BIAB help needed

[Potamus]

I'm planning to do a 5 gallon batch of saison this weekend. It's an all-grain recipe with 10 pounds of pilsner and 3/4 pound of briess caramel, and I'm planning to do brew-in-a-bag because I don't have the equipment for all-grain brewing. The problem is that I only have a 5 gallon brew kettle.

As I'm looking into it, it seems most people who BIAB mash with the full volume, which I obviously can't do.

So I'm wondering what difference it makes in efficiency when mashing at a standard 1.3 gallons per pound vs. the full volume. Could I do a standard mash (which I should barely be able to fit), then sparge with some water from a second pot? I figured then I could combine the two to do a roughly 4 gallon boil that I would then top off in the ferementor.

Any foreseeable problems with this method?

 

[Jps101]

By no means am I an expert, but I have done probably 30 5 gallon batches via BIAB. My initial reaction is you are going to have a difficult time getting all the juicy sugars out of your grain. The premise behind BIAB is you use all of the water you would use for a full boil. Your description is closer to a modified 3 vessel approach (my opinion only). Regardless, give it a whirl, take good measurements and see what happens. Cheers.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[bigdaddybrew]

I use a 5 gallon pot for BIAB and a smaller pot to heat sparge water. After mashing I remove the bag and place it over a 5 gallon bucket on a stainless pasta colander to drain and then pour the sparge water over the grain. I then use both pots to speed up the boil. I add the hops to the bigger pot and combine the two into the fermentor. I get very good results and about 76% brewhouse efficiency. Good luck.

 

[speeddemon190]

I do a partial boil with mine. mash as much grain/water as you can in the 5gal pot. Then after its done I dunk sparge in a seperate pot with enough 170 degree water that it will combine with the other pot to equal 3.5 gal. then bring to a boil, I adjust the hops to accomadate the lack of water, and top off with cool water in the FV to equal the post boil 5.5 gal. It has worked well so far.

 

[Potamus]

Thanks guys. I'll give it a go and see how it turns out. I'm sure it'll make beer either way

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

Have you been to BIABrewer.info? They are very helpful there as well.

 

[gregfreemyer]

The other answer is to do a 3 gallon batch. You would put about 4 1/4 gallons in the kettle. Heat to strike and then lower about 6 lbs of grains in. The kettle should be about to overflow, but that's okay.

After the mash, heat the wort to 170 and pull the bag. You should be below 4 gallons at that point, so heat to boil and make sure you don't overflow. Boil off should get down close to 3 1/4 gallons.

I use biabaculas to calculate all the water details. You tell it all about your pot and grain bill and it tells you how the water will work at every stage.

 

[DaNewf]

Google Maxi-BIAB. This is an adaptation of the Mini-BIAB method used to do 5 gallon batches using a 5 gallon brew pot.

Basically MASH BIAB style in a 5 gallon pot with all the grain. Do a couple of dunk sparges in a second pot, boil the wort topping off the 5 gallon pot as the volume drops due to boil-off (more than five gallons of wort is collected pre-boil) and then do a post boil dilution to get your total batch volume. There's a little more to it than that (need to increase bittering hops I think?) but that's the gist.

I've kind of adapted this method to do full volume boils using 2 pots (5 gallon and 3 gallon). As I sparge I collect all the wort in my ~30 litre fermenter and then divy it up between the two pots. This makes the brew night a tiny bit more complicated but removes the need for post boil dilution and I don't need to monkey around with the hopping amounts or schedule (do have to split the additions correctly between the pots though).