I've been doing BIAB partial mashes. As space is at a premium these days after moving to a house lacking a beer room I made a pot koozie. However I got expanding foam on my pot and had to buy a new one negating the space saving feature.
I've found that my mash tun isn't very efficient as I lose up to about 5-6* after 70 mins. I'm needing to put an old quilt on the lid to help hold in heat.
I've been using a large colander (largest I can find) to sparge my grain bag with and have found that 6.5 lbs is pushing the limit without making too much of a mess.
I'm considering an Igloo type water jug and am wondering how many pounds of grains the 5 gal jug can hold. I don't want to short change myself later down the road if/when I get to all-grain and 6 gal batches. Will that fit in a 5 gal Igloo or should I get the 10 gal? And if I get the 10 gal Igloo how will that effect the temp efficiency with only 6 lbs of grains?
I'm also wondering what the sparge efficiency typically is by adding the sparge water directly to the spent grains and pulling a second running compared to what I've been doing, which is to dunk like a tea bag my grain bag in my brew pot's water followed by slowly pouring my sparge water over the grain bag and pressing it with the base of a cup, and then placing the colander with the bag into the sparge water pot to allow gravity to pull more out which I add to my brew pot periodically. This has usually given me very good efficiency that I'm seeing typically in the 80% range.
What say you all?
I've found that my mash tun isn't very efficient as I lose up to about 5-6* after 70 mins. I'm needing to put an old quilt on the lid to help hold in heat.
I've been using a large colander (largest I can find) to sparge my grain bag with and have found that 6.5 lbs is pushing the limit without making too much of a mess.
I'm considering an Igloo type water jug and am wondering how many pounds of grains the 5 gal jug can hold. I don't want to short change myself later down the road if/when I get to all-grain and 6 gal batches. Will that fit in a 5 gal Igloo or should I get the 10 gal? And if I get the 10 gal Igloo how will that effect the temp efficiency with only 6 lbs of grains?
I'm also wondering what the sparge efficiency typically is by adding the sparge water directly to the spent grains and pulling a second running compared to what I've been doing, which is to dunk like a tea bag my grain bag in my brew pot's water followed by slowly pouring my sparge water over the grain bag and pressing it with the base of a cup, and then placing the colander with the bag into the sparge water pot to allow gravity to pull more out which I add to my brew pot periodically. This has usually given me very good efficiency that I'm seeing typically in the 80% range.
What say you all?