New PM Brewer

[Evets]

Hi Guys,
I've Done 6 extract kits , now, and I think I've got a pretty good handle on that. I ordered two PM kits from Austin HB and they'll be here on Monday. A Belgian Saison and an Anchor Steam. I also ordered a large , reusable grain bag, which they recomended. So, my question is; Should I use the bag( I assume they include specific instructions) or should I spend the weekend gathering parts, and building a proper mash tun? I probably won't be ready to brew this for a couple weeks yet. I've got a Scotch Ale Extract kit to do tomorrow, not to mention the Red Ale I'm bottling tonite, and the German Altbier I'm racking over tomorrow.

 

[Beer Snob]

There are people here who use a grain bag. As long as you dont mind poor efficiency it should not be a problem at all. Mash/Tuns are also pretty simple to make if you have all the right parts.

Here is a blown up of mine... more pictures in the gallery.

I thought the plumbing would be very easy to put together, but it turned out for me to be a real pain in the A$$. I ended up buying a Kewler Kit and wished I had from the start. If you have all the right parts this literaly takes ten minutes to put together.

 

[kaptain_karma]

Personally, I'm not a big fan of grain bags, so I would suggest investing the time and money into a decent lauter tun. Having a working mash/lauter tun will make the transition to all grain easier too if that's something you're interested in doing in the future.

When I was doing partial mashes I usually had about five lbs of grain between the base and specialty malts. I bought a nice fat strainer and poured the mash through that before boiling. Once the strainer was full of grains, I sprinkled hot (170 degree) water through them to rinse all the sugars out. For a batch with about five lbs of grain I'd have to strain and sparge about four times to get all the grains rinsed. One notable disadvantage to this method is that it causes hot-side aeration, which can lead to undesirable flavors in your beer. However, I feel there's a lot of more important things you can do for your beer before you fret over hot-side aeration.

 

[brackbrew]

I understand that having a mash/lauter tun would obviously increase efficiency with starch conversion, but how do grain bags hamper it? I'm curious because I've been doing partial mashes in my old brew kettle for my last couple batches, knowing that efficiency isn't that of all-grain processes. Is it because the grain is more compacted in bags?

 

[RichBrewer]

Take a look at this thread:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=8805

If you look at page 5 near the bottom, you can see the mini mash tun that I built. I am going to do a test batch this weekend and I'll be reporting the results.