Cotton or nylon bag. Is there a difference? Cotton is natural & nylon is synthetic. The goal is for the best possible brew. Would one produce a better brew in anyway than the other.
Yes, for steeping the grains. We are doing our first mini-mash and I wanted to order from 7 bridges and noticed the cotton bag was $11 compared to $4-5 for nylon from Austin Home Brew.
If you let anything lay on the bottom of your boiler it could melt or scortch. If you support it with a rod going across the boiler top rim you will have no problems. I like nylon as it is very easy to clean.
I broke down and bought the $11 Seven Bridges bag. :cross:
The idea of applying heat to very thin nylon fibers for many hours evokes too many images of leaching chemicals. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I'd rather spend the $11 on a reusable fair-trade organic cotton bag.
When I got the bag, the label talked about how cotton retains a huge amount of pesticides (which makes sense if you think about it). So the idea of disposable muslin sounds to me like getting a fresh batch of chemicals for every brew.