Burglar's big electric brew in a bag build (bbebiabb)

First, thank you Kal and ScubaSteve. Huge inspirations, and we would not have tackled this without either of your amazing documentation.

Concept stolen from here.
Electric stolen from here.

We're extract brewers with about two years under our belts, and have been having so much darn fun that we're going all electric, indoor, BIAB all grain. This project is going to be done in three phases:

Phase 1: E-kettle. The biggest part, where we build possibly the most overdone extract brewing kettle system of all time.

Phase 2: BIAB capability upgrade. Where we attempt our first all-grain batch of homebrew.

Phase 3: Full system. We're going to add a pump, and a fancy pants HERMS / Sparge on demand setup I'm still figuring out...

Pot:

After closely following ScubaSteve's system, and talking to our amazing LHBS about our plan, we decided that a 15 gallon keggle setup might not be big enough. We brew big, so they recommended stepping to 20 gallons.

The Bayou Classic 80qt pot has a diameter of 18.75" - and the 102qt pot has an 18.25" diameter. So, we went with the 102qt, as we had a better shot of getting a 5 gallon batch in there if desired and still making minimum depth required for the element.

So we got the Bayou Classic 1102 stainless pot w/ steamer basket. Holy crap, this thing is huge. Yee haw, let's drill holes in it!



And add a nice Bobby M sightglass too for good measure (pun intended.)



Squiggly element is out of stock everywhere, so we went with the Camco 02933 Lime Life LWD element, installed exactly as Kal has listed on his site:

Panel:

In progress...

I'm mostly following Kal with a few tweaks as to what we have available. My buddy picked up a project box at a lab liquidation that was full with a PLC and a bunch of other stuff he gave me for free, as long as I give him beer. It's a hair smaller than Kal's, but I can't argue with the price. Switches weren't much more. My layout for Phase 1:



Switches in:



And as it sits now:



Much more to do, I'll update this post as we progress on it.

Brew area:

We have very little space, hence the BIAB setup. There initially was some closet maid in there, which held stuff we never accessed, so we ripped that out, spackled and painted, put down some vinyl tile, a probably inadequate stove hood, and a nice $25 stand.




220V 30A GFCI Spa panel:

Looking good so far!

Are you going to have a float switch to cut the power if you are low on water. It will save you from replacing the element when you forget to shut it off.

Boar Beer said:

Are you going to have a float switch to cut the power if you are low on water. It will save you from replacing the element when you forget to shut it off.

Click to expand...

Not until we burn the first one out.

According to the packaging, the element can survive a dry fire. Not sure for how long though.

good luck

lots of stuff with no wires attached...

Boar Beer said:

good luck

Click to expand...

I feel I should address this better -

Since ScubaSteve's design has only one pot, the fluid level should never be lower than the element. Another reason why it's so slick.

The element will not be turned on until the pot is full and I'm ready to heat to strike. The wort doesn't get drained until after chilling. If we manage to leave the element on accidentally, we'll never make it down to pitching temp, and we'll figure it out pretty quick.

I guess we could run into trouble if we bump out heads and boil for too long, but the element should be fully submerged down to ~3.5 gallons, so it'd have to be a pretty severe bump.

Nice rig! I am considering something like that myself. I am subscribing. Keep posting updates!

Very cool.

Can't wait to see how your first brew turns out.

At some point I think I am going electric. Right now I do partial boils on my electric stove. It works really well right now but I am starting to get into all-grain and I want to do full boils so I will need a gas burner for outside or start building an electric set up now.

Sweet!!!

Subscribed!

Why we are doing BIAB - tiny brew area.

Subscribed.

I dig any BIAB bling and innovations. Below is my BIAB Recirculating System. Temp control comming soon. Where did you get that huge brew pot?

Very nice! I'm building a smaller version of this setup using the Bayou 44 quart with the spigot. At least you've found a dedicated spot to brew, I'm sharing my laundry room with a washer, dryer, vacuum and BIAB rig.

OT: That's a sweet rig McTarnamins!

Looking great so far! Love the control panel! GO BIAB!!!

My 3 vessel system has been very neglected lately, and now I'm just expanding and tweaking the BIAB system more and more. McTarnamins I believe I have the same pot as you. Do you have a link to your build, or additional pics? I'd like to see how you integrated the inner strainer and how you hook it and pull it out when you're done. Also I'm kind of confused about the hose clamps on your sparge arm. Hey I see you're in STL, do you ever go to the O'Fallon meets?

The hose clamps on my sparge arm is to keep the poly tubes in place. I do live near Ofallon Brewery but I haven't been to a meeting. I sent you a PM so I don't hijack this great post.

