BIAB Vorlaufing

I would like to vorlauf in my BIAB kettle to clarify a bit of the wort, how can I do this without getting the bag sucked into the ball valve?

 

A diptube?

 

Since I both fly sparge in a 3-vessel, and BIAB in a single vessel, I can say with some confidence: I think you'll want to skip the vorlauf. The whole point of a vorlauf is to set the grain bed, which with BIAB you don't bother with, as you're lifting out the bag and messing up the grain bed. Yoopers and others who have a bag in their mash tun, could batch sparge or fly sparge, and would vorlauf, and may have a way to keep the bag off their outlet, but if you're boiling in the kettle you're mashing in, no need.

 

Clear wort going into the boil is uncorrelated with clear finished beer.

You're going to get massive precipitation of proteins and other sediment anyway that will all bind together in the form of hot break and cold break.

I like to skim the hot break out from the kettle as it forms, but that's partially because it gives me something to do while I wait for my wort to come to a boil.

There is a lot of debate about whether or not cold break material making it into the fermenter matters. Brulosopher did a side by side experiment and demonstrated that the batch of beer with a massive amount of break material in the fermenter ended up very slightly clearer than the one with barely any. He also didn't get any off flavors in the finished beer.

I typically pour almost the entire contents of my kettle into my fermenter with the help of a giant funnel. I stop near the bottom when it starts to get really sludgy.

 

Yeah, I agree -- I've stopped worrying about trying to get clear wort into the fermentor, since I've noticed no correlation with beer clarity. Cold crashing and careful racking to keg has given me really crystal clear beers, with no finings at all (I'm a vegetarian, so gelatin is out anyway).

 

I have used a bazooka filter in the bottom of the kettle, with great success

The bag just sits on top of the filter.
Vorlaufing is no problem at all

I did a blog post using this method (but without the bag): http://brewinginbergen.blogspot.no/2014/05/how-to-brew-all-grain-without-separate.html