Updated list:
1 - People did this 30 years ago. If you have any superstitions about doing things that people did 30 years ago, it may be best to avoid.
2 - It is 'harder to do' than BIAB according to some people.
3 - It is 'harder to make' than BIAB according to some people. (I disagree with this one already from experience, emphatically.)
4 - If you are interesting in this concept you are the cause of some good ex-posters leaving this forum. Can you live with that?
5 - If you have a bucket you should just be a 3V brewer. Why? Well just because.
6 - If using a pump you'll get bacteria in your pump that can not be killed by any method known to man
7 - 3v people might act like little kids and taunt you about your beer making.
8 - The acronym for Brew In a Bucket is the same as Brew In a Bag. This alone is reason enough not to do it.
9 - People may end up making "HELP! Stuck sparge in stove-top beach-pail in a Big-W stockpot!" threads. Presumably this would further drive off the mythical former posters.
Mark, thing is - you've got it right. No one (until bum just did anyway) has articulated a good reason why this wont actually work, because having just gone back through the thread, nobody has tried to do so. No one actually thinks (or at least has said that they think) it wont work. It will work. Its a perfectly reasonable way to go about mashing and lautering and no one has said anything different. Not even bum, he didn't say it wouldn't work, just that it wont work particularly well for the reasons that people seem to want it to work.
Will it be easier than a bag? Debatable at the least. Maybe - I think not, but what's easy for me might not be easy for someone else.
Will it sparge as well as a traditional fly sparge system? Not the way you are planning to do it and not without considerable dicking around. But it probably will sparge better than a biab bag. Not i think better than a dunk sparged bag, but better than the "pour over" methods.
Will it make clearer pre-boil wort than a bag? if you vorlauff enough, or you recirculate during the mash, yes it will.
Are there other ways to achieve what it seems to me (us?) that this idea is trying to achieve, but do it more effectively and with either no, or very little, extra equipment or difficulty? Yes there are.
None of that means it wont work or that its actually a bad idea. It will work and its not a "bad" idea - It just means that maybe it wont work quite as well as you'd like and that its very possible there are a few somewhat better ideas to choose from.
I actually quite like the set-up you have made for yourself. I think you will encounter some problems with it, but nothing insurmountable or so cut and dried that i might not just be wrong about them. I think its just the ticket if getting rid of the bag is your primary goal and all the other stuff just falls under "fringe benefits"
Good luck with it
TB
oh - PS. i dont at all like your "shower" wort return. Its nicely made and looks cool, but HSA is bad - not an issue really for straight mashing, but if you are going to recirculate for an hour??? all that splashing for all that time is way less than optimal. have a look at the other re-circulating system threads and see how its generally done. lots of options all based around even distribution of the incoming wort and minimal splash. The shower is cool for just a sparge - I'd re-think it as a wort return for a recirculating mash.
Thanks TB, this is better feedback.
1 - Easier or not, that is what I am looking to find out with my experiment. None of the people that claim it will be less easy have explained why.
2 - Any actual sparging is something I'd only be planning on doing for the first batch if I don't hit my pre-boil volume. However I would like to note that it's not possible to do a dunk sparge in single-vessel BIAB, to be fair. So if I do a mini fly sparge in this system by say tipping a kettle of hot water into the hole in the top of the bucket that the pump normally goes into, that is a seriously easy thing to do compared to the BIAB alternative, and requires significantly less clean up and less vessels. If I end up needing to sparge(rinse) with 2L of water to reach my desired top up level then next time I will start with more water.
3 - Clearer wort, as I've mentioned a few times my intention is to focus mainly on using a bucket as an alternative to a bag, with a simple hoist and drain off (no sparge or recirc). However because I have a pump, I am going to test some after mash recirculation as well. Firstly an automated vorlauff using the pump, and then a recirculation to mash out temperatures for presumably extra grain rinsing. This is an experiment only, where I'll be measuring SG at different points and taking samples of wort in clear glasses to note the differences (if any) in clarity.
It is very important to note that it's an experiment only. As it's an experiment, the absolutely ideal outcome would be that the pump / recirculation is a waste of time from an efficiency and clarity point of view, as that would mean that I can do away with it and keep my setup as simple as possible in the future. But I figure doing experiments is a way to know for sure rather than blindly following what is said here (I have done that before only to find out that you actually get bad advice here a lot of the time, as opinions are regurgitated to the point of them being consensus despite not everyone having first hand experience in the matter).
4 - What are the ways to do what I'm trying to achieve more affectively with no or little extra equipment or difficulty?
5 - Any of my input into this thread is about me doing an experiment to see how affective this system will be due to not receiving the right kind of information from other posters that would educate me on its shortcomings without needing to experiment. If this information was available it would certainly have saved me some time and effort (not much though, as everything I've done so far has been really easy). Now that I'm most of the way there I won't be turning back without experimenting though.
6 - Yep, my primary goal is definitely getting rid of the bag. I don't like bags, installing a sky hook in my brew area would be more effort and more costly than buying / making an eski mash tun. However I don't really have enough room to store a 3V setup either, so there's no real clear alternative for me. I can't see any benefit to the bag from a cleaning or handling point of view (this I don't know from experience yet) or constructions of bag / bucket (this I do know from experience now, the bucket I made was far easier to construct than my attemps at sewing a bag). And yes anything else I would consider a fringe benefit, if I measure and find said fringe benefits.
7 - Regarding the shower wort return, thanks for this feedback. It's the part of the design I'm least happy with and I was wondering about HSA. I won't be recirculating for an hour though. I'll be leaving the bucket in the urn for an hour just like with a bag, no pumps, no stirring, just fully lagged and sitting there. Then the bucket will be hoisted on to wooden supports to allow draining. I'll only start the recirculation process as an experiment to measure any extra clarity or efficiency gained in doing so. I imagine it would be 15 minutes max.
Do you think it'll be okay for that? If not what about if I cut it into a smaller disk that floats on the surface of the mash and has bigger holes?
)