Here is a link to my build.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/brew-bag-rims-system-234646/

Woah, sweet setup. The pot is a Bayou Classic, Amazon had the lowest price when you factored in shipping.

Just a question - since you have that recirc pump, you eliminate the need for a rims tube on the uninsulated pot?

I don't need a RIMS tube because it's direct fire. This will keep my mash temp at the right set point. The recirculating does three things, it keeps my enzymes in solution, it keeps the temperature profile consistent so the thermocouple reads a accurately, and it helps clearify the wort by using the grain bed as a continuous filter. This last point is one of the bigger downfalls of BIAB, I always had tons of trub from all the grain particles because there was no lautering step.

I still have work to do on the propane solenoid valve and temperature controller, but it should be complete within a month. My control pannel will look a lot like yours. Nice work.

I look forward to seeing how your first brew day goes.

Most exciting time we've had watching water boil today. Huge success!

The hood seemed to keep up well. One small drip from the temp probe threads, and the probe read 202° at boil. Otherwise, flawless. 5 gallons leaves maybe an inch above the element, not as much as I hoped, but should still work.

I have to figure out how to program the two Auber boxes, and wire the alarms and pilot lights, and Phase 1 should be complete. The most extravagant extract e-kettle EVARRRRR!!!!!!! Muhahahaha.

We brewed over the weekend - just a five gallon extract batch to work out the unexpected.

We should have pulled the Dylan (gone electric) a long time ago. It's so simple. You can set the buzzer to beep at you whenever you need to do the next step. "I've hit the temp you want and am holding, BEEP." "I'm close to boiling and am waiting for you to come watch. BEEP." And "I've boiled for 90 minutes, come turn me off. BEEP." Sure beats checking the thermometer and timer constantly.

The minimum where the entire element is submerged comfortably is at the three gallon mark. The five gallon batch was no problem.

The big pot pays off. In the turkey fryer hot break usually meant a boilover, and ejection of hops. The height is nice, but I think it's more the surface area, at 100% throttle the foam didn't go above halfway. Lovely.

Our range hood exhaust could not keep up. We had condensation dripping off the pipes. The smell of brewing beer being blown out on the deck outside was really cool though. We did run the entire boil at 100% throttle though, which threw 3 gallons of water into the air in 90 minutes, so I guess we did ask a lot.

We used our immersion chiller. The element is in the way. It works, but takes longer since we can't submerge the whole thing. Anyone have ideas? Again, setting the buzzer to beep when it hits pitch temp is glorious.

Cleanup was a snap. Nothing burns to the bottom of the pot. Rinse and wipe, maybe 20 seconds.

Next up - our very first all-grain batch.

Very nice, congrats! When you stop running your bk as a faux sauna I'd be interested in your boil off rate when it's not firing 100%!

Again, good job.

Looks good! That's a lot of electronics for 1 heating element and a pump

IrregularPulse said:

Looks good! That's a lot of electronics for 1 heating element and a pump

Click to expand...

I know, right? We designed it to have the capability to run a traditional three vessel system if we decide to upgrade in the future, or run the hybrid system we plan on updating to if we decide we prefer all-grain to extract.

The volt and amp meters are functional, but mostly bling (Thanks Kal. See what you did?) The timer isn't being used to automatically turn anything on or off, just beep, so that's not really necessary either.

As far as the boil rate, we've always read to boil hard, so we'll probably not dial it back too much. We may try and put the lid partially on to try and cut down on the steam a bit.

*subscribed*

We did our first all-grain batch. Oh boy. Many notes. When I upload some pretty pictures I'll do a writeup.

Wow, this is elegant. Smart design!

Step one was to make the bag. I went to JoAnn fabrics and bought what I thought was suitable material. I think it was called polyester voile or something. It wasn't stretchy and was 100% synthetic, so it won't absorb, which were my goals. I learned how to use a sewing machine, because apparently my wife had a bad experience making a teddy bear pillow as a child and refuses to sew since then. Anyways, I made two nice open top double stitched cylinders. Machine washable, for quick cleanup. I then did a shot of whiskey and started a bar brawl to regain some man cred.

We bought four stainless bolts to raise the basket up so it's not resting on the element. I adjusted so that it sits maybe 5mm above, which leaves us with a little more than 3 gallons of dead space. Seems like a lot.

We followed the great BIAB directions in this thread. We did a 10 gallon batch of wheat. I'm sure you've all seen mash pictures before, ours looked like that except it was really thin, because we mashed 19.5lb of grain with over 12 gallons of water.

We stirred quite often. We have no pump yet, so it was to even out the heat though the pot. Even so, we still had a pretty big difference in temp between the RTD probe under the basket and the cooking thermometer we put in the actual grain. Not sure if we were supposed to stir or not, but it helped with the temp.

