18 Litre Pot - Biab Possible?

[shark]

Hi Everyone,

I have tried searching cant find the answer (I am sure its on here somewhere... but I cant seem to find it).

I have come across an 18 litre stock pot. Is it possible to do a BIAB with the 18L?

I thought I remember reading that you can do it using say 10 litres and then top up to 20 litres with cool water in the fermenter?

If someone could help me or point me in the right direction that would be great.

Thanks
Ben

 

[crundle]

Hi Shark,

there was a thread on this recently, about a 20 litre pot if I remember correctly. The short answer is yes - but.....

You can do BIAB in an 18 litre pot, but you will be restricted in what you can make/how much you can make by the size of the vessel. You can make either less of a stronger beer (bigger gravity beer), or more of a lower gravity beer. You can water a stronger beer back down to get the amount of beer you are after, but you may have some issues with extraction of sugars using BIAB alone, and may need to use some supplementary methods to be able to boil up the amount of wort needed.

I will try to find the link to the other thread for you when I get a chance later tonight.

Crundle

 

[RdeVjun]

Sure can shark, I do it in a 19L stockpot all the time. We discussed it here lately, a few others report similar successful experiences. Basically its bigger batches (21-23L) with dilution or smaller, stronger batches without. I've just 5 minutes ago inoculated another 21L batch of TTL done in a 19L pot, OG 1.042.

The key, for me at least, seems to be the sparge, I bucket sparge, which means to lift the bag out after mashing and into into another bucket or pot, sparge it with about 5L of near- boiling water and add that back to the stockpot on the boil. Your mash efficiency should be quite decent this way but you'll possibly need to adjust hops up by 10-20% due to the stronger wort in the boil being less efficient at isomerising the oils from the hops.

I'm fairly sure the most common pot is 19L (ex- BigW), but there may be others in circulation, not that it really matters though. Oh, and like I've said before, my more- traditional 3- vessel system is on hold while this 19L/ BIAB thing works so well, although its inevitable that I'll finish it one day.

Let us know how you get on, and good luck!

 

[shark]

Thanks guys. Been a great help.

RdeVjun... Perfect.... Exactly what I was looking for.. Thanks heaps. Will keep you all updated. Now burner shopping