Tristram27
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Hello everyone, I've been happy with the cost savings, ease, and frequency of my brewing process, so I thought I'd share it with you. Any comments/corrections/ratings would be greatly appreciated! 
***Further improved process to use BIAB instead of mash tun on 2/28/15***
Cheapest, Easiest way to brew a lot! (3 Gallon BIAB All-Grain Batches!)
Advantages of this 3-gallon system:
Equipment: (most of this you may have already, but I wanted to include a complete list anyways)
Brewing Process:
1. Prepare a recipe. I use the forums on homebrewtalk.com to find excellent recipes, and then use the recipe calculator at brewersfriend.com to tweak them and scale down to 3 gallons. I like to keep brewhouse efficiency around 70%, since I’m much happier when I hit higher than intended efficiency than when I hit lower than intended efficiency. If your pre-boil gravity is too high, you can just boil off less wort or add water at the end to bring it back down to the proper gravity. If your pre-boil gravity is too low, you will have to add dry malt extract to bring the gravity back up to the proper level. If you consistently hit higher efficiency, then you can up your brewhouse efficiency number and save a little bit of money on grains. I print out my final recipe and make notes on it during the brew day.
2. Prepare Ingredients. You can purchase ingredients from your local brew store. At 3 gallons, the ingredients usually run only $15-$25 per batch. You will also need to run 4.5-5 gallons of purified drinking water through your mash tun to extract 4 gallons of wort. I have water delivered to my home but you can also fill up a 5 gallon bucket at a water dispenser outside of a Walgreens or local grocery store.
3. Brew. I won’t outline the specific steps of the entire BIAB process here, as you can find instructions for BIAB all over the net. I’ll just note a few things I do that may be slightly different from most:
Must Use Calculators!:
I hope this guide may help some of you to brew more often on a budget!
***Further improved process to use BIAB instead of mash tun on 2/28/15***
Cheapest, Easiest way to brew a lot! (3 Gallon BIAB All-Grain Batches!)
Advantages of this 3-gallon system:
- Need to collect less used bottles per batch (30 instead of 50)
- Brew more often! Lower cost, less storage needed and shorter brew time means more frequent brews.
- Brew for less! Grain is much cheaper than Malt Extract. Ingredients for each batch will range from only $15-$25.
- Can brew in your kitchen! No need for a propane burner if you have a decent stove. Any gas stove will do, and most electric stoves will bring 4 gallons to a boil in a reasonable amount of time.
- 5 gallon buckets are extremely cheap (You will end up buying more of these to have additional fermentations going or to replace ones that will inevitably stain or get scratched) At $3 each, these are basically disposable!
- Brew faster! Brew in a bag means the mash and boil are both done in your brew pot, which saves a lot of time since you can skip a few steps normally required from a mash tun/hot liquor tank system. You can also start heating up your wort to a boil sooner.
- Usually don’t need to make a yeast starter since yeast packs are good for 5g batches.
- Learn faster! The best way to master brewing is to brew a lot, and this system lets you do just that! With this system you can experiment with all sorts of different all-grain beers at a smaller batch size.
- Much less expensive equipment! Brew in a bag means you don’t need a mash tun or hot liquor tank, which typically cost over $150. Also cheaper fermenters, brew pot, and more.
- Less cleanup! No mash tun to disassemble and clean out grain particles after every brew. Just rinse off your mesh bag instead!
- Less heavy lifting! Anyone can handle lifting and moving filled equipment on their own.
- Most Equipment is upgradeable to 5+ gallon batches if you decide to upgrade in the future.
- 30 bottles is still plenty enough to drink and share with friends/family per batch.
- Less storage required to store bottles and equipment.
- Smaller batch size means less wasted beer/money if you mess up badly on a batch.
Equipment: (most of this you may have already, but I wanted to include a complete list anyways)
- 3x 5-gallon food-grade plastic buckets from wal-mart. 1 is primary fermenter, 1 is secondary, and 1 will be your bottling bucket. (wal-mart $9)
- Plastic valve, bottling wand and tubing for bottling bucket (homebrewing.org $9-$12)
- 2x Grommetted lids for fermenters (homebrewing.org $6)
- 2x Air Locks for fermenters (homebrewing.org $4)
- Large stainless steel strainer (wal-mart or homebrewing.org $12)
- 5 Gallon Stainless Steel Pot (wal-mart or homebrewing.org $20)
- Auto-Siphon and siphon tubing (homebrewing.org $15)
- Copper Wort Chiller (homebrewing.org $40)
- Star-san Sanitizer (homebrewing.org $10 for 8 oz)
- Bottle Capper (homebrewing.org $16)
- Bottle Caps (homebrewing.org $4.50 for 144)
- Hydrometer (homebrewing.org $7)
- Thermometer (homebrewing.org $7)
- Large mesh bag for mash. I got a 19” by 19” nylon bag with a flat bottom from my local brew store for $7 and it fits around my 5 gallon pot just right.
- Used bottles. About 30 for 1 batch. You can find some way to get them for free. I get mine from my girlfriend who works at a Chinese restaurant that serves beer. She collects the bottles for me. But if you drink a lot of beer, or have friends/family that do, you will find it is surprisingly easy to collect enough bottles. Note that twist-offs do not work. To remove labels from the bottles, I soak then in water overnight and then rub them off with a heavy duty sponge.
- Volume measuring stick. To make one of these I fill my brew pot with 3 gallons of water, put a stick(can use a spoon, thermometer, or whatever you have that works) in the pot, and carefully place a little piece of tape right at the water level on the stick. I then add one more gallon and do the same to mark the 4 gallon level. This lets me know when I’ve collected 4 gallons of wort and lets me know when I’ve boiled it down to 3 gallons. This makes the process much less tedious since you don’t need to worry about exact measurements of water during your mash and sparge.
