Biab Insert

[reviled]

Goddammit all this worrying about pulleys and inserts, if its just a single batch just lift it out with your arms, seriously, its honestly not hard... If youre worried about lifting for sustained periods just throw the bag in a bucket and let it drain out that way...

If you find it hard, by all means feel free to blame me

edit : Or as Mantis suggested - buy me a ticket over and ill lift it for ya

 

[staggalee]

I am in an apartment and will be doing this outside in the car park... I would have to create a crane structure to support a pulley.

Could be the answer?

stagga.

 

[KingPython]

I am in an apartment and will be doing this outside in the car park... I would have to create a crane structure to support a pulley. I even thought of a large tripod, but the insert idea seems more logical to me in my specific instance, expecially with large batches.

Look on youtube for a video on Alton Brown deep frying a turkey. He uses a ladder and some pulleys to get the turkey in and out. I'd feel ridiculous doing it inside though so don't know how'd you feel.

 

[MarkBastard]

Goddammit all this worrying about pulleys and inserts, if its just a single batch just lift it out with your arms, seriously, its honestly not hard... If youre worried about lifting for sustained periods just throw the bag in a bucket and let it drain out that way...

Has anyone done any experiments with regards to how much efficiency you get if you do the following...

1 - Lift and toss the bag without draining.
2 - Lift and drain the bag passively (ie no squeezing).
3 - Lift and drain, and squeeze as much moisture out as possible.
4 - Lift and drain, squeeze, then sparge and lift drain and squeeze again.

Because it seems to me that 1 & 2 wouldn't require a pully. 1 just requires you to be able to lift the weight of the bag, that's easy enoguh. 2 requires you to lift the bag and maybe hang it on a door knob or some other hook with the actual bag hanging into a bucket.

You guys that BIAB outside, do you have problems with insects and even just little things flying around in the air? I'd be a bit paronoid about crap getting into the brew.

 

[Katherine]

Doesnt everybody brew outside???

ummm I cover my pot with the lid and then a towel. When its boiling I dont bother... boil the crap out the f*ckers.

 

[MarkBastard]

Doesnt everybody brew outside???

ummm I cover my pot with the lid and then a towel. When its boiling I dont bother... boil the crap out the f*ckers.

What if you're draining a bag in a bucket? It's basically cooked sticky grain just sitting there. Sounds like the kind of thing insects would froth at the mouth over.

 

[hosko11]

I only do partial biab's in a 20Ltr pot so I'm not dealing with the mass or volumes of wet grain you guys are, but this thread got me thinking - what about a BBQ spit (or bucket and water well) concept for those that can't mount a skyhook/pulley somewhere.

You need 2 vertical support poles mounted to the pot handles, a bar sitting across the two support poles that can be turned (I was thinking those cheap car jack winder in the boot of the car) and some sort of attachment lugs on the bar for attaching the bag. Turn the handle, the bag wraps around the rod, lifts up out of the pot and at the same time gives the bag a squeeze. Strap the handle to the support so it won't let the bag down and let it drain.

Need to think through the weight bearing ability of the handles and any stability issues..... just an idea and could be achieved with a few bits and pieces lying around the house.

 

[MarkBastard]

That's one of the best ideas I've heard PPP.

If you had two cross bars, one fixed and one as a roller, the bag would get sort of squeezed between them too.

 

[Bizier]

In all fairness, and with all due respect to the "laundry roller" style idea, how can this possibly be simpler than a strainer that is inserted before the bag, then when lifting, simply hooks onto the top of the kettle?

 

[hosko11]

I actually doubt you'd need a 2nd roller. I'd guess the weight of the bag would be enough to squeeze itself and drain. I personally don't squeeze my bag too hard, I just massage it a little and give it gentle squeeze.... I rather let it drain on it's own accord - I'd hate to end up with a split bag. h34r:
Cheers,
Hosko

 

[mesa]

Has anyone done any experiments with regards to how much efficiency you get if you do the following...

