New to brewing, very limited equipment.

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

SKBugs

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 24, 2018
Messages
183
Reaction score
52
Location
Ipswich, Queensland, Australia
All i have is a 8 gallon(ish) kettle and an electric stove top. I have made a couple of extract batches with some steeping grains, which came out at around 4-5 gallons. The stove managed the boil very well and i think it could go up to most of the 8 gallons. The two beers i made have been very enjoyable, but I would like to try my hand at all grains.

The likelihood of new equipment is pretty grim at the moment.

My question is whether I am really looking at a life of extract brewing only (which is not a bad proposition in itself), or if a BIAB type system would work ok in my kettle given that it would probably boil most of the 8 gallons. Or is there another way to brew, like partial mash for instance? Or can you do partial mash with BIAB? I am still trying to get my head around the language.

I am not looking at a massive volume of beer, and would be very happy with 5 gal batches.
 
You certainly can do BIAB with your kettle. I've made a 5 gallon batch on my kitchen stove with a 7 1/2 gallon kettle so I know it can be done. You might have to start with a smaller amount of water and then top off like many of the extract kits do. The other method is to scale down an all grain recipe and make the batch smaller, like perhaps a 4 gallon batch. There is nothing magical about a 5 gallon batch except that it can fill two cases of bottles.

You can do a partial mash with BIAB too, it's just like doing a smaller batch, then adding water and extract to make up the remainder of the the batch size.
 
I prefer to stovetop brew rather than drag my keggle and burner out in the cold and dark. With an 8 gallon brewpot you can scale back your batches to 4 gallons, but I use a cheap 16 qt. side pot, pull the bag and do a "dunk sparge"in about 2 gallons of water, then I get both pots boiling and dump the side pot into the main boil after about 1/2 hour.
 
Here's another possibility--a variation on BIAB.

Get a cooler like a 12-gallon cube cooler, or perhaps just a regular rectangular-shaped cooler. Maybe you have one. Buy a bag from Wilserbags, sized for whatever cooler you have--Michael Wilser can custom make one if he doesn't have one in stock, and they're rather reasonable in price.

At that point, you can line your cooler w/ that bag, add the strike water, add the grain, then treat it as if you're BIAB'ing on a burner. You have to preheat the cooler (add a gallon of boiling water for 10 minutes, then dump that water), and figure out a good initial strike temp (I always used about 161), and you're there. We can give you a good idea where to start with that.

The only issue I see with doing BIAB on a stove is hoisting the bag. If you mash in a cooler, you can have that anywhere you can have a hook and pulley above you to pull the bag. Then drain the wort from the cooler into the kettle and from that point it's no different than extract brewing. You don't have to worry about lautering like you would w/ a normal mash tun, it works for all intents and purposes as BIAB. Well, it is. Just not in the kettle.

The downside of your setup is capacity; a 10-gallon kettle is better for mashing, esp. to avoid either having to do makeup water and you end up with some protection against boilovers due to the larger size.

But with a cooler mash tun, you can have it larger which gives you more flexibility for future brews--and I brewed a lot of beer using an 8-gallon kettle.

Anyway, welcome to brewing and homebrewtalk, and remember: if you're not having fun doing this, you're doing it wrong. :)
 
Like RM-MN said, nothing requires you to do 5 gallon batches. I do 2.5 to 3 in a five gallon kettle BIAB. If you alone are drinking it five gallons is a lot of the same thing. Smaller batches means more variety.

All the Best,
D. White
 
I would say the first thing would be to make sure your stove can handle the addition strain of getting about 7 gallons up to boil. And how long it takes - it might do it but take an hour and a half to do it.
If it does, then your options are wide open.
You can do the BIAB if you like, or the cooler route.
I have a 48-qt rectangular, got a high-heat spigot and built a manifiold for the bottom - total cost around $50 or so.
I later got a turkey fryer burner which came with a 30-qt pot - I use that for heating strike and sparge, and have a 32-qurat graniteware for boil (until recently.)
Hint: if you want to go the turkey fryer burner route, go right after thanksgiving - they're usually on sale pretty cheap then.
I've recently upgraded to a 10-gallon kettle and an induction burner. works great.
 
Another way to do 5 gallon batch is to do it extract way. Crush the grain for your five gallon batch and use a smaller amount of strike water for the boil, then add back the amount needed to achieve your batch size. This will also help cool the wort faster.