Brewing Process:
1. Prepare a recipe. I use the forums on homebrewtalk.com to find excellent recipes, and then use the recipe calculator at brewersfriend.com to tweak them and scale down to 3 gallons. I like to keep brewhouse efficiency around 70%, since I’m much happier when I hit higher than intended efficiency than when I hit lower than intended efficiency. If your pre-boil gravity is too high, you can just boil off less wort or add water at the end to bring it back down to the proper gravity. If your pre-boil gravity is too low, you will have to add dry malt extract to bring the gravity back up to the proper level. If you consistently hit higher efficiency, then you can up your brewhouse efficiency number and save a little bit of money on grains. I print out my final recipe and make notes on it during the brew day.
2. Prepare Ingredients. You can purchase ingredients from your local brew store. At 3 gallons, the ingredients usually run only $15-$25 per batch. You will also need to run 4.5-5 gallons of purified drinking water through your mash tun to extract 4 gallons of wort. I have water delivered to my home but you can also fill up a 5 gallon bucket at a water dispenser outside of a Walgreens or local grocery store.
3. Brew. I won’t outline the specific steps of the entire BIAB process here, as you can find instructions for BIAB all over the net. I’ll just note a few things I do that may be slightly different from most:
- Mashing: I typically mash 60 minutes at 150-152 degrees and then do a 10 minute mash out at about 169 degrees. Then I lift the bag out and let it drain a bit, and then set it on my large strainer over a bucket to sparge with 169 degree water. As soon as I finish collecting 4 gallons of wort, I take a small sample and put it in the freezer to do a pre-boil gravity reading as soon as the sample comes down to around 70 degrees.
- Boil: To end up with 3 gallons in the fermenter, you want to collect 4 gallons of wort from your mash tun. A 60 minute boil should be enough to boil off 1 gallon, but may take longer if your stove is weak. If you are hitting extra high efficiency or using extra ingredients, it is okay to end up with a final volume or 3.25-3.5 gallons as well, just as long as your original gravity is close enough. I like to add my wort chiller to the wort 10-15 minutes before flame out to make sure it is sanitized. As soon as my pre-boil sample of wort has cooled down to about 70 degrees, I take a gravity reading of it to see if I am on target. If I come up short, I use a calculator to see how much DME I should add to hit the correct Original Gravity, and I add it in the last 15-30 minutes of the boil. See the end of this document for the calculators I use.
- Chilling Wort: I live in Tucson Arizona so the tap water here is pretty warm, so I make an ice bath and use a pond pump to pump cold water through my wort chiller. You can get a decent pond pump from Harbor Freight for about $20 if you decide to do the same thing. Sometimes a beer style might require you to get pitching temperatures down to 65 degrees so it may become even more necessary if your tap water isn’t that cold.
- Transferring to fermenter: I simply dump the 3 gallons of wort through a strainer into my fermenter. At this point oxidation is good, so I even dump the wort from fairly high to make sure it gets aerated plenty. Be sure to use a large stainless steel strainer and sanitize it before use. Before pitching your yeast, be sure to take a gravity reading. This will be your OG(original gravity).
- Pitching Yeast: Open your pack and dump it in. Since the batch size is smaller, a regular sized pack of yeast will usually be plenty enough for healthy fermentation without a starter. I personally use harvested yeast to save even more money, but I really only harvest and reuse yeast because I find it to be fun. It honestly isn’t worth the hassle if you don’t find it fun yourself.
- Transferring to secondary: After 10-14 days, it’s time to transfer to secondary. I use my syphon to carefully transfer my wort to secondary without kicking up too much trub/yeast at the bottom of the fermenter. I then harvest my yeast, but this is an optional step. The secondary helps to clear up your beer for better presentation. Certain styles of beer my also require a dry hopping stage in secondary or just some extra conditioning time here. I also like to cold crash my secondary, just to clear up the beer even more. The last 48 hours of secondary fermentation in the fridge is all it takes. A 5-gallon bucket will fit in most refrigerators if you make room. Cold crashing is another optional step and can sometimes make it take longer for the beer to carbonate.
- Bottling: I like to a priming sugar calculator(see below) and boil my priming sugar(usually 3 oz of cane sugar) for 10 minutes in a small pot in as little water as possible that will allow the sugar to dissolve. I then take a gravity reading of the beer (this will be your Final Gravity) and start siphoning the wort into the bottling bucket. Be careful here not to stir up the yeast at the bottom of the fermenter as this would defeat the purpose of your efforts to clear up the beer. After the beer is all in the bottling bucket, I put it on top of my refrigerator and use my bottling wand to fill my sanitized bottles.
- Waiting: This is a very important step! Most of the time, carbonation is done in 2 weeks, but I’ve found that almost all my beers taste much better after a month or two of extra aging. This isn’t the case for certain lighter styles of beer however, like hefeweizens, which get all their flavor from the yeast, or IPAs, which get their flavor from the hops. I always have so many beers rotating, so waiting is never an issue for me. I always have some other beer that is available for drinking. My recommendation here is to put your batches that age well in a closet or somewhere you don’t look very often and forget about them. Just be sure to label some of the bottles or leave your recipe with them so you don’t forget which beer is which!
Must Use Calculators!:
- Recipe Calculator: http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator]
- Priming Sugar Calculator: http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/
- Pre/Post Boil Gravity Calculator: http://onebeer.net/boilcalc.shtml
- Extract Addition to Correct Gravity: http://merrycuss.com/calc/gravityadjustmentextract.html
- Brewhouse Efficiency Calculator(If you want to see how efficiently you are mashing): http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/
- Alcohol by Volume(ABV) Calculator: http://www.brewersfriend.com/abv-calculator/
I hope this guide may help some of you to brew more often on a budget!