1 - Lift and toss the bag without draining.
2 - Lift and drain the bag passively (ie no squeezing).
3 - Lift and drain, and squeeze as much moisture out as possible.
4 - Lift and drain, squeeze, then sparge and lift drain and squeeze again.

Because it seems to me that 1 & 2 wouldn't require a pully. 1 just requires you to be able to lift the weight of the bag, that's easy enoguh. 2 requires you to lift the bag and maybe hang it on a door knob or some other hook with the actual bag hanging into a bucket.

You guys that BIAB outside, do you have problems with insects and even just little things flying around in the air? I'd be a bit paronoid about crap getting into the brew.

I'd very much like to hear the results of such experiements (I want to improve my lauter efficiency). http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title...ding_Efficiency gives some interesting maths. If you can be bothered weighing yourself and the bag a) after lifting it B) after draining it passibly c) after squeezing it we could get how much water is absorbed by the grain and calculate efficiency. You only really need the 3 numbers (which you can get from one brew) and we can calculate the rest.

I should mention, I'm batch sparging, but I think I have a lot of dead space. Using a bag in an esky that can be lifted, I think its possible to massivly reduce dead space and grain absorption. If the one estimate I've seen for absorption in BIAB (0.5L/kg after squeezing) is correct, I think it may but the lauter efficiency for option 4 at about 96% (10kg grain bill into 40L sweet wort in two equal runoffs) which would be pretty much excelent even by fly sparge standards. (you might start having some serious pH issues though in the second runnoff)

 

[PostModern]

That's one of the best ideas I've heard PPP.

If you had two cross bars, one fixed and one as a roller, the bag would get sort of squeezed between them too.

Please shrink the image in your sig. It's ridiculously large.
Thanks.

 

[troopa]

I have a pulley but im too lazy to install the bloody thing
Lift the bag straight out and put it in a bucket
Then hang the bag up from a door knob, chair with phone books on it or any other devise, thing, stuff you can tie a knot around

7-10 kilos isnt that much even for most women... my wife carries our 12 month old son around half the day and he would weigh more then that now

The hieght of lifting it out may be a problem
Solution... get a lower pot stand

Other then that im sorry but id have to agree with the purists here as much as i hate the idea of that
KISS it and make great beer

Stainless steel basket large enough to fit even a 40litre urn will probably weigh in the region of 2-4 kilos and increase the difficulty of lifting the thing up

Tom

 

[PistolPatch]

Someone sent me a link to this thread and have had a quick scan through. Here are a few random thoughts...

Those starting AG should start with minimal equipment and expense. So, do at least four or five single batches without pulleys, insulation or anything. This is fun and easy and will give you a great beer. Just follow the guide and nothing will go wrong - no burnt bags, no low efficiency, just great beer.

You will by this stage be absolutely dying to complicate things and this is half the fun. Some ideas make things easier and some things just cost you money with zero benefits. A pulley creates a hell of a lot of advantages but I still recommend doing 4 or 5 single batches before you get one.

So a pulley is number 1 improvement.

There have been several mentions of a stainless steel basket above. There is nothing wrong with this idea and if I could get a basket that had holes small enough to do what the bag does then I would go for it. There isn't one unfortunateley - it would cost you a fortune. So now you are thinking a bag within a stainless steel basket. This is a good example of an over-complication. On the surface, it looks as though it would be great but in reality, you are just creating more work.

The idea of a false bottom as originally mentioned in this thread is also a perfectly sound one but won't solve anything major that a pulley won't solve. It will give you peace of mind but you shouldn't use it as an excuse not to give your BIAB brew a bit of a stir when applying heat. When I have to do a major increase in temp say from 66 to 78, I actually use my pulley to lift the bag to the top . This way I don't have to stir. When it reaches 78, I turn the gas off, lower the bag and give the mash a bit of a jiggle. A false bottom, unless it was a very high one (which would then be useless) will not stop you having to do this if you don't want hot spots in your mash.

Thinking about making your existing set-up more complex (and this applies to both traditional and BIAB brewing) is great fun. I love it and quickly go out and implement anything I believe to be a "grand idea." Most of the time these grand ideas fail. Occassionally we have a small win and rarer still we have a big win like BIAB.

