Cooler Box VS Pot & Grain bag

John Palmer recommends a cooler box with a manifold for mashing and sparging but Ive seen a different method using two pots and a grain bag - which is the preferred method or are they used in different circumstances ?

Check around here (or use the search) for brew in a bag or stove top all grain. I think there is even a tutorial on it with pictures from Deathbrewer.

My quick, relatively uninformed impression is that the brew in a bag method is great for doing an all grain batch when you either want to continue to use your stovetop and/or don't want to get all the equipment necessary for full boil all grain brewing (propane burner, huge brewpot, chiller, mashtun).

Using a cooler is a set and forget operation. It will hold your mash temp without any intervention. In a pot/brew in a bag deal, you will have to apply some heat a couple times during the mash. The other issue is that you have to hoist that big bag of wet grain out of the pot. In the cooler, you just open the drain.

You CAN make beer using brew in a bag, but you'll enjoy the process more in the cooler.

Bobby_M said:

You CAN make beer using brew in a bag, but you'll enjoy the process more in the cooler.

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I disagree- I've been doing 12 gallon batches as Brew in a Bag (BIAB) for a few months now. I used the cooler method for about 9 months and it's ok but it's nicer for me with BIAB. It's nice to clean only one vessel and if your temp starts dropping you can bring it back up. It's also easy to do a mashout with BIAB.

So picking up a bag filled with 30+ pounds of grain (wet) while it drips all over the place is no inconvenience at all? What kind of efficiency do you normally get without sparging? Do you find that you need to mash longer due to the dilute enzymes of such a thin mash?

I guess if those factors aren't a big deal, either way is fine. BIAB does require a larger kettle than you would if you mashed/lautered in a separate vessel given you have your entire volume plus grain in there.

Meh.

Just hold the bag for a min or two, then put in a clean bucket. After you get the boil going, you can dump any extra drainage into the pot. Grain is easy to dispose of, as it's mostly dry and all wrapped up in your bag. Last time I did BIAB, I wrapped an old blanket around my pot, and it only lost 1° in 60 mins. Ambient temp was mid-70's. (winter might be worse)

And no cooler to try and store. Although, I would guess the mash tun makes a good storage box till next brewday. And a cooler is certainly easier to do high-gravity beers.

In general nit picky fashion, I'd say that cleaning the grain bag and cleaning the bucket isn't really less work than hosing out a cooler.

Doesn't the BIAB method give you bad efficiency? I thought it did...

Cooler's are the way to go IMO. I get 80% eff regularly using Bobby_M's NMODBS method.

+1 for the cooler.

My Coleman cooler has a tap that I can unscrew and replace with my manifold and spigot. One day it holds cold sodas for kids' softball team, the next it has 18 pounds of grain at 152° F.

Well, I think this is really akin to AL vs SS pot or Starsan vs Iodaphor questions.

BIAB vs Batch sparge are both reasonable answers to the same problem: How to make beer as easy as possible. Both have adv and disadv.

Both will make delicious beer! Huzzah!

bdnoona said:

Doesn't the BIAB method give you bad efficiency? I thought it did...

Cooler's are the way to go IMO. I get 80% eff regularly using Bobby_M's NMODBS method.

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No, it doesn't.

I BiaB in a cooler, though.

+1 for BiaB. The efficiency concern is a little overblown--it's not tough to get 80% efficiencies with BiaB (for one thing, you can crush the grain finer with no worries about stuck sparges). You avoid doing a couple extra water transfers, and it generally works out to be faster and easier for me.

I wouldn't want to do it for 10 gallon batches without a pulley, though, and probably not at all for bigger batches. And step mashes wind up being more slope mashes. But for most brews, I find BiaB preferable to 3-vessel.

Doesn't the BIAB method give you bad efficiency? I thought it did...

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No, I've never had an efficiency problem bagging it. For me 6-7 pounds is the cut-off. More than that and I'll use the cooler tun.

And sometimes, the bag IS in the tun.

I routinely get 80% using a bag in a cooler and batch sparging.

I'd argue that using a bag as your lautering medium in a cooler is not what most people call "BIAB". A "true" brew in a bag is a no sparge process where you lift the grain out leaving your entire preboil volume wort in the pot.

Bobby_M said:

I'd argue that using a bag as your lautering medium in a cooler is not what most people call "BIAB". A "true" brew in a bag is a no sparge process where you lift the grain out leaving your entire preboil volume wort in the pot.

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I don't know that BiaB is mature enough it fit it in a little box just yet.

Besides, why not have the best of both worlds? A bag is a better lautering medium than either a manifold or a stainless braid (more surface area, no stuck sparges), cost about the same, is easy to implement, and doesn't have dead space like a false bottom. What's not to like?

Having to haul the wet bag out is what's not attractive to me. There's certainly a grain bill limitation there. I've done barleywine's with 28 pounds (dry) grist. That's not going in a bag. I've never had a stuck sparge using a braid.

Agreed with Bobby. Just doing a 10 lb batch I forgot how heavy the grain really could be until I lifted the cooler. I've only done BIAB twice now, but both times it's been a pain maintaining a constant temperature instead of tossing it in the tun and forgetting about it for an hour. Plus, if your grind is too fine you will end up with a lot of grain residue, since there's not really an option to vorlauf without taking away the simplicity.

brokenanchor said:

Agreed with Bobby. Just doing a 10 lb batch I forgot how heavy the grain really could be until I lifted the cooler. I've only done BIAB twice now, but both times it's been a pain maintaining a constant temperature instead of tossing it in the tun and forgetting about it for an hour. Plus, if your grind is too fine you will end up with a lot of grain residue, since there's not really an option to vorlauf without taking away the simplicity.

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I can see the lifting concern--it's not a big deal for me, but for some people it could be.

The temperature thing is a non-issue; I've never had more than a 1-degree drop in 60 minutes, which is about the same as a tun. You just toss the blanket over things and forget about it for an hour.

I've only very recently started doing all-grain batches, and I've had no problems with the BIAB method. I've had zero problems with efficiency, I usually have a higher efficiency then 75%, only once did I get below that.

I think the only problem with the BIAB is the amount of grain you can use. Most grain bags can only handle 10 lbs, but as long has you're not brewing 10 gallons at a time, or a big russian stout it's not a problem.

I suppose if you wanted to brew something like that with the brew bag method you could split the grain load into two bags, brew them both at the same time, and then mix them, but that seems like more trouble then it's worth.

Bobby_M said:

I'd argue that using a bag as your lautering medium in a cooler is not what most people call "BIAB". A "true" brew in a bag is a no sparge process where you lift the grain out leaving your entire preboil volume wort in the pot.

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I agree. I am just using a bag instead of a braid or a false bottom. It works fine for 12 lbs. of grain, but if I did a really big beer, I might have to break out my false bottom.

BIAB as commonly described is something different. A bag is cheaper than a false bottom/braid and easier to clean, IMO.