Brew in a bag - Equipment question

[DandyMason]

Question about BIAB - Do you guys mash and sparge? For example mash in a few gallons, drain, then sparge in a 4 or 5 gallons?

Nope... In my last batch, I heated 6.75 gallons of water, put the bag in, added 4.2 kg of grain. After an hour, I heated the mash to 168 ish, then pulled the bag out. I let the bag drain into a bucket for 20 mins or so and then added that back into the boil.

Some people sparge the bag, but reports are conflicting on whether it boosts efficiency. One thing that allows you to do is increase your volume.

For reference, I achieved 75% efficiency with the no-sparge BIAB.

Very good efficiency really.

If you find you're tight for space, theres really no reason why you couldnt treat the kettle as a cooler, right? Especially if you're inside. Just like I mentioned above... mash in 10-15 L, drain into a bucket.. Sparge in your kettle with another 15 L or whatever... Drain into your bucket. Pull out the bag of grain and dump your bucket of wort back into the kettle and start your boil.

EDIT: forget this you would need 2 kettles wouldnt you

[Roger]

Yeah, you can start with brass for now.  Nothing wrong with that.

That's true you can get away with brass for sure but you can get SS ball valves on eBay for $7.07 and couplers and nipples from @Fhilo for under a couple bucks each. If your willing to wait for the ball valves its a great price I plan to get a few more in the near future for some other projects.

[ECH]

I had a thought the other day (dangerous I know).

I watched a YT video where he used a large paint strainer bag as his BIAB, pretty sure his pot was 8gal. Steeped with 3 gal, splarged with 2 or so gal right in the pot.

My only thing is, I would think the pot would be hard to keep the temps up in. You can't have your burner on when steeping as you don't want to burn the mash, so it would bleed off heat pretty quickly.

Why couldn't you use the best of both worlds. BIAB in a cooler? No need to modify the cooler for a mash tun. Pour in your hot water, grains in the bag, put the bag in the cooler, close and wait. Then splarge with however much you need. Once done, drain it all into your brew kettle and go. You could potentially use more grain that you could fit in the 8 gal brew kettle. Likely already have a cooler and wouldn't have to modify it, this upsetting SWMBO, or spending money on another cooler.

Just spitballing here, but wouldn't that work?

[Chris Craig]

There's a guy on the Brewnosers forum that makes bags especially for coolers.  @Roger also does the same thing in his keggle mash tun.

[Roger]

It was kind of bred out of necessity. I couldn't quite imagine myself scooping out the spent grain little by little then carrying it up stairs to dump and the keggle mash tun would be too hard to carry up stairs full. So the bag is dual purpose it acts as a grain filter in the keggle and carrying sac to lift all the grain out at once. Works great for me!

[Two Wheeler]

Hey ECH... the temp control problem is one of the other reasons I was leaning towards a cooler. Last weekend, I brewed outdoors when it was about 8c outside. My mash lost about 12 degrees fahrenheit over that time. I'm not sure if that's enough to be concerned about. I insulate with towels, as below:



Here's a good video of the cooler BIAB, which is what I think I'm going to do. This video is actually made by Jimmy, who Chris referenced above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyz_zT_glDM

I ordered my BIAB bag from Jimmy, it was well built, cheap enough and here in 2 days. http://www.biab-brewing.com/

[ECH]

Yup, that is pretty much what my thought was. Guess I know what direction I am going to go!

BTW. What do you guys do with your spent grain? I have heard people giving/selling it to farmers to feed cattle/pigs, etc. Also have hear of people baking it into bread.

Would make good seed for bird feeders once it was dried out again wouldn't it?

[blisster]

Yup, that is pretty much what my thought was. Guess I know what direction I am going to go!

BTW. What do you guys do with your spent grain? I have heard people giving/selling it to farmers to feed cattle/pigs, etc. Also have hear of people baking it into bread.

Would make good seed for bird feeders once it was dried out again wouldn't it?

I dump mine in the woods behind my house. I don't brew very often so it's not worth saving for farmers and drying it out for bird feed is extra work that I don't want to get into.  I've noticed that the squirrels around my house are getting quite healthy, lol.

I've heard of people making dog treats out of their spent grains or even pizza dough. Again, too much effort required for my lazy ars.

[Al-Loves-Wine]

I was just mentioning to Roger at the MO about these that are great for partial and BIAB, or like he does for his tun.

http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/yukon-gear-deluxe-quarter-big-game-bag-0754469p.html#.U2AZ6c44NM8

I picked one up to do a partial over the winter. They are knit cotton, and easily washed, plus they are so large that you could cut it into thirds likely and sew the ends closed, and have extras when you finally wear one out.