BIAB and heat sticks???

Does anyone brew this way? I'm wanting to do a K.I.S.S. , single kettle, all grain set up and this seems to be the way to do it but I'm not sure how to keep the sticks from coming in contact with the grain/bag or if it matters. Also, how would you hold temp during the mash without a PID or is that a pipe dream?

Any suggestions?

Clint

I do 2.5 gallon BIAB stovetop, but I rarely have the stove on during the mash. If you have a stainless steel pot and/or a blanket you can probably just wrap your brewpot in a blanket (with the lid on of course) and hold temp for at least an hour without the heat stick.

I will say that I love the simplicity of BIAB, especially since I have literally zero outdoor space available to me for brewing.

brew in a bag is awesome for smaller (5g or less) brews. One container, no sparging.. Makes life alot simpler

You can probably hold temp within 2-4°F if you turn the heat stick on once in a while during mashing. Just make sure you don't bump it against the bag.

Agree with the rest. I brew in a keggle with a combination of propane and a heatstick, BIAB style. Once I hit my Mash temp I have the heat off and rarely need to turn it on. Typically I pull the top off the keggle to cool it down, I rarely need to add heat.

I use a pulley I attached to the ceiling of my garage and I pull the bag out and let it drip into the keggle. After the main 'drip' is done i have a home depot bucket with half a 5 gallon water jug on top of it. The jug acts like a funnel. I rest the bag on top of the 'funnel' and let a 2nd drip occur into that bucket while I get to boil.

I keep my hops in small nylon bags and I drop them in with the heat stick and I've never seen burning on the bags. I think the vigor of the boil keeps them from resting on the heat stick.

I point this out because I've never had an issue of the heat stick burning a bag, whether in the mash or in the boil.

I actually just finished up building something along these lines. I got a 6 gallon Bayou Classic with a steamer insert and use that to keep the bag off the heating element. So far I have used it once without the element on the stove top and it help temp all right but on my last one I used the element and ran it through the love controller I used for my kegerator and it held temp much better.

The only downside I noticed was that with the element/thermo-well down low the element will turn off before the grain really reaches the strike temp. I think I may try adding a pump to this set up to recirculate and hopefully even out the temperature throughout the kettle.