle and start doing full boils. or you could always scale down the recipe for a 3 gallon or even 2.5 gallon batch.

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Great thanks Mystic!

I may move up in kettle size at some point but I also wanted to improve my skills a bit first.

Is there an advantage flavor-wise to doing a full boil? Are hops or other particles attaching to something in the wort, and will they not be as flavorful if I just add water at the end?

Also, since I'm going to try to do this with weird restrictions, it seems to me I need some weird math to get around it.

The only way I can hit my target gravity with this seems to be to take a pre-boil specific gravity reading.

Is there a handy formula for figuring out how much I need to boil off, knowing that I will add back about 1.5-2 gallons at the end?

What is the best kettle size for BIAB?

I think it is good to have something that will hold at least 10 gallons. You end up with a couple gallons of grain for a moderate strength brew and you need a gallon or so for boil off and up to a gallon loss for transfer and trub. So if you want to end up with 5 gallons you are up to over 7 gallons for boil. Adding 2 gallons for grain and you have 9 gallons in your pot during the mash. If you want to cut that down you can do a gallon or two or batch sparge and save that room. I had trouble getting by with my 8 gallon pot and am loving my 15 gallon keggle.

Rough numbers but I hope that helps.

brewdat said:

What is the best kettle size for BIAB?

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What I've found in my searching is that most people recommend 2x your batch size. I have only done one BIAB (no-sparge), and a 44 qt Bayou Classic with a steamer basket worked well for my 5.5 gallon batch. I actually ended up with extra wort, but that was due to having to cut my boil short.

You could probably get away with a 15 gal kettle or a keggle for 10 gal batches, especially if dunk sparge (look up "Maxi-BIAB"). May even work for lower gravity 10 gal no-sparge batches. Once you get into bigger beers, 2x batch volume seems to be the STARTING point.

Go 20 gal!

Got my 20 gal the other day. Can't wait.

My calculations say that for a 10 gal batch of 1.075 OG gives me an approximate mash volume of 19.81 gallons.

jholen said:

My calculations say that for a 10 gal batch of 1.075 OG gives me an approximate mash volume of 19.81 gallons.

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Wow! That's going to be pushing it during your mash unless you use a batch sparge of a couple of gallons. Not nice to be 1/4" from the top of your pot when you are trying to move around 20some lbs of hot grain. You should be good if you incorporate that. I have done a couple of 1.06 batches in my keggle without too much problem. I did incorporate a 2 gallon batch sparge.

Heflover said:

Great thanks Mystic!

I may move up in kettle size at some point but I also wanted to improve my skills a bit first.

Is there an advantage flavor-wise to doing a full boil? Are hops or other particles attaching to something in the wort, and will they not be as flavorful if I just add water at the end?

Also, since I'm going to try to do this with weird restrictions, it seems to me I need some weird math to get around it.

The only way I can hit my target gravity with this seems to be to take a pre-boil specific gravity reading.

Is there a handy formula for figuring out how much I need to boil off, knowing that I will add back about 1.5-2 gallons at the end?

Click to expand...

you will get better utilization from you hops if doing a full boil. this holds true for extract, partial mash and AG.. not sure if there's any formula out there for how you're doing it.

Brewitt said:

Wow! That's going to be pushing it during your mash unless you use a batch sparge of a couple of gallons. Not nice to be 1/4" from the top of your pot when you are trying to move around 20some lbs of hot grain. You should be good if you incorporate that. I have done a couple of 1.06 batches in my keggle without too much problem. I did incorporate a 2 gallon batch sparge.

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My old kettle is a 10 gal, so some batches pushed the limits of it so I'm used to it.

Don't think I'll do too many 10 gal batches, so figured even maxing out at 1.075 @ 19.8 gals would be 'OK'

I oalned my brewing buddy my BIAB sack and he returned it w/o cleaning it I have run the sack through the washer twice with hot water and mild detergent trying to remove the mildew spots but the back just seems to be stained. I have thought about boilling it to make sure I kill any of the mildew but even then I am not sure it is Ok to use again. Anyone have an opinion on what to do?

I wash mine with bleach after every use. Seems to work pretty well.

mrgstiffler said:

I wash mine with bleach after every use. Seems to work pretty well.

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Do you hot or cold water with the bleach? I probably should have used bleach with the initial washings and now I wonder if the mildew stain is there for good.

msa8967 said:

Do you hot or cold water with the bleach? I probably should have used bleach with the initial washings and now I wonder if the mildew stain is there for good.

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I use the warm wash/warm rinse setting on my washer.

Wonder what a good PBW soak would do.

Do you think soaking in oxyclean might help? I don't have any PBW.

msa8967 said:

Do you think soaking in oxyclean might help? I don't have any PBW.

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Absolutely. I use the fragrance free Oxiclean instead of PBW for everything. 1 scoop in 2 gallons HOT water should do it. Directions say 1 scoop per gallon, but I've found that it doesn't dissolve enough and just foams more.

I'd say it's worth a shot. Not to say Oxiclean isn't good, but after listening to an episode of BrewStrong with Jamil and John P. talking to Bob from Five Star, Bob explained that PBW has ingredients that aren't found in Oxiclean. I'd say if Oxiclean isn't cutting it, get a small sample of PBW and see if it does the trick. After using it my first time, I got a 8lbs container of it.

Thanks...I will be sure to bu some PBW with my next mailorder of supplies. No LHBS near me that carries it.

I have another question....Can one have too fine of a crush when doing BIAB? I did a few 4 gallon batches and just let my drill run at a much faster speed thinking the back would keep out even the smallest pieces of husks. No husk pieces showed up in my wort but now I wonder if I increased the risk of tannin extraction.

I was doing some research on that - and it sounds like too fine a crush, as in flour type crush, it can lead to less-than-desirable beer. I think however that one would have to have their gap setting on their mill set so small that it would be hard to achieve a crush too fine for BIAB. My rebel mill has a gap setting of .027 (factory default) and it works great.

Btw, I can mail you some PBW if you want to sample it first before buying some. If interested, just send me a PM and we'll figure something out.

msa8967 said:

I oalned my brewing buddy my BIAB sack and he returned it w/o cleaning it I have run the sack through the washer twice with hot water and mild detergent trying to remove the mildew spots but the back just seems to be stained. I have thought about boilling it to make sure I kill any of the mildew but even then I am not sure it is Ok to use again. Anyone have an opinion on what to do?

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I forgot to clean my bag once and I realized it when I went to brew next, I just rinsed it real good and used it, I had no off flavors or anything, I was also concerned about the stain but nothing came of it.

msa8967 said:

Thanks...I will be sure to bu some PBW with my next mailorder of supplies. No LHBS near me that carries it.

I have another question....Can one have too fine of a crush when doing BIAB? I did a few 4 gallon batches and just let my drill run at a much faster speed thinking the back would keep out even the smallest pieces of husks. No husk pieces showed up in my wort but now I wonder if I increased the risk of tannin extraction.

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IMHO.... Oxy works great. sure PBW has some extra chemicals added but are they REALLY needed? PBW is expensive compared to Oxy and I'd go broke with as much brewing I've been doing lately.

For your second question. Tannin extraction really becomes an issue when PH gets out of whack. it takes a combo of PH, heat and pressure. Which is why tannin extraction doesn't occur in a decoction mash and doesn't occur when you squeeze the bag (you do squeeze right?)