A Guide To All-grain Brewing In A Bag

[Katherine]

I guess Im no average girl, as I love my pulley system to lift my bag.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Thats the thing with the whole skyhook/pully thing ... a normal healthy human most likely wouldn't need one to brew a single batch... but bloody hell its nice to have the pulley if its not an issue to rig it up.

And of course it doesn't need to be pulley ... it can just be a bit of rope tossed over a beam or hanging from a nice sturdy hook screwed into a door frame or something.

If you can - go the pulley - If its a pain in the bum to rig up... you certainly don't need it to brew BIAB.

 

[Bribie G]

I love my pulley not because it makes it easier to hoist the bag (actually it's a single pulley not a multiple) but I can hoist then tie off the cable and it drains at it's own speed while I bring the wort to the boil, havafewbeers, etc. However it's quite possible to do a hoist n squeeze without a pulley especially if it's a smallish grain bill like this 4 kilo example, where much of the bill (maize) had been almost fully digested away by the enzymes.



Although it can be an energetic affair, cross between arm wrestling and strangling kittens

 

[pdilley]

Thanks for the above Pete!

While you're at it, tell BribieG to do the same

Mate, I know I'm good but I'm not "that" good to pull of miracles!

hehe

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

P.S. I'm sure if you ply him with spicy beef vindaloo or better yet a recipe he will fill one out for you

 

[Phoney]

*update*

Mission complete! My brew day was a success and it went off without a hitch. Well, almost. Last night while I was cleaning my hydrometer rolled off the bench and smashed into a million pieces! So I ran down to kmart and got a brigalow hydrometer, it's accurate enough but the POS only goes up to 1.040! wtf. Oh well it's enough to get me out of trouble for this batch. Other than that it all went ok. It's easy once you know how, although it's not really any more time consuming or complicated than doing an extract + mini mash....

anyway, pics or it didnt happen!

water heating up with colander element protection in place

in go the grains

Oops, a little too high. So I kept the lid off and agitated the grains for about 10 mins until it dropped to 67.0C.

Mashing away

After 60 mins it dropped to 65.0C. Then I turned the heat back on and after 10 mins it got to 79.0C for the mashout. Close enough for my first attempt I reckon.

Tent pole tripod pulley system in place

The dye ran from these welding gloves and made the bag go pink. :blink:

Boil away

Drain into the cube

And its all done!

I guess the only thing ill do differently next time - besides getting better temperatures - is run a lead outside and have the urn out there. a) so that my laundry doesnt resemble a sauna for 60 mins, and b ) so that any spilt wort doesnt need to be mopped up!

Big thanks to Pistolpatch, BribieG and everyone else in this thread for all the helpfull advice... Here's to many more BIABs! :icon_chickcheers:

Now it's time for the reward beer! Chimay Blue... :chug:

 

[Bribie G]

Good work. Re the squeezing the pink bag into the pot, ALDI currently have really cheap and big plastic nappy buckets, I bought one. You can drop the bag into the bucket and do a mini sparge with two or three litres of very hot water, hoist on the tripod and chuck it back into the boil, less messy than a pot as well.




How big is the cube? There's a wee bit of headspace going on there and I would be looking for more exclusion of air but no big dramas if you are pitching soon. I use a 20L cube but it actually holds around 23L .


However that's just small details and tweaks, well done mate.

 

[Phoney]

How big is the cube? There's a wee bit of headspace going on there and I would be looking for more exclusion of air but no big dramas if you are pitching soon. I use a 20L cube but it actually holds around 23L .

The cube is 25L, after it stood it upright I loosened the lid and gave it a squeeze. There's only about an inch of headspace there now.

4 hours later and it's still hot to touch! I was hoping to seal the fermenter later tonight, but looks like it'll have to be tomorrow..


cheers.

 

[crundle]

Well done phoneyhuh!

Looks like a fairly textbook brewday, a few minor dramas and some lessons learnt for the next brew. The welding gloves can be supplemented by large size protective rubber gloves to give them that waterproof character, and during the mash try throwing a cheap doonah or some blankets around the urn to give it some extra insulation, you will find the temp will only drop about 1 degree that way over the entire mash.

ooking at the picture of the cube, it might pay to try to get some of the air out of it prior to sealing, normally accomplished by painfully squeezing the cube between the knees whilst tightening the lid, or as I have come to do, squeezing between the feet and the wall, as my tenders are a bit sensitive to just boiled wort!

