Biab

Hi all,
At the weekend I'm doing a partial with steeped grains but the next batch I want to do all grain. I'm limited as to all I have is a 4 gal pot and a 2 gal pot.

Could I do maybe a 3-4 gal BIAB?

It seems to be cheaper and looks quite easy. I'm relatively new to brewing.

If so any good recipes anyone could throw at me would be good. I live in the UK so a British or European style ale or IPA would be easier to get grains.

Cheers

Depending on the grain bill, you can probably pull off 4.0 gallon BIAB batches in a 4 gallon pot. Remember that the grains will displace quite a bit of water. 10.0 lbs of grain at 1.25 qts/lb of water is 3.96 gallons. You probably want to be closer to 3.5 gallons and watch your boil like a hawk, which would limit you to abot 9.0 lbs of total grain at 1.25 qts of water/lb.

Average (1.04-1.05 OG) gravity 4.0 gallon batches of ale will require about 8.0 lbs of grain, so you are going to be limited to beers under about 1.055 OG.

Find a 5.0 gallon recipe you like with about 10.0 lbs of total grain that's under 1.055 OG, then scale it down to 4.0 by multiplying all of the grain and hops by 0.8.

You'll then use your second pot as a dunk sparge after the mashing step, and may also need to top off with just a bit of extra water to get to about 4.25 gallons in your fermenter to yeild 4.0 gallons.

I'm a BIAB brewer...Let me know if you need any help with the process!

You might consider doing a partial mash. It sounds like you're doing extract with steeping grains, which is not the same thing.

I often do 4 gallon partial mash batches by BIABing and adding only a couple of pounds of extract at the end. Most of my fermentables are coming from the grains. I've had great success with this method, and with your pot constrains, it would save you some trouble.

Thanks for the replies. I wanna start doing 3 to 4 gallon batches so that I can do them more often. Which means more experience.

Could I put 3 gallons of water in my pot with about 9 lbs of grain and once that has converted, remove the bag and drain and then dunk into my other pot at a temp of 170f, sort of spare and then add the water to the bigger pot and then boil?

You have the basic idea down!

Cheers. Just got to find a recipe I want