I have several mates who have very complex automated traditional brewing systems. They love thinking about them and improving them and tinkering. It is all good fun and I love seeing what they are doing and I get excited about it! The reality is though, that the more automated their system becomes, the more they have to keep an eye on it!!! And, there is a lot more cleaning! Their systems rapidly become vary inefficient.

There is nothing elegant about pulling apart ball valves to clean or trying to flush counter-flow chillers and pumps. Some home brewers actually have a lot more technology and ball valves in just their mashing and kettle system than many micro-breweries have in entirety. (It is no less time-consuming cleaning a small ball-valve than a big one. Bare that in mind!!!)

If starting out in AG brewing and you know the basics of cleanliness and fermentation then I think you couldn't go too far wrong in making the following your priorities...

Before you Even Start AG Brewing...

a) Ensure your Equipment is Accurate - Most thermometers and hydrometers are inaccurate. How is yours?
B) Find Recipes for Beers You Enjoy - Taste your mate's brews and join in AHB Swaps. Brewing Classic Styles by Zainasheff (Jamil) and Palmer is a great book to help you here.

Now, Brew Simply...

a) Brew with Minimal Equipment - This not only keeps things cheap, it keeps things simple. If you can't brew a brilliant beer with BIAB or the most simple traditional system, then improving your equipment will not help. If anything, it will slow you down.
B) Play Around with Software - After your first brew, download the free version of BeerSmith or ProMash. (If you have a Mac then go straight to Beer Alchemy - I just bought a cheap second-hand Mac laptop mainly so as I could use this great brewing software!) Doing this will give your brain something challenging to muck around with besides playing with your equipment!!! This should keep you confused and occupied for ages - lol!

And, After That Have a Good Look at Quality, Litres, Variety and Time/Effort

What is most important to you? Quality of your beer, litres you can put out, the variety of beer you have to drink or the time it takes to do a combination of the former? What is your desired Q:L:V:T mix? Every brewer will have their own favourite ratio. Everything is a compromise so be very aware of what advice you take on board. Will it improve or sabotage your QLVT?

I''m not sure if I can even, in a post, break down what is important in each of the above areas but I'll have a crack

a) Quality - If this is the area that is important to you then educate yourself about styles, yeast strains, pH, temperatures, lagering etc. You should still be able to brew the highest quality beer using the most basic BIAB or traditional set-up so don't use your equipment as an excuse for not making the highest quality beer.

B) Litres - I think the first things you need to look at if volume is your major consideration is double-batching and no-chilling. I double-batch a lot but usually give half of the batch to a brewer friend and they reciprocate. The maximum use of an average home-brew kettle would require the ability to double-batch and then cube (no-chill) half the kettle volume then chill the remaining batch for immediate ferment. I want to learn no-chill so am going to give this a crack on my next brew.

c) Variety - How many types of beers would you like to be able to drink? Do you like an occassional dark beer? If you have found a few recipes you like, then this can be a challenging question to answer. If you have stayed focussed on finding and brewing a few recipes you really, really like, then you are doing very well. You have gone way beyond getting hung up on the minutiae of brewing (eg, my efficiency went from 75-78% and realising these figures are totally unimportant if you have accurate equipment) and into the the real world of brewing.

d) Time/Effort - I think the biggest thing that is forgotten when brewers start to complicate basic brewing models is time and effort. Quality, Litres and Variety are the easiest things to master if the brewer wants this and puts concentration into these areas. Time and effort is the hardest area to get rewards in. On the surface, it seems easy to make great strides in this area but, practically, it rarely is.

For example, assuming we chill our beer, putting a tap on our kettle will make things faster and quicker. Right? (If you no-chill, a tap is pretty much necessary but still read on.)

Well, putting a tap on your kettle requires a ball-valve. These are lovely to use but you still have to pull them apart to clean them - even though it is on your kettle and exposed to high temps. This takes considerable time. An auto-syphon (assuming you are chilling) is quick and fairly easy to clean but still quite awkward. What is the better method?

