I have a question about the amount of grain

[billybingbollar]

I'm going to be doing my very first BIAB tomorrow and got really excited about doing while ordering my first AG kit and may have got a little too excited. I got an imperial stout and it has 19lbs of grains. Is this too much for a 10gal pot to handle considering the extra water that has to be used to account for grain absorption and boil off? If it is too much, is it possible to do two smaller mashes and bring them together in the boil? Thanks for the help.

 

[Mirilis]

Total Water Needed 7.36 Gallons
Total Mash Volume 8.88 Gallons
PreBoil Wort 6.50 Gallons
PostBoil Wort 5.25 Gallons
Into Fermenter 5.00 Gallons

That was from BIAB calculator.. if thats a 5 gallon recipe then id say youll be ok.. but you will be at the limit of your kettle.

 

[Hello]

This helps me a lot:
http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

 

[billybingbollar]

Thanks for the help and also thanks for the calculators. My only other concern is the weight when I get ready to pull it out. I think I'm just going to rig up some kind of pulley system from under my step ladder.

 

[doug293cz]

Thanks for the help and also thanks for the calculators. My only other concern is the weight when I get ready to pull it out. I think I'm just going to rig up some kind of pulley system from under my step ladder.

Step ladder with pulley works great. It's what I do. If you set it up with a moving pulley attached to the bag vs. a fixed pulley attached to the top of the ladder, you only have to lift half the weight.

Brew on

 

[MaxStout]

You can hold back a gallon or so of your water and heat it in a separate vessel to around 160. Do your mash as you normally would, then hoist out the grain bag so it's hanging directly above the kettle. Slowly pour the gallon of water over the bag (a sort of "pour over" sparge).

That way you don't have the full volume of water plus grain all at once getting close to the brim of your kettle.

 

[billybingbollar]

You can hold back a gallon or so of your water and heat it in a separate vessel to around 160. Do your mash as you normally would, then hoist out the grain bag so it's hanging directly above the kettle. Slowly pour the gallon of water over the bag (a sort of "pour over" sparge).

That way you don't have the full volume of water plus grain all at once getting close to the brim of your kettle.

I had actually thought about doing this but had read in another thread that sparging with BIAB is not recommended. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

 

[MaxStout]

I had actually thought about doing this but had read in another thread that sparging with BIAB is not recommended. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

It's not that sparging with BIAB is not recommended. It's that sparging is not necessary. But it's OK to do it.

 

[billybingbollar]

Ahhhh. Gotcha. Thanks for the help.

 

[chuckcomm]

Step ladder with pulley works great. It's what I do. If you set it up with a moving pulley attached to the bag vs. a fixed pulley attached to the top of the ladder, you only have to lift half the weight.

Brew on

I use a fixed pulley with step ladder. Can you explain the "moving" pulley with step ladder? Im very interested in lightening the load.

 

[TexasWine]

I had actually thought about doing this but had read in another thread that sparging with BIAB is not recommended. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Lots and lot of folks here sparge, including myself. Some pour over, some dunk. It all works.

 

[doug293cz]

I use a fixed pulley with step ladder. Can you explain the "moving" pulley with step ladder? Im very interested in lightening the load.

You can find an explanation here: http://hgp.hdsb.ca/Grade4/FOV1-000C664C/?OpenItemURL=S08AB3326 I use the ratchet pulley that Wilser sells along with his bags. The disadvantage of the movable pulley is that you have to pull up rather than down. This can be remedied by adding a fixed pulley at the top of the ladder (also shown in the link.)

Brew on

 

[rlonardo]

I brewed a RIS a couple of months ago using 19.5 lb of grain. In my 10 gallon pot I think i used somewhere around 6.5 gallons of water to mash and it came damn near to the very edge. I attached a picture that was before i added the dark grains. I did a sparge with an amount that i can't remember without looking at my notes. ended up boiling about 2.5 hours to get the volume down. But is doable!

View attachment 1421294509257.jpg

 

[wilserbrewer]

I typically mash in roughly a few quarts to gallon short of my total water needed, then gently pour sparge water over / through the bag to reach proper pre boil volume. I believe this aids efficiency, and also simplifies the process, rather than calculating volumes in advance, I am simply measuring in my kettle with a mark for preboil volume on my mash paddle. Very easy!!!

Calculators tell you what you should have, while measuring tells you what you actually have

Regarding the OP, I would reduce all the grain amounts proportionally, but reducing just the base grain will also work...reducing all the grain is truer to the original recipe...but it s not all that critical IMO.

 

[wtaylor3]

Step ladder with pulley works great. It's what I do. If you set it up with a moving pulley attached to the bag vs. a fixed pulley attached to the top of the ladder, you only have to lift half the weight.

Brew on

Wreckers use the same basic setup for heavy/very stuck vehicles to take the load off the winch its called a snatch block in that scenario....at least the Army does anyways