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biab bags. paint strainer vs adventures in homebrew?

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pricelessbrewing

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First attempt at biab in the next few days. Not sure which bag to get, or if both have issues I might buy the one from the guy on here that makes them.

Do they need to fit the pot, or is okay if I just binderclip the excess?
 
For a first attempt it depends on the size of your brew, I used the 5 gallon paint sprayer bags with no issue but decided to go with wilserbrewers bags after some issues with efficiency and using the turkey fryer basket wit hthe 5 gallon bag. What size BIAB are you doing?
 
Paint filters are designed to have a rim left once around the top. They usually come two to a package, and one inside the other, I do all the time for filtering. The little tiny stuff that goes through, will cold crash out.
 
2.5gal on the stove, in a 5g pot. Can get pot can dimensions when I get back home.

I have 3g carboy and a 5gallon fermenter, but can't do full volume 5gal.
Can't really get a good boil on my stove, is partial boil biab work okay? Say 3g topped with 2 gal?
 
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I mill cold, conditioned grains to a pretty fine particle size. I do get some of the flour coming through, but not nearly as much as I did with the filter bags from Home Depot.
 
My bag is made from a full yard of polyester voile fabric. As such, it is wayyyy too big for my 10 gal pot. I just binder clip it in to deal with the excess. Works like a champ.
 
I've used the 5 gallon paint strainer bags from Lowe's to do a few 3 gallong BIAB batches and they worked fine. Wouldn't mind something a little finer mesh though to help cut down on stuff getting into the boil. I use the smaller 1 gallon bags for hop bags.
 
The Adventures bag is a little coarse and the paint strainer bag is a little small. Ideally, you would have a bag made from voile material but either of your current options will work without too much trouble.
 
I got mine from biab-brewing.com (canada) and it's wonderful. It's the only one I found that comes with nylon webbing around the top and loops for hanging/holding, sized to fit your pot, plus velcro to keep it tight around the rim. Had it within a few days after ordering.
Super fine mesh compared to the paint strainers, and made a huge difference in the debris getting into the pot. Drains just as fast as the paint strainers too.
Highly recommended.
 
The Lowe's 5 gallon paint bag was too small for my 10 gallon kettle. The opening only covered about half the opening of the kettle and my relatively large grain bill was too compact resulting in a poor efficiency. That was my first BIAB. After that I bought the viola cloth and sewed a much larger bag and my problem disappeared.
 
That is a good point. I had my Mom sew up a custom bag which fit my pot perfectly. The result was the mash was not constricted at all which made for easy and effective stirring. It drains great too.
 
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