In brewing, the more you complicate and automate, the more you have to really consider that Q:L:V:T. Most brewers don't consider it because complicating and automating is pretty exciting stuff and it is in our nature. We add a pump, ball-valve or solenoid and think that is great.

It is certainly in my nature to try anything as those who have known me since the day I joined this site will testify.

Real Brewhouse Efficiency

So often I see here and elsewhere questions on extract/mash/kettle/post-boil efficiency - i.e. how much sugar you extract from the grain at varying stages. Nearly all these questions derive from an over-reliance on faulty equipment or, more usually, mis-information, poorly-defined and wildly passed on. The funny thing is, if they are BIABers or batch-spargers, and brewing as prescribed on a single batch, they should be getting 75% mash-efficiency on average. Agh! Talk on efficiency drives me mad! It is so easy to get 75% and that is all the home brewer needs!

I would love to see some new brains focussing on how us home brewers can better clean. I think cleaning is the most under-talked area in home-brewing and the one that could do with the best thinking. It sounds boring but it is the most under-explored area in brewing there is and the one that most urgently requires our attention.

Whoops! Wrote way more than I thought...

Must be time for bed,
Pat

 

[Cocko]

Awesome guest appearance PP and a great post, as always.. sincerely!


If a lifting/filter 'bucket' was to be easily viable surely it would just be a stainless 'bucket' style something with whatever size holes lined with a voile bag to ensure filtering and all is achieved!

Just a thought.

please carry on. :icon_cheers:

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Ok BIAB
BREW IN A BAG is supposed to be simple
But what about BREW IN A BASKET
If a stainless basket was devised like a fish and chip basket, hot water sparge over the top?
Simplicity is the key not cost, a stainless basket costs more than a bag but if it works why not?
Pulley or no pulley who cares, it's still brewing.
Purists can argue about method but....
Remember that taste is important over method.

People are I think missing my point,

An insert would work, in fact it is proven to - you don't even need a stainless one. A standard 20L food grade bucket with a crap load of holes drilled in it works. Just as per the bucket in bucket mash tun. Go back to the original threads where BIAB was being developed, and the insert was tried well before the bag was. It worked just fine. For a while there were two "single vessel" methods developing in parallel. Its just that the bags seemed to appeal to more people and were supported by more loquacious proponents - interest in the inserts dropped off.

There is no argument of purist vs non purist BIAB - no one cares. There isn't even an issue with whether these ideas would work or not. There is only the fact that all the complicating factors make the BIAB thing pointless.

Aside from the basic one vessel, bag, burner - you don't need anything. Pulleys etc are optional - you do not need a pulley to do BIAB. And even if you do decide you want one - seriously... there is nowhere where you live that you could throw a rope over?? What about the washing line? a tree branch? a rafter? stair rail, hook screwed into a door frame? I live in an apartment and can see a good 3 or 4 places where I could attach a rope/pulley.

But if its still too much trouble - got a weak back - the bag gives you the willies - then there are other ways to brew. They are tried, true and nearly as easy as basic BIAB. Other people have solved all their problems and you know 100% for sure they can be made to work.

All I'm saying is don't get fixed on the BIAB paradigm, there are others and they might save you a bunch of angst and effort if the stock standard BIAB stuff isn't doing for you what it should.

If you want to invent a new method or variation of a method - then that's different - go for your life and I'll truly be interested in how it works out. You just don't need to do it is all.

TB

 

[reg]

The whole point behind this thread was to stimulate conversation and discussion on ideas behind changing from a swiss voile bag to look at something like an insert with holes fine enough to allow wort through but grain in.
I really do appreciate the feedback that people have found the time to share on this forum.
For me with my young family, shift work and community commitments BIAB is the way to go and I will be for a while I would imagine.

Unfortunately though it is very cost prohibitive with quotes for the basket coming in around the $300 mark.
Looks like I will get a false bottom to cover my element and continue with my urn.

I burnt a hole in my bag with a mongolian burner, I lifted the bag out and heated from mash temp to Mash out and then put bag back in.
I unravelled bag to stir grain and put lid on for 10 minutes, this was when it burnt as the sides of the pot were hot and put holes in the voille.
Lessoned learned, I now brew in my 40 litre urn. Just need to cover the element for my own piece of mind.