Looking forward to hearing of many more good brews from you,

Crundle

 

[nikgr]

Dear friends my name is Nick and I am homebrewer of course, from Greece . I was amazed when I red about BIAB technique and I will try to learn as much I can , to try it as my first AG batch .Keep up the good work .I will promote and support this technique to my home forum to help spread this new technique.

 

[PistolPatch]

Dear friends my name is Nick and I am homebrewer of course, from Greece . I was amazed when I red about BIAB technique and I will try to learn as much I can , to try it as my first AG batch .Keep up the good work .I will promote and support this technique to my home forum to help spread this new technique.

Wow Nick - what a pleasure it is to have a Grecian aboard! A warm welcome to you from all us BIABrewers and all those here on AussieHomeBrewer.

I have seen that BIAB is going well or raising interested eyebrows on USA, NZ, English and Irish forums but I don't think we have a European ambassador yet. It looks like you might be the man!

If you have any questions, please just ask them and someone will get back to you within a short time. We might save you a bit of reading at least.

What forum are you on? Is it written in Greek or English?

Cheers to you :icon_cheers: ,
Pat

 

[PistolPatch]

*update*

Mission complete!

Now it's time for the reward beer! Chimay Blue... :chug:

Phoney, I saw your post and pics on the weekend but never had time to post. I just sat back and enjoyed them. Thanks mate for a great post.

It was great to see you post and take all those perfect pics with such enthusiasm. I have no idea how you had time to do it! I loved the 1.040 hydrometer, sauna and spilt wort bits

I've also been scanning your email whilst writing this. There are so many numbers in it my head is spinning - lol! We'll have a bit of fun though sorting out your volumes/gravities etc. I think for your next brew, we'll go through the process I just wrote in this post

Have a look at the 5 questions at the bottom.

Anyway, we'll talk more and congratulations :beerbang:,
Pat

 

[nikgr]

Thank you for your warm welcome.Our forum unfortunately is in Greek language and it is hosted by our local homebrew shop but is quite unbiased I can say .Homebrewing beer in Greece is just starting to move these days because of lack in homebrewshops (so far we have 3-4 in all country, most people here brewing wine ).So the only knowledge for us are foreign books and forums like yours.
Personaly I am new to homebrewing and I brew with extracts and I enjoy the procedure and the results and due to limited space (I live in a small apartment) so I identify my self as a stove top brewer (also I brew sometimes half batch 9.5 liters) so AG brewing with the traditional way is time and space consuming for my situation.Some piece of equipment like a German device " The Braumaister " seemed appealing but it is very expensive and then the BIAB method came like a gift from God actually I think and correct me if am wrong is a manual "Braumaister".So we discused here the BIAB method with some friends and we will try our first batch as soon as we found someone to lend us a big kettle.
I have some questions in mind in order to save time but I'll come back in another sesion
Thank you again for your welcoming

 

[crundle]

Hi Nick and welcome.

You will find that the change from extract to BIAB is minimal, and that you will be able to make the switch to BIAB quite easily. The kettle size you are after is likely to be around 40 litres minimum to be able to easily make a 23 litre batch of finished beer at a gravity of 1.050. Some people use 50 litre beer kegs (not sure how easy they are to get where you are) while others like myself use 40 litre urns.


If space is tight and you are able to get hold of them where you are, immersion heaters are great for heating up the water and boiling the wort.


If you are able to get them, camping mats are a great way to help insulate the pot during the mash and the boil (but not suitable for boiling if you are using a gas burner), while blankets and quilts are a good way to help hold in the heat during the mash



Good luck in getting your large pot, we hope to hear of your adventures shortly!

Crundle

 

[Bribie G]

Welcome, Nick. I was in Greece about 30 years ago and quite liked Greek Beer, but in those days there was a limited choice of Fix, Amstel, Alpha Beer and Henninger but I believe that Fix isn't brewed any more and the breweries are all owned by Heineken etc nowadays. So home brewing would be an attractive proposition there I guess. Also I remember Athens getting quite cold in the winter so you could brew some nice lagers there :icon_cheers:

For brewing in a bag you need to get a polyester material used to make curtains. Anything made out of cotton, such as cheese cloth, would not be very durable. Happy brewing.

Miki

well that was my name when I worked briefly at the Athens Pepsi Cola factory on the road out to Marathon, on the right hand side of the road if it's still there, my fellow workers couldn't get their tongues around "Michael" :lol:

 

[LLoyd]

In BIAB this step is also going to help to make sure you get clearer beer. Raising to a mashout temperature (while stirring the mash) is going to really help to make sure you convert all the starches to sugars. This will give you a "slightly" better efficiency, but more inportantly, it will stop unconverted starches getting into your kettle and maybe into your finished beer.

