BIAB advice

Recently acquired a 10 gal Boilermaker kettle and was interested in trying a BIAB batch with it inside. Assuming that I use a recipe with a modest grain bill and can achieve about a 6gal boil with my gas stovetop burner (which is of pretty high quality), does anyone have any thoughts on if this is a problem? Anything I need to be especially mindful of?

Be careful when pulling the bag out. I would often spill wort all over the stove top.

Also, squeeze the crap out of the bag to get the most wort you can. I have a steaming basket that I drop the bag into and set it aside to drain after squeezing, then pour the rest of what has drained back in the pot sometime during boiling.

Maybe test that you can achieve a good boil with your setup using only water prior to making the actual brewing attempt.

If I were doing BIAB indoors, I'd keep a large pot next to my boil kettle to put the grain bag in after the mash. You can then squeeze while the grain bag is in this pot and add the runnings to the BK. This might make the hot grain bag easier to handle as opposed to holding it over the kettle, although you might try doing both. You could also try dunk sparging to get a little better efficiency (search the forum for more info on this technique). I've not tried it before, but basically, dunk the grain bag in a small amount of sparge water (proably about 170F). Then add the sparge water is added to the BK.

I'd also verify your stove can handle the volume of liquid by boiling 6-7 gallons of water.

Seven said:

Maybe test that you can achieve a good boil with your setup using only water prior to making the actual brewing attempt.

Click to expand...

Yep, that is absolutely the plan. Also, should have mentioned, the only other kettle I have is 4 gallon, so I doubt it would be large enough to hold required sparge water. Can I just mash-out in the bigger kettle by raising the temp to 170?

The four gallon pot, or even a bottling bucket or plastic fermentation bucket would work. Even is you don't plan on dunk sparging, I'd put the grain bag in something to avoid making a sticky mess of your kitchen and to do a little extra bag squeezing. Good luck on your first BIAB and congrats on the 10 gallon boilermaker, they're sweet.

Things to worry about:

1. Make sure you can lift the amount of grains you are using once they are wet
2. Be prepared to burn your hands by squeezing a bog of 150 degree (or so) grains
3. Looks like you're already doing a test run of the boil - check