Need a little help with the method

[treacheroustexan]

Extract brewer going to BIAB...Just a few questions

My original plan: I have a 5 gallon pot I am going to do my mashing in (I know, bigger the better but I will make it work for now) and I will do my boil in a 10.5 gallon pot. Or do I have enough room in the 10.5 pot to do the mash and boil?

What is your recommended method? I will be doing this on my stove top in my apartment.

 

[soccerdad]

my vote - mash and boil all in 10.5

 

[keahunter]

I'm no expert but I think this depends on your recipe (ie, how much grain you're going to use) and your boiloff rate (ie how much water you're going to need). I'm doing my first biab tomorrow and i have 12 pounds of grain and due to a boiloff rate of 1.75 gallons per hour I have to use just over 9 gallons of water so in my case, your pot would be too small (I think). I think that the water displacement of 12 pounds of grains in 9 gallons of water would be too much for a 10 gallon pot. As I said, I'm no expert by a long shot. Good luck!

 

[madscientist451]

With Biab, you mash the full boil volume, so you'll need the big pot for that. Your kitchen stove may not be able to boil the whole volume in one pot, but you can use two pots and then combine after you lose some water to evaporation. You'll have to figure the extra evaporation loss when using two pots, but you can make it work. The best thing to do is spend a little extra and mash in a cooler, you can still do the BIAB method, but its way easier to maintain mash temp and not as messy when you pull the bag out.

 

[tooblue02]

Agree with how much grain you will use for the recipe. I have done grain bills of 16lbs in my 10 Gal kettle for a 5.5 gallon recipe (very close to overflowing though!) I just did a 15 lb grain bill a week ago and had no issues at all, although with more experience I do tend to go a little under my mash volume since I recover enough out of the grain for the pre-boil volume. When I first started I usually had a spare pot lying around to drain some water off if needed as I added the grain. I would have some extra hands to help as well as a separate pot just in case and give it a shot and take some good notes!

 

[treacheroustexan]

Okay so rather than BIAB, I kinda thought about just using a cooler to mash and then just split the boil in two pots.

 

[soccerdad]

tt - why not post a recipe? there are some brilliant and experienced people here (not me ) who can give you a good guess as to how you can (or not) do the full volume mash in your kettle

there are (maybe unfortunately) a hundred variations on BIAB, so you can mash in a cooler, you can get your volume in 2 pots, you can dunk, sparge, semi sparge, semi dunk ...

but for me (maybe just me) , I'd like to see you at least try the single kettle, full volume mash with all the grain before you deviate

 

[TexasWine]

Soccerdad hit it on the head. Folks really need more details to provide good input. For starters, how big of a batch are you making?

One of the big benefits of BIAB is using a single vessel to mash and boil. For a 5 gallon batch you would have no need for the 5 gallon kettle unless you use it to do something like heat sparge water or dunk sparge. You definitely wouldn't want to mash in it.

And don't listen to the naysayers that it's hard to maintain temp in a kettle. Throw a sleeping bag around it, some towels on top, and call it good. Tons of people do this, including myself, and loose no more than 2 degrees in an hour long mash. Since I started mashing in my oven I don't even loose a degree.

 

[chickypad]

tt - why not post a recipe? there are some brilliant and experienced people here (not me ) who can give you a good guess as to how you can (or not) do the full volume mash in your kettle

there are (maybe unfortunately) a hundred variations on BIAB, so you can mash in a cooler, you can get your volume in 2 pots, you can dunk, sparge, semi sparge, semi dunk ...

but for me (maybe just me) , I'd like to see you at least try the single kettle, full volume mash with all the grain before you deviate

Agreed, lots of variations but with a 10.5 gal pot you should be able to fit most full volume mashes. Even keahunter's example would just fit I believe, and that is more water than most would need I think. 1.75 gal is a fairly big boil off - that's a little more than I get in in my 20 gal pot. Plus if you squeeze the bag you'll lose less water than traditional mashing, like about 1 gal for that 12 lb grainbill. So that would leave about 6.25 gal post boil by my calculations. If you want more like 5 gal post boil you should have plenty of room for most grainbills.

 

[treacheroustexan]

I was going to start with EdWorts pale ale (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/bee-cave-brewery-haus-pale-ale-31793/) I think I am going to just mash in a cooler and split the boil in two 5 gallon pots or so. After some thought I realize my stove can only boil 4 gallons on my big burner.

10.5 lbs of grain, and and then I can just divide the wort up into two kettles.

After putting that recipe in beer smith, it comes out to:

Mash in with 3.25 gallons of water at 148 F for 75 minutes. Then fly sparge with 4.5 gallons. Total boil volume would be 6.52 which I would split in half into two pots and boil as normal.

 

[TexasWine]

Straddle two burners and use your big pot! I can boil 8 gallons doing this, and in a 9 gallon kettle.

Another thought, insulate your kettle. I insulated my 10 gallon kettle last night to make it easier to boil. Haven't taken it out for a spin yet, but I'm confident it's gonna work.

 

[halcyondays]

I've been doing BIAB in my 10 gallon kettle for a couple years now. If I'm doing any recipe under about 1.070 OG, I'm fine doing a 5 gallon batch in there, mashing and boiling. I think using two vessels complicates things.

Part of the beauty of BIAB is being able to just mash in my full volume of water, pull the bag out, squeeze it, and proceed to boil. Keeps things nice and simple. YMMV, but I can easily fit 15 lbs of grain in for a 5 gallon batch.