Brew in a bag recipe vs. standard all grain?

I just listened to a podcast from Brew Strong on brew in a bag. I have been slowly moving from extract brewing to all grain brewing (currently doing min-mashes) and this sounds like a natural next step with very little additional equipment required.

My question is, if I get an all grain recipe, can I just do it as brew in a bag or are there adjustments I need to make?

By the way, I'm on jury duty today and they have free wi-fi so I can read brewing stuff and listen to brewing podcasts all day!

Depends on if you sparge or not. If you do not, you'll want to use more grain to hit your OG, although I couldn't tell you exactly how much, that is going to depend a lot on your process.

I've been doing BIAB with a sparge for a while and usually hit 80%+ efficiency on normal sized beers.

Depends on your efficiency, but would still need to tweak recipes based on your efficiency if you used a "standard" AG setup. You might not get as clear a wort since you can't vorlauf, but you can just use finings or let it sit longer to clear up. Or just brew dark beers.

It's not rocket science, you just measure more stuff.

I have Coleman 48qt cooler with a copper manifold. On my best day I cannot get the efficiency that I get when I BIAB.

BrookdaleBrew - how are you doing the sparge? Just hold back some of the water and pour it over the grain bag after you have lifted it up or???

Death brewer did a great writeup on this. I am going to do my first BIAB AG this week. I like using my cooler but this might be a good way to go since winter is on its way and I have a 72 qt cooler and a smaller kitchen.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/

LarryC said:

BrookdaleBrew - how are you doing the sparge? Just hold back some of the water and pour it over the grain bag after you have lifted it up or???

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I have a cooler and 2 kettles. 1 5 gallon kettle, 1 15 gallon kettle and 1 15 gallon cooler. Smaller batches I'll mash in the 5 gallon kettle and then sparge in the 15 gallon kettle using DeathBrewer's method, which it linked just above this post. Bigger batches get mashed, drained, then sparged in the cooler with the bag acting as a false bottom.

I know a lot of people have had good success with BIAB but I haven't. I was never able to get a decent efficiency. So now I just do regular AG with my homemade MLT. I typically hit about 78% efficiency.

Some people say to just over-shoot your grain bill to hit the efficiency with BIAB, but long term it's cheaper to invest in a MLT.

I just started BIAB as I am also moving to all grain and have no problem reaching my efficiency (typically 75%). I purchased a restaurant grade collider, put the nylon bag into it then sparge into a large pot/cooler and transfer back into my brew pot.

I never tweaked/scaled an all grain recipe just to do a BIAB, never sparged, always did full volume mashes, and always hit at least 70% (80% once I started really squeezing the bags and no, there are no tannins... that is a myth).

I have been doing small batch BIAB using a paint strainer and two pots. I do the mash in my small pot and heat my sparge water in my boil pot. At the end of the mash i just take the grain bag and dunk into the sparge water, stir and drain. Then I add the wort from the small pot and boil. Beer has been good but I'm looking to build a cooler MLT once I get my turkey fryer and go to 5 gal batches.

zman said:

Death brewer did a great writeup on this. I am going to do my first BIAB AG this week. I like using my cooler but this might be a good way to go since winter is on its way and I have a 72 qt cooler and a smaller kitchen.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/

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That is a good thread.

When I do BIAB I found it's best to use the large course nylon bags to maximize the surface area of the grains to water and thus reducing the dough ball effect. A few stirs over the mash process and the grains are all separated. I have recently seen videos where people skip the sparge and dunk the grains after mashing into a sparge water pot but I have not tried this method yet. It looks like it could be easier than pouring 180 degree water over 10+ LBS of grains through a colander. That’s why these discussions are helpful, we hear what others are doing, there success and if there results would work in our own setup.
:fro:

BIAB is a great way to get into all-grain on the cheap. I found it a great way to learning most of the brewing principles without investing a lot of money. It does have limitations though, as a grain bag can only hold so many pounds of grain. I also found it hard to hold my mash temps using just a pot. I found my batches tasted better when I started using a cooler with a copper manifold.

BIAB is a great way to do all grain. Efficiency is not a problem; the key is to use a very fine crush (since you're relying on the bag to filter, not the grain itself. I ask my LHBS to double crush the grains for me and get ~80% efficiency with a full volume, no sparge BIAB. There's no "adjusting" of a recipe you need to do, besides efficiency considerations and of course a different mash/sparge schedule.

I keep a little DME on hand and toss a little in if I fall short when I biab. Of course, this would mean that it isn't technically be AG, but no can taste 6oz or so of DME.

No adjusting needed, but as others have said, you should have a little finer crush. My eff has been about 70 to 72% but I've never hit the 80 to 85% that some people say they get. I've done it with and without a sparge, and it never really made much difference for me. I've been doing BIAB for about 2 years now,(probably 40+ batches) but since I'm going to 10gal batches, I converted my BIAB pot into a mash tun, and have a keggle for the boil.

The best part of BIAB is the limited equipment, and the fact that all the equipment you buy for BIAB can be used for any other brewing techniques if you decide to change your process.

BrookdaleBrew said:

Depends on if you sparge or not. If you do not, you'll want to use more grain to hit your OG, although I couldn't tell you exactly how much, that is going to depend a lot on your process.

I've been doing BIAB with a sparge for a while and usually hit 80%+ efficiency on normal sized beers.

Click to expand...

what are you exactely talking about spargeing ?

I've since gone back & bought the nylon paint strainer bag at the lhbs. Course mesh with my crusher set at .039 works very well. Less floury stuff to strain out going into the FV. I sparge my 4=6lbs of grains with 1.5 gallons of 170F spring water for 3.5 gallons boil volume in my 5G kettle. My efficiency has been as high as 80% since. Generally 70-75% on average. Doing partial boil,partial mash is about the cheapest way to go with the equipment I have. I only had to buy the nylon bag for the grains. Being able to stir the mash & sparge properly raised efficiency.

I've found that most AG recipes are based on about a 70% efficiency, so I invariably have to scale the grain bill down for BIAB, as I tend to achieve 80% w/o sparge and 85% w/ sparge on normal gravity brews. My last brew was a 1.089 Wee Heavy that I scaled for 80% (w/ sparge) and it ended up coming in at 82%.

One of my recent brews was supposed to be like 1.060-1.065,& wound up at 1.074. I believe it's my best yet efficiency-wise. My PM's always wind up a couple points higher,but that was a good one.