Investing in a proprietary homebrew ecosystem?

[KookyBrewsky]

Once more, for effect-BIAB is all grain brewing. It’s been around long enough, and is in sufficiently widespread use, to be considered “traditional”.

Any process which involves converting the starches in malted grain into fermentable sugars, and using the resulting wort to produce beer, is an all grain process, regardless of the assortment of pots, kettles, coolers, pumps or plumbing involved.

Ok then, stigma removed. I am too new to have personally developed stigmas, I have just gone off of the trends I've read online. Perhaps I've stumbled across those older forum posts on the internet that stigmatized it during my research and wanted to say it's not "all-grain", but I am all for ingenuity, which BIAB provides quite well. Maybe we should just call it "grains in a bag" since, well that's literally what it is and might remove any stigmas new people notice when getting into the hobby

Thanks for solidifying my path though... A really nice and durable kettle coupled with a nice bag will be a killer setup for me.

 

[eric19312]

I’m a dedicated 3 vessel brewer but I agree with others on this thread...BIAB is an end game not step to something else. Issue with BIAB is you need one big kettle vs multiple smaller vessels. Because you won’t be adding future kettles I really think it makes sense to start with minimum 15 gallon. This will let you do high or low gravity brews in 5 gallon batches and if you get creative maybe mid gravity 10 gallon batches. If you want some bling I’d absolutely recommend Spike. I have their 20 gallon kettle and LOVE it. If you are more utilitarian I’ve got both Spike and Bayou Classic kettles and both work great. I’if money is an issue I’d steer you in direction of the larger kettle from lower quality brand (like Bayou Classic). Even a reallycrappy stainless kettle is going to be good for 100s of batches while a too small kettle will be constant PITA.

 

[KookyBrewsky]

I’m a dedicated 3 vessel brewer but I agree with others on this thread...BIAB is an end game not step to something else. Issue with BIAB is you need one big kettle vs multiple smaller vessels. Because you won’t be adding future kettles I really think it makes sense to start with minimum 15 gallon. This will let you do high or low gravity brews in 5 gallon batches and if you get creative maybe mid gravity 10 gallon batches. If you want some bling I’d absolutely recommend Spike. I have their 20 gallon kettle and LOVE it. If you are more utilitarian I’ve got both Spike and Bayou Classic kettles and both work great. I’if money is an issue I’d steer you in direction of the larger kettle from lower quality brand (like Bayou Classic). Even a reallycrappy stainless kettle is going to be good for 100s of batches while a too small kettle will be constant PITA.

I'm going with the 20 gallon Spike!... It'll be the perfect size that I can expand upon in the future if I need to. The 20 gallon is only marginally more expensive than the 15 gallon. It's also likely I'm going to grab the Spike Conical... I'll use it as my "perfect beer" fermenter, and ferment other beers if I want in my typical fermentation buckets. I like that I can temp control with the TC-100 and drink straight from the conical

 

[eric19312]

I'm going with the 20 gallon Spike!... It'll be the perfect size that I can expand upon in the future if I need to. The 20 gallon is only marginally more expensive than the 15 gallon. It's also likely I'm going to grab the Spike Conical... I'll use it as my "perfect beer" fermenter, and ferment other beers if I want in my typical fermentation buckets. I like that I can temp control with the TC-100 and drink straight from the conical

Haha that escalated quickly....

 

[KookyBrewsky]

Haha that escalated quickly....

I'm only getting their brew kettle for now so I can do BIAB while using all the gear I already own. Just ordered a bag from Wilser.