Once again thanks for your replies

Reg

 

[Thirsty Boy]

damn - that burner must have some grunt

I'm not a big fan of the lift the bag out technique - and you named one of the reasons. I am (in case anyone missed it) a fan of the leave the bag in and stir the crap out of it technique. That way your mash is more effectively pulling in the heat and things stay more homogeneous and less likely to have really hot spots.

Its harder - but it just works.

Heres an idea if exploring ideas is the name of the game.

Stainless bolting cloth - a Spillsmostofit idea. Spills and I have been (as an intellectual exercise) kicking around the notion of how you could BIAB on a small commercial scale. Spills is a fan of doing away with the voile and replacing it with an alternative. His alternative suggestion is the stainless bolting cloth.

Check your screen printing and industrial filtering type sites for information.

Basically it would be a bag made out of a fine stainless mesh cloth - still fundamentally a bag.... just a stainless steel one.

I have no idea of the costs though.

In all the permutations I personally came up with ... basically it came back to the voile, or an industrial equivalent. I looked at needled polyester felt (and bought and trialled some too) but I think it is a poor option. For me - its more or less a voile bag reinforced with webbing to take an industrial sized malt charge - usually with the voile replaced by a version of bolting cloth (polyester rather than stainless) and a combination of agitation and shielding to protect the fabric from overheating and melting near the heat source.

I think I have a workable design for a 150-500L BIAB system, modular in up to three units to give a total 1500L brewery - Spills likes his design better. But he's funny like that

Don't let me saying that "the extras are a waste of effort" put you off trying for a better solution - you don't need one. You should and I have no doubt could tweak your methods to make your voile and mongolian combo work for you - but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be cool as buggery if you came up with an alternative.

TB

 

[MarkBastard]

How about building the false bottom into the bag kinda?

Imagine a bag with a base. The base has legs on it so the base doesn't get as hot as the bottom of the pot, and the base holds the bag off the bottom too. The base could just look like a big version of those grills that go over PC fans. Sort of a bunch of coils. So it's holding the bag off the bottom without affecting drain off etc.

Now imagine if you had another one of these bases, but on the top of the bag. Then imagine if you could bring these two things together in an easy enough way so that they are squeezing the extra wort out of the bag. Possibly even inside the pot. You'd have to be pulling the base up against the top.

You'd probably need a pot with a fair amount of head room in it. Dunno if there'd be any real benefit but being able to squeeze the bag in the pot would be kinda cool. You could give it a squeeze as you're pulling it out and then just discard it and not worry about using buckets etc to collect drips.

 

[Bizier]

Aside from the basic one vessel, bag, burner - you don't need anything. Pulleys etc are optional - you do not need a pulley to do BIAB. And even if you do decide you want one - seriously... there is nowhere where you live that you could throw a rope over?? What about the washing line? a tree branch? a rafter? stair rail, hook screwed into a door frame? I live in an apartment and can see a good 3 or 4 places where I could attach a rope/pulley.

All good TB, and in the end I will do what I see working.

For single batches, I can see myself not needing anything other than a bucket to dump the bag in. But for double, triple batches, or high OG beers, I can see that I might need a slightly different approach.

I am on the top floor of an apartment with no balcony, so I am going to be brewing in the car park. It is basically against the sheer wall of apartments that are not mine (thankfully the lower one is a brewing neighbour that won't mind the smell). There is absolutely nothing to hang a hook from, zilch, nada. Thus my idea of a freely draining shelf that remains under the bag while mashing and clips to the top of the kettle when finished mash-out. You only have to lift a little way when full of moisture, hook it in place, then place the lid on the top as the liquor drains.

I understand that this is substantially different from the original SS insert idea replacing the bag.

I understand that BIAB is a working concept, and a blessing for someone in an apartment like myself, and I don't want to make it seem like it has fundamental flaws. I will do some testing of my own and see what works best for me in my instance.