BIAB with a crawfish pot?

I'm not 100% sure I'm ready to go all-grain yet, since I only have 2 extract batches under my belt, but was wondering if this set up would work.

I have a 60-quart crawfish pot with a strainer. When I used it for crawfish, I had a 4-way lug wrench (clean, never used for anything else) that fits over the pot, that I would set the strainer on to drain the crawfish.

I'm thinking I could line the strainer with a bag, and use the same set up to allow the grain to drain afterwards. The grain shouldn't be too much heavyer than 30-40 pounds of crawfish with taters, corn, mushrooms, etc.

The main issue I see is if the pot will make the beer taste like crawfish. Guess I could try boiling a couple of pots with water and Oxy-Clean to see if that would remove any signs of the crawfish.

The other issue is the way my water lines run under the patio, my outside water is probably 90-100 degrees in the summer, so I'm not sure what I could do to cool the wort quickly enough.

Anyone see why this wouldn't work?

My first pot was dual use. I used it for shrimp boils, crawfish boils, steaming oysters, etc... and making beer. Everytime I was done I scrubbed it with OxyClean and then Barkeepers Friend.

I never did the brew in a bag thing, but I would think that crawfish would way a lot more than the amount of grain you will be using.

Also, my pot is stainless steal. Aluminum you will need to be careful about the oxidation layer.

JeepDiver said:

The main issue I see is if the pot will make the beer taste like crawfish. Guess I could try boiling a couple of pots with water and Oxy-Clean to see if that would remove any signs of the crawfish.

Click to expand...

Yup, that would be my first concern too. If you thoroughly clean the pot a couple of times, you should be able to remove any trace crawfish odors.

The other concern is sourcing a large enough bag to hold ~15 lbs of grain. You can always make your own, but you'll need basic sewing machine knowledge (something I don't have!). Something like a 2' x 3' nylon mesh bag should work well.