Ag Gear.... What Do I Need?

[raven19]

What is this "Voile" stuff anyway ? and where does it come from???

You should be able to get this material along with cheesecloth, etc at Spotlight here in Adelaide mate.

 

[Cocko]

Mate,

It would work easy!

You have an insulated vessel for the mash, if you make a bag/lining you could you could just lift the grain out and pour the wort out into the kettle....

BTW: Do you have kettle? How do you plan to boil?

 

[chappo1970]

All you need is an understanding wife... who's father owns a brewery. Simple?

Don't go boiling your grains in a bag...

 

[pokolbinguy]

BTW: Do you have kettle? How do you plan to boil?

I am acquiring a keggle and burner from some local brewers.

 

[skippy]

G'day Kenny,
Here are a couple of piccy's of my skin fitting before I mounted it in my mash tun.
Cheers
Doug
View attachment 19667View attachment 19668

I recognise that therm setup for a MT Dougie!

 

[Nick JD]

I do a lot of small (10L) batches using a 15L pot, a candy thermometer and some swiss voile, on the electric stove top.

I have mashed 4kg in this pot and added a bit of adjuncts to correct the OG for a 24L batch.

For $35, you can make great AG beer if you are not aiming for high volume batches.

A secondary benefit of small batches is you learn much quicker what sucks and what doesn't recipe-wise - you also learn just how much you can get away with (a hell of a lot of the "rules" of AG brewing can be broken with very little affect on taste). I do two or more little brews a week. Only takes two and a half hours from crushing grain to filling the cube.

I'm all for "the perfect setup" and will have one one day ... but for those moving to AG be aware that you don't need to spend $500+ to make tasty all grain beer.

 

[RdeVjun]

I'm in a similar position to Nick JD and quite a few others, I BIAB in a 19 litre stockpot on a domestic gas stovetop. Having come through the ranks of K&K, K&B and extract brewing, it was the next logical step for me without incurring much expense in trying my hand at AG. With a few stainless buckets (ex- dairying), clearing cubes, fermenters, tubing, glassware, and bibs & bobs leftover from my previous brewing, the stockpot and a BIAB bag was all I needed to do the switch, so it can be just so simple and also very cheap to get into AG through this route if you've brewed before.
One other aspect is that if you find that it is just not the method for you, for whatever reason, then you haven't thrown a heap of dough at gear that you may not end up using. On the other hand, it is an inexpensive way to see if all grain brewing is your thing and then go on to develop some of the techniques.
If it proves a hassle getting material for the BIAB bag, then a few of the AHB site sponsors are able to supply one quite cheaply. Its not perfect by any means, but more than adequate to get started, I used one of Ross' to start with and it worked just fine, but a generous fellow brewer gave me his that has a drawstring and had become surplus. (BTW, again, many thanks for that pal! :icon_cheers: )
Full- sized batches can be done with dilution, i.e. 23 litres, although sometimes I've just been filling 15 litre cubes with smaller batches to try a few different things out, but its much the same amount of effort for less beer, so most of the time I aim for full batches. Sparging is fairly important to do this though, unless you want to increase the grain quantities significantly.
+1 for doing smaller batches initially and sussing out which rules can and can't be broken, its not as demanding and onerous a process as some literature would lead you to believe, while thinking outside the box comes highly recommended! Good luck!

 

[PistolPatch]

Because my drilling skills are better than my sewing skills Pat

LOL! You don't need any sewing skills these days, Nev's Mum does it all for us now. See here.

Good to see you back into it mate :icon_cheers:
Pat