Maybe there is a reason not to but when my boil off was more than I wanted and the OG was higher I will put in a quart or two to hit target volume. Yeah I get distracted by the kidlets now and then.
BTW I brew 5 gallon batches in an 8 gallon kettle. Did once on the electric range and did not like all the water dripping from the exhaust hood over the stove.
 
Last edited:
That was my thought, which seems quite sensible. So why do people pay $ for their AG systems? Does a smaller strike mean the flavor is lost? As a noob I’m happy to give it a go regardless, just wondering
 
That was my thought, which seems quite sensible. So why do people pay $ for their AG systems? Does a smaller strike mean the flavor is lost? As a noob I’m happy to give it a go regardless, just wondering

BTW, my apologies for being geo-centric. Hadn't noticed you're an Aussie, and some of what I suggested might not make sense for you. I'm sure you can find someone in Australia who sells BIAB bags.

As to why people pay $ for their AG systems, there are several reasons I can think of. First is that having to diddle with smaller batches, add-up water, adjusting recipes to deal with this, and so on--well, I prefer not to do that.

Second, it's an element of control--starting with their own grain mill. Homebrew supply stores that sell grain will crush it for you, but invariably, it seems, that crush is too coarse, sometimes resulting in uncrushed kernels, or just generally incomplete crushes. I control my crush exactly. Further, crushed grain is subject to oxidation, and the closer to brewing you can crush that grain, generally the better. Flavors in oxidized grain are muted. This isn't a huge issue unless you wait a fairly long time with crushed grain before you brew with it, but it's one reason why people have their own mill.

One of the tenets (if you want to call it that) of BIAB brewing is crush the grain finely. Local stores won't probably do that, base on experience here. Thus, your own mill. And when you have your own mill, you end up looking into buying grain in bulk, which can (at least here) drastically reduce the price of malt.

And along with that: homebrew stores sell kits including already-crushed grain, the yeast and hops you'll need, so you don't have to make any decisions about recipe. But most home brewers eventually want to do their own recipe-building, and having your own mill can make that much easier.

Third, a more $ system allows you greater control over certain variables in your brewing. Size of the grain bill, for instance. You can if you have the capacity go large, and also of course, small.

And if you really start to get crazy with the $, you can do step mashes, control mash temps to within a degree, which makes it easy to control the characteristics of the beer (lower mash temp = drier finish, higher mash temp = sweeter finish, and you can control or do both).

Fourth, some people like the bling, or coolness factor. Shiny stainless steel and all that. It's the Rolex watch factor--LOOK! LOOK! Well, I have that, too. :)

***********

It's like any hobby--there are different things different people want to get out of it.

That said, you can make really good beer using BIAB. I have all the bells and whistles, well, most of them anyway. I miss the days of doing BIAB, as it's simple, effective, and quicker. I brewed yesterday and it was nearly 5 hours from start to finish. With BIAB, generally it would be 3.5 hours. Less to clean, quicker setup...more relaxed brew day.

That's what's cool about this hobby, IMO--you can brew good beer, maybe even great beer, with a minimal setup. Or you can dig into your children's inheritance and go large. :)

***********

One last thought: what people can afford and how they enjoy this hobby varies with resources and where they are in the life cycle. My kids are grown and gone; no way I could afford to do what I'm doing if it were 15 years ago. So I have toys that would have been impossible to buy back then. People with young children, people still in college--maybe not so much.

But I started out with an inexpensive kit, and learned, learned, learned about brewing. As I learned to make good beer, I began to add equipment that either sped things up or made my life easier. But I remember the first beer I really hit, and I still brew it. It's a Rye ale and it's great.

What I sort of regret--though I'm still not sure how I could have foreseen where my brewing has ended up--is money spent on equipment that I upgraded later, costing me much if not most of the initial investment. I've sold some of that off at a partial loss, but I sort of wish I'd made better choices early on. Again, not sure how I could have done that--didn't know how much I'd end up liking this, etc. etc. etc. And it didn't seem like the smart choice at the time.

So--if you can and it's within your resource base, try to buy a little better than you think you need. If you end up buying another kettle (you don't need to--this is an example), go the 10-gallon route not the 8-gallon route. If you buy a propane burner so you can brew outside, buy one with more rather than fewer BTUs. More BTUs = faster. Same with an immersion chiller, same with....well, everything.

Think about where you want to be a year from now, and how you might get there. Maybe you can save money by cutting out the daily latte from the coffee shop, or sell off items you don't need any longer, or find a few quick part-time gigs...

Anyway, always remember the number one rule of home brewing: if you're not having fun doing it, you're doing it wrong.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top