Mash in a bag / Mash Tun Liner

[nanofreak]

I built a 60qt mash tun. I had an igloo cube sitting around that I never use and I saw that great thread about cheaply converting a cooler. As someone who has sucessfully done brew in a bag, I am just curious.

For ease of cleanup would it be OK to make a bag that lined the entire cooler, just like you use in brew in a bag, but mash regular in my cooler? Still do a batch sparge, etc?

Obviously it would make things easier when it comes to cleaning, what you are sparging you would be less likely to get any grain flowing through, but what are my downsides?

Has anyone ever done this? If I am overthinking things, and I just need to STFU, get back to brewing, and RDWHAHB just let me know.

 

[Walker]

You can do it. Some homebrew shops sell large grain bags that will fit nicely into one of the tall 7 gallon buckets. The intended use is mashing large amounts of grain without a 'proper' MLT.

It should work.

I can't off hand think of any obvious downsides other than the risk of the bag ripping in the middle of a mash. That might be a huge PITA.

 

[bsdx]

I did a mash in / mash out with a grain bag in a cooler yesterday, I added the water first, then the grain bag, stirred as best I could (1.5 quarts/lb of grain seemed easier to stir inside the bag than 1.25), closed it, let it sit an hour, added hotter water for the mash out / sparge, stirred, let it sit about 10 min, then I pulled the bag of grain out and stuck it in a temporary pot while I quickly drained the wort into my brew kettle using the spout on the cooler. Then I put a strainer basket on top of the brew kettle, sat the grain sack on it, poured the wort from the temporary pot into brew kettle, and made sure I hit my temperature corrected approximate pre-boil OG.

Next I want to try figuring out how much heat my cooler will absorb so I don't need to pre-heat and drain it, which is a moderate pain...

 

[samc]

I made a BIAB for my keggle as a MLT grain bag. Used it once so far and had great results. The clearest wort by far that I have ever seen. Clean up was much faster with the bag although I had to scoop out a large amount as trying to lift out a grain bag from a 10 gallon batch is not all that easy.

 

[Stuntman]

I made a BIAB for my keggle as a MLT grain bag. Used it once so far and had great results. The clearest wort by far that I have ever seen. Clean up was much faster with the bag although I had to scoop out a large amount as trying to lift out a grain bag from a 10 gallon batch is not all that easy.

+1

Use the bag in the kettle, when coming out of MT, remove bag and boil. If you don't get the grain separated (I am figuring that you are all grain, so ten lbs for 5 gallons approx) you will get dough balls. This will lead to inefficiency. I do 10 gallon batches (It would be a serious PITA). After grains are sparged they are pretty dry, I have this wide round spatula that works great. The grains are sort of carved out and thrown into a plastic bucket for the trash, put cooler on grass and hose/wipe out...done!:rockin:

Good luck

 

[Barc]

For ease of cleanup would it be OK to make a bag that lined the entire cooler, just like you use in brew in a bag, but mash regular in my cooler? Still do a batch sparge, etc?

Yes, it will work. This is pretty much what I do.

I line the mash tun with the large bag and then continue as if it wasn't there. The bag does want to fall sometimes but if you've got an extra set of hands while you mash in and sparge, it really helps. Also, it is pretty difficult to get a stuck sparge since all you have to do is to lift the sack a little and re-vourlaf if you do happen to have the flow stop.

Other than the bag falling in, the only other thing I recommend is not stirring in one direction too much as the bag will want to twist on you but it is not to hard to untwist it by stirring in the opposite direction.

My efficiency usually averages in the high 70's to 80's if I'm doing a typical single infusion / double batch sparge.

 

[Bobby_M]

You'll still have to hose the tun out and that would have cleaned it without using the bag. I'd just install a stainless braid and call it a day.