Poor mans all grain

Ok so I'm new to brewing but have done 3 or 4 batches. I want to move to all grain but am looking for the most cost efficient way to do it (and space since I live in an apartment) ok so I have 7.5 gallon pot and a 3 gallon pot. Also have an igloo square cooler maybe 10 gallons? Not sure.So I also have heard of brew in a bag method. Let's say I buy a big paint strainer bag to put the grains in. Put that in the cooler and add however much water I need to. Let is sit then drain the water into 7.5 gallon pot then sparge with water from the 3 gallon... Would this work?

 

I do all-grain with 3 vessels, but brew in a bag (BIAB) is definitely a cheaper and more space efficient route. Your method sounds like it could work, but you really don't even need the cooler. You can mash and boil in the same pot with the strainer bag.

 

That would work! You might need to sparge (vorlauf) the wort back through to reduce sediment.

 

I wasnt sure if all the grain and water would be able to fit in the 7.5 gallon pot or not. Previous posts said that I could do like 3 gals of water with the grain the pull that out and sparge with the remaining water I needed for the boil but I was thinking this way would make more sense but I could be wrong. Being new I don't quite understand how much grain absorption happens during the mash and how much sparge water I would need

 

It depends on your recipe, but a 7.5 gallon pot should work for most low to mid gravity beers. I generally use 1.25 qts per lb of grain in my mash, which may only amount to a few gallons of water. Then you just sparge until you reach your desired boil volume.

 

Can your cooktop(or heat source) handle a full volume boil? Otherwise you will need to do a split boil or partial volume boil with top up water. Sounds like you have what you need otherwise.

 

Yeah I actually have an outdoor propane burner. I just brew behind the building like a weirdo. So if I were looking to brew a two hearted clone with say 13 lbs of grain would I have enough room? I'm not sure of 13lbs would displace 3.5 gallons or not. And if that's the case then that's a lot easier than I thought!

 

If you absolutely, positively want the most cost effective way to get into all-grain with your existing equipment, add two five gallon paint strainer bags and go BIAB.

 

Well since you will probably batch sparge you are fine. Mash in at the appropriate ratio. Add a little more water, drain into BK (start heat while draining), add rest of sparge water, drain and do your boil. You should have plenty of space.

 

BIAB is the way to go. I have a 7.5 gallon kettle and a 5.5 gallon black canning pot. I can mash 11 pounds in the canning pot, do a sparge, and a full boil for a 5 gallon 1.050 batch. If I want to do a higher gravity brew I add extract or do a 3-4 gallon batch.

 

Look up donosborn.com or lookups on Osborn on YouTube. I followed his instructions for a cheap mash tun that has worked perfectly for me.

[ame]http://youtu.be/JMHLqnWCNjE[/ame]

Cheap and easy mash tun
http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/mashtun.htm

 

I do BIAB with a 7.5 gal pot. It works fine up to ~14 lbs of grain. In the few cases where my recipe has been over 14 lbs of grain, I just use some extract to make up the difference. I mash with 4 gallons, then sparge with 2. You will lose ~1 gallon to the grains. I was sparging in another pot, but I've recently just been sparging in a fermenter bucket. It works great, but some of my bags don't reach the top of the bucket, so I have to sparge twice so the grains don't come out of the bag. If you have a pizza pan, but that on your kettle as you bring it back up to a boil after sparging, then use your kettle lid to squeeze the crap out of grains. It makes the day a lot faster than trying to drain the grains. Also, squeezing the bag does not release tannins. I usually get ~75% efficiency with my setup.

 

donosborn.com was already mentioned; also check out http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/

 

That'd make you the normal guy in my book.

The outdoor burner opens up your options to sky is the limit really. Sounds like you're looking to stay on the cheap so the first hurdle is the 7.5 gallon pot. For full boils and assuming a 5 gallon batch, that pot is on the small side. The easiest solution would be to get a 10-12 gallon pot but if that's not in the cards, you could either try to boil 6+ gallons in there and be real watchful, or make a concentrated wort with say a 1 gallon water top up. Or you could just adjust all your recipes to say...4 gallon batches.

 

fermcap.

 

7.5 gal is fine for a 5-6 gal batch BIAB. I've done it dozens of times. I do use Fermcap though. I've never had a boilover and don't pay much attention to my pot. I usually go do other things during the boil. I also shoot to top up with 1/2 gal of water, but that's just to make OG correction easier if my numbers are off, not due to space.

 

Buy a 5 gallon igloo water cooler at home depot for $22 and buy a cheap valve for it. Insert a re-usable grain bag into it wrapping it outside of the cooler. I zip-tie mine around to keep it in place--mash in the cooler, heat water for sparge in your stock pot and run sparge off into brew kettle.

 

That is exactly what I did greay efficiency and no stuck sparge

 

In response to 7.5 gallons being small for the 6 gallon boil for a 5 gallon batch: I bought a couple of these "anti over boiler" disks that go on the bottom of the kettle and I'm gonna try them out this time around. They are used for cooking so you don't have to sit and watch.

As for sparging method just so I'm clear. Mash grains in bag with roughly 4 gallons of water 1 hour at 155 (ish). Pull bag out. Squeeze bag out with lid and cookie tray of some sort. Pour remaining water (150?) over bag in to pot.

 

Fermcap is what I use to prevent boilovers. I have no experience with the discs. Fermcap works awesome though, and I think I paid like $5 for my bottle, which has lasted me 20+ brews, and is still half full.

You mash the grains for 60-90 minutes at 145-160 (both depending on recipe, personal tastes) lift the bag, let it drain a little, then put it in a bucket. Dump the remaining water over the grain in the bucket (batch sparge), then dump that wort into the main kettle, then put the grain bag on a pizza pan (the kind with holes in them), with the pizza pan on top of your kettle, then squeeze the crap out of it with your kettle lid. Boil.