After mash out it took me and another dude to lift the basket out of the pot. All the water drains very slow through the grain bed / bag, so you're basically lifting 10 gallons of water plus the 20lb of gain. Not light. A winch or pulley system is in our future, as I don't think my wife and I could have done it ourselves.



We let it drain for about 20 minutes, then gently squeezed with a saucepan lid, which got a lot more wort out of there. We didn't sparge at all.



According to the measurements we took, we calculated 80% efficiency. Our LHBS doesn't believe it, and either do we. No seriously, we all think we measured it wrong. We'll drink a little less during the next brew day and measure more carefully.

And disaster - I had just extended the hoses on our immersion chiller to reach our faucet (you can see the washtub in the bottom left of the picture) and apparently forgot to tighten one of the clamps all the way. During the chill portion, I managed to let 5 gallons of water be added to the pot. Ooops. We reboiled for 10 minutes, fit what we could into two fermenters, and pitched anyways.

Well, a few lessons learned, a big beer fueled mistake, but overall a super cool system that was very easy to brew with. Now we just hope the beer tastes good.

2.46 qts/lb seems really thin. Was that intentional?

lordbeermestrength said:

2.46 qts/lb seems really thin. Was that intentional?

Click to expand...

If you're doing a "No Sparge" beer you essentially mash with your full volume of liquid needed for the beer, hence the thin mash.

lordbeermestrength said:

2.46 qts/lb seems really thin. Was that intentional?

Click to expand...

At this point we are still "following the examples the teacher puts up on the blackboard." We're mindless brewing sheep. But learning.

A thin mash won't cause you any issues, heck take a look at the brutus 20 or the Speidel Braumeister.

Burglar,

Sounds like a picture perfect BIAB efforts (except the chilling screw-up. Your not the first to do that!). FWIW 80% is not unheard of with BIAB, but that mostly depends on the crush. Since you don't have the problem of a stuck sparge with BIAB, you can crush really fine and bump the efficiency. Some have reported 85% and higher!! I routinely get in the low 70's.

Can't wait to hear how your other BIABs turn out. I do that exclusively now (after several years of a typical three vessel cooler mash tun set up) and am in the process of converting to electric now. I have just now started collecting parts and my electrician is scheduled for Tuesday to talk 30amp GFCI with me!

Cheers,
Jeff

Yea crush the hell out of the grain and you can easily get 80+ efficiency with BIAB. Look into "no chill" and then you'll have a super easy and quick brew day.

studmonk3y said:

Yea crush the hell out of the grain and you can easily get 80+ efficiency with BIAB. Look into "no chill" and then you'll have a super easy and quick brew day.

Click to expand...

So in the future I should ask my LHBS for a fine crush?

BTW, they recommended we add some microwaved LME right to the fermenters to boost the gravity back up to the right level to save the beer.

You might ask them to double-crush your grain, but since you're brewing All-Grain now I'd recommend purchasing a mill. I use a Corona Mill and get 83% almost every time.

Adding LME/DME will certainly help things, I'd dissolve it in as little boiling water as possible and drop it in to the fermenter.

2nd batch went off smoother (IPA w/ belgian yeast and candy sugar).

Two process changes:
1. After mashout, we sparged with ~2 gal of hot tap water (~140°F)
2. Wife (who is smarter than me) folded the bag over itself before squeezing the grains, which worked way better.

We measured slightly over 80% efficiency, this time letting the wort in the hydrometer cool instead of relying on a conversion calc. This time I feel way more confident in that number, and am ecstatic.

The biggest issue with this system is heating the mash evenly. The basket acts as a pretty good heat shield. Even with vigorous stirring and a bit of basket shimmying it's tough to change the temp of the mash, so single step is really our only choice right now. Perhaps that recirc upgrade is in our future.

It was only the two of us this time, so I had to lift the basket myself. If anyone plans on doing this type of system, and doing 10 gallon batches, I'm going to say some sort of pulley system is a necessity. The bag I made drains very slow, so you're basically lifting the full volume of water along with the grain. I'd say ~100lbs, depending on what you're doing. When I figure out our lifting setup, I'll post it.

As a side note, this time I remembered to tighten the wort chiller clamps and we ended up with the correct volume. I guess this technically is then our first true all grain batch.

Burglar... thanks for the updates... you have built pretty much exactly what I am in the planning stages of building.

As for lifting, I am planning on using a boat winch like the one below. Whether or not I make it into a block and tackle sort of rig is yet unknown, but it will be a good start.

Congrats on a couple of successful brew days!