As an analogy....add a teaspoon of sugar to water at ~65C.....add a teaspoon of sugar to water at 78C....which disolves easiest?

JUst mashed out my latest IPA and have some measurements..
05min 46.0%eff
30min 67.5%
60min 67.5%
after raising temp over fifteen mins to 76C
75min 72.4%

Now I know my measurements are likely to be out slightly (I normally see a slight increase between the 30 and 60 min), but 4.9%points over fifteen minutes is significant!
I never used to mash out cos I thought "I'm pulling the bag out, so no need to kill the enzymes"
I will now....

 

[nikgr]

Dear friends thank you for your replies .
Speaking of eqipment so far I have found in the local market a 60 liters Aluminium pot measuring 45cm dia.X 37cm Height and it's affordable to me compared to Stainless Steel , you think is a good option or I have to wait a bit to buy the right stuff ?.For the bag material I will visit my local curtain material shop to find something similar to swiss voile and I think I will find something. For heating an immersion heater system as the pictured above is very appealing to me considering to brew inside in winter days and of course smaller footprint for storing the equipment after use.So if there are any recomendations or plans on how to built such a brewing pot is welcome my email is [email protected].
These are my thoughts for equipment so far . I keep reading on the method and I will ask for more techical stuff later on.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

60L aluminium pot will be just fine - almost perfect in fact. This will be big enough so you can do a single batch (20-25L) of any beer you want to brew without worrying about running out of room - 50L would probably be big enough if you can get one for less money - 40L is as small as I would ever recommend anyone buy a BIAB pot.

Aluminium is absolutely fine - I have over 100 brews in an aluminium pot and just bought a new one ... 60L aluminim, 45cm (diam) by 40cm H.

I like the immersion elements - a single 2400W element will do everything you need for a 20-25L batch and is a very versatile bit of brewing equipment. It will not heat and boil as fast as a big gas burner would ... but if you don't mind waiting 10mins longer .. it does the job well.

If you are already brewing extracts - you obviously have stuff like hydrometers, fermenters, hoses etc

So the extra equipment you will need to brew BIAB is :-

A pot - miniumum of 40L
The Bag - 100% Polyester sheer material
A good thermometer accurate in the range 40-80C
A big spoon, or some other way to stir the mash well. The paint stirrers that look like big potato mashers - are really good in a BIAB mash.
A chiller OR a container to No-Chill

It will make your BIAB experience easier if you also have:-

A way to suspend your bag over your pot. A rope and pulley, a hook in the roof - any of the things you might have seen in this thread that suspend the bag
A tap/faucet in your kettle. You can siphon your wort out of the kettle ... but a tap is much easier

And thats about it. When you aren't brewing.. you should be able to fit all your AG gear inside the pot. So it really wont take up much room at all.

Cheers and welcome to AHB

Thirsty

 

[drtomc]

Welcome also!

A big spoon, or some other way to stir the mash well. The paint stirrers that look like big potato mashers - are really good in a BIAB mash.

Of course, we know they''re not really paint stirrers, or potato mashers. They're mash stirrers adapted for the mass market.

T.

 

[nikgr]

Thank you again for your replies.The equipment I need as you mentioned is the pot , bag , and a chiller and of course a stirring device so I will try to get them as soon as I can to get started with BIAB brewing.

 

[PistolPatch]

Thank you for your warm welcome.

I think we all appreciate your interest and are grateful that you have taken the time to explore BIAB.

Some piece of equipment like a German device " The Braumaister " seemed appealing but it is very expensive... I think and correct me if am wrong, [BIAB] is a manual "Braumaister".

It certainly is and mimeryberg sent us pictures of the Braumaister in the early days of us exploring BIAB. He is currently working on building his own as you can see in this post. My goodness!

If you look back on these early days, you will see that I was also an apartment brewer (still am but now have outdoor space) and used to batch-sparge and then BIAB with my 3 ring gas burner. I always had a great sea-breeze in that apartment though .

I know little about BIAB brewing in an urn but I think it is certainly the way to go in an apartment - much better than what I used to do inside my old apartment. Crundle and BribieG above are both urn brewers and they are very willing to help new BIABers - good on them! They are really helpful brewers so make sure you ask them lots of questions. It's about time we all learned about urn brewing anyway as we have always been mainly focussed on gas rather than electric in this thread so far.

Anyway Nick, we will all look forward to helping you out and seeing a new thread here on AHB titled, "First BIAB done in Greece."


Pat