Brew in a Bag bag

I am thinking about making the jump to all grain by trying BIAB.

I have a 5 gallon SS kettle and a 7.5 gallon aluminum kettle so I will probably do a sparge method.

My question is would this bag work ok? http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/brewmaster-filter-bag.html It says it is coarse but is it fine enough for the grain to not get through?

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/large-straining-bag-18-3-4-x-19.html I think this will be to small.

 

A lot of people (myself included) use 5 gallon paint strainer bags. Works perfect on my 7.5 gal turkey pot.

 

I use a coarse mesh bag and it works just fine. I'm actually using this one, since it's large enough to line my converted keg.

 

+1, I use the same and its fine

 

What's the worst that could happen if you got a bag that had too coarse of mesh? You'd get some grain particles in your wort that would end up settling out in the trub, right? What's so bad about that?

 

I have heard the general rule of thumb is that your pot should be able to fit inside your bag.

This will make sure the grain isn't being tightly contained by the bag and is allowed more surface area to be exposed to the water for mashing.

I bought a yard of curtain voile fabric from Joann's for $4 and can fit a keggle in it.

Anything you do will be a good step in the right direction.

 

I use this one, and it fits perfectly inside a 5 gallon jug style cooler: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/nylon-straining-bag-18-x-32-coarse-mesh.html

I really like the bag-inside-the-cooler method as I can't imagine all-grain getting any easier than that. The cooler holds the temperature very steady, I dont lose even a single degree over the course of an hour. Just mash at your desired temp and time and then when it comes time to sparge, just lift the bag out of the cooler, let it drain for a few minutes, and then soak the bag for 15 minutes in the sparge water - right in your kettle.


I've hit 80% efficientcy using this method, and the total cost to go all grain is about $25.

 

Have you ever tried the full volume, no sparge, using only your kettle?

Up side is one less thing to clean, no extra water to heat.

Down side is that you must have a big enough kettle and have to potentially work at maintaining your mash temp. This is as hard as wrapping with a sleeping bag and/or just turning your flame on once or twice with a good stir.

 

I will probably mash with the 5 gallon kettle and hold temps by pre heating my oven to 170F placing the kettle in the oven and then kill the heat. I will probably not disturb it for 60 minutes I hope this keeps my mash temps well enough.

I was thinking of doing a mash out to. Taking the kettle out of the oven after 1 hour (start to pre heat oven again to 170F) putting it on the stove and bring the mash up to 170F then put it back in the oven for ten minutes with no heat on.

Do you think this will help efficiency? Of course I will sparge after with my bigger aluminum kettle.

 

I use 5-gallon paint strainer bags... They are $5 for a pack of 2 at hardware stores.

I use them to strain the grains out, then I dump out the grains and use them for the hops, then I dump out the hops and rinse them thoroughly and then dry them out and re-use them on the next batch. They work great!

 

I used to use the paint strainer bags but I found my beer was cloudy. Maybe I was using the wrong kind?

Now I use the Voile fabric and my beer is crystal clear.

I grind my grain as fine as my barley crusher will get it and I dunk and drain the bag three times to sparge. With this I have had 92% efficiency but usually I get 88%

 

Ok, spill it (NOT the beer)... What is the gap on your BC??

 

I don't have a feeler gauge but I pretty much set it as small as it would go.

I don't get any off flavors at all and my wort is clear.

 

Are you a squeezer?

 

Yep I am but not every last drop just the bulk of it.

 

This was my process:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/3rd-brew-day-first-all-grain-226914/

I chose to mash with the larger 7.5G pot. You can fit more grain in that way and mash with a larger volume of H2O.

I wouldn't worry too much about temp drop during the mash.

In a 7.5 gallon pot with 10lb of grain and starting with 5 gallons of H20 I only had a couple of inches of head space in the pot with the grain in it.

That much H2O won't lose much heat covered in an hour unless its real cold outside in which case I will move it inside>