 

Oh ok. I missed the step then of putting it in the bucket. That's easy though. Just need to grab a cheap bucket at lowes or something.

Yeah I think I will get fermcaps for my next brewing from now on. Heard alot of awesome things about it and for that cheap kind of a no brainer. It sucks cuz the closest LHBS to me is like an hour and a half so my trips are seldom. That or buy online and pay shipping

 

You can use your fermenter if you use buckets. If you use carboys, yeah, you could probably get by with a 5 gallon bucket from Lowe's. The white ones at my Lowes are food safe, but make sure to check that it says it.

 

So all that being said, can I expect a 75% efficiency from that method?

 

I've had one stuck sparge but it was an easy fix.

 

I consistently get 70-75%, and from what I've heard from others this is pretty typical. One more thing, double crush your grain. i.e. run it through the mill twice. It helps with efficiency doing BIAB.

 

I believe he said he has a 10 gal potential MLT cooler (I have used mine with a bazooka tube to make 10 gal batches so that is sufficient). He has all he needs. He can always use the smaller pot to heat the sparge water. In my opinion he really needs nothing. A bigger Brew Kettle (BK) if he wants to do 10 Gal batches and can use the large pot as a Hot Liquor Tank, or kettle to heat sparge water when he upgrades. With Fermcap the OP is perfectly suited for the standard Batch Sparge brewer.

Have at it. Cheers!

 

I did that for several batches before going full-on 3 vessel. Heck, I even used a bucket to mash with so I could heat sparge water in the one large pot I had. It's a fine plan.

 

If you want to do a bigger sparge, just heat the sparge water in the larger pot (say, 4 gallons), then dunk your grain in there and stir it, then pull it out, squeeze, discard. Then drain your cooler into the pot and your runnings are all combined. That's how I did it.

Your BK is your HLT, twice, then it becomes the BK again.

 

For BiaB you can hit Ikea for some voile curtains... You get 2 large voile panels for under $5. I just fold one panel over a couple times and line the pot. They last quit awhile. I'm still on my 1st set after a year and a half. Starting to get a couple small holes and singed spots though.

To check if your 7.5G kettle can hold grains and mash water you can look at the "Can I Mash it" section of the Green Bay Rackers mash calculator:http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml you can change the mash thickness until it comes in under 7.5G for your grain bill. I typically mash at 2qt/lb or higher for BiaB. 1.25qt/lb is more typical for a regular MLT.

If you're not adverse to aluminum kettles, you can upgrade to a 10G "tamale pot" from places like Smart and Final or Super King Market (in SoCal) for fairly cheap. I got mine on sale for $19.99.

 

Morebeers 29x29 bag works for me and its under $7.00. It fits in a 10 gallon cooler or 10 gallon kettle with a bunch room to spare. It also is a coarse mesh which is perfect for draining the bag and its food grade to boot.

 

Part of the convenience of BIAB is the single vessel, no sparge, no mash out.
You could mash with >1.25qt/lb water, remove bag, squeeze, and top off kettle to the desired pre-boil volume. If you are not happy with the efficiency you could add the sparge, but I get about 80% with this technique.

 

You get 80% efficiency doing that??!!?! Just mashing then squeezing the snot out of the grain over the pot? That's pretty impressive

 

80% is routinely normal for BIAB. There's a good discussion in the thread "BIAB vs mash tun" going on concurrently with your thread.

 

I scanned through that thread and I am definitely going to start with BIAB w/sparge because it requires almost no investment so that's good enough for me. And if I get a really high gravity brew ill do the brew in a bag in the cooler so I have room. Brewing up an Oberon clone extract brew tomorrow but it might be a little while til I get to the next one because I got full bottles of my belgian tripel in the closet and probably 50+ bottles to bottle the Oberon with. Then it's all grain BIAB two hearted clone!

 

Don't be afraid to use some extract for high gravity brews. In most cases you won't notice the difference between adding for example 2 pounds of LME vs 2.5 pounds of extra base malt. I just did this last night - I made a Helles Bock with 10 pounds of grain plus 2 pounds LME, for a gravity of 1.064.

The "no investment" part was really when hooked me on BIAB - I don't have to have any extra equipment to store and clean. Also, the amount of time I'm spending on a brew only increased by about half an hour over extract + steeping grains now that I've had some practice. If I grind my grains and measure my water ahead of time, I can have my yeast pitched and brew kettle scrubbed in 3.5-4 hours!

 

Might be a dumb question.. But when doing all grain does one mash all the grains? Or do you still only steep the specialty grains?

 

Mash 'em all together. You'll get as good or better results mashing your crystal malts, and the enzymes in the base malt can work on them some more and convert some sugars that may not have been converted when they were mashed in the husk.

Honestly, I find that doing all-grain with BIAB is easier (or at least, less hassle), since I don't have to muck around with weighing out extract, scraping the containers, making sure it doesn't scorch, etc. And it smells SOOOO good when you're mashing....

 

I agree. BIAB is the easiest way to do all-grain and most extract brewers already have what they need. Hell, you can mash in a bucket if your pot is too small. Or just pick up a turkey fryer pot and you're golden (with dunk sparge in bucket or pour-over sparge). My boss at work is an extract brewer and I kinda want to get him doing BIAB.

 

The grain crush and ability to hold the temp are a big factor.
If you are using the mill at the LHBS have them do a double crush (run the grains through the mill twice). For AG brewing consistency is more important than hitting a particular efficiency number.

 

Agreed. Consistency is super important - it makes recipe formulation much easier. I've gotten to the point where on the last 5 batches I've hit my numbers within a point or two. So now I can just use the efficiency numbers I've been hitting, and figure out the proper water/grain amounts.