Brew In A Bucket Why Not Indeed

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I reckon Thirsty Boy and Bum have hit the nail on the head.

So much discussion about a method that was routinely practiced by homebrewers more than 30 years ago!!!


John: Look Ive grown a new fruit?
Andrew: Thats not a new fruit, its an orange!!
John: Its not an orange, its a yellow Babouche!!!!
Andrew: Yeah....whatever
 
So do you reckon that looks ok matho? Or is that the magnet exposed?
I can't tell tim but if ppl are using it without reporting anything wrong then it probably OK, I'm just getting this taste in the back of my tongue almost in my throat that i haven't had in my beers before and i know that beer very well as its kinda my house beer

BTW the new darren the pump is only used during mashing so the wort will be boiled for over an hour anything that can survive that deserves to be there

cheers matho
 
I can't tell tim but if ppl are using it without reporting anything wrong then it probably OK, I'm just getting this taste in the back of my tongue almost in my throat that i haven't had in my beers before and i know that beer very well as its kinda my house beer

BTW the new darren the pump is only used during mashing so the wort will be boiled for over an hour anything that can survive that deserves to be there

cheers matho


No probs Matho. However, there is plenty of evidence that shows that infections can be derived (and often are) from crevices under false-bottoms/mashtuns even in major breweries. The way I look at it is that the "heat-resistent bugs" are able to get a stranglehold and increase in numbers in the tun. It just takes one or two to lodge themselves in a "cooler" part of the boiling aparatus and voila, infection you have. A non-sanitary pump will most likely be a fantastic place for this to happen.

I doubt your "flavour" you are detecting is bacterially derived as it would bgenerally take a few batches without cleaning the pump before you would see problems. I would guess its plastic from the pump or the lines you are using that are not heat-resistent.

cheers

tnd
 
No probs Matho. However, there is plenty of evidence that shows that infections can be derived (and often are) from crevices under false-bottoms/mashtuns even in major breweries. The way I look at it is that the "heat-resistent bugs" are able to get a stranglehold and increase in numbers in the tun. It just takes one or two to lodge themselves in a "cooler" part of the boiling aparatus and voila, infection you have. A non-sanitary pump will most likely be a fantastic place for this to happen.

I doubt your "flavour" you are detecting is bacterially derived as it would bgenerally take a few batches without cleaning the pump before you would see problems. I would guess its plastic from the pump or the lines you are using that are not heat-resistent.

cheers

tnd
Very interesting "the new darren", could you list any links to these heat resistant bugs? I think I have one and would like to eliminate it.
Daz
 
Daz,

Lactobacillus sp and Pediococcus sp are the most common heat resistant spoliage organisms. Like I mentioned, it only takes a vouple to get through the process and off it goes.

cheers

tnd
 
The incredible detail I'm getting with regards to why this isn't a good idea just keeps growing and growing. I think I'm going to make a list as a sort of FAQ so that if anyone is thinking of giving it a go later, they can take these important facts into consideration before hand so that they make the correct decision for their own circumstances.

A working draft:
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.

Feel free to add to it guys. You too Darren, have fun mate. You are on my ignore list anyway so it won't bother me at all.
 
A working draft:
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 - You'll get bacteria in your pump that can not be killed by any method known to man
 
The incredible detail I'm getting with regards to why this isn't a good idea just keeps growing and growing. I think I'm going to make a list as a sort of FAQ so that if anyone is thinking of giving it a go later, they can take these important facts into consideration before hand so that they make the correct decision for their own circumstances.

A working draft:
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.

Feel free to add to it guys. You too Darren, have fun mate. You are on my ignore list anyway so it won't bother me at all.

Hahahaha..

7 - 3v people might act like little kids and taunt you about your beer making.
 
5 - If you have a bucket you should just be a 3V brewer. Why? Well just because.
I think you are, quite possibly deliberately, missing the point on this one. What confuses me is when some (perhaps not you, I cannot recall) state they are interested in following this method in order to chase a 3v-like grain bed to filter their wort but they just rip the bloody bucket out and the liquor runs out in significantly less time anyway. What further confuses me is when people say "I'm sick of pulling the bloody bag out" (fair position) but then are happy to pull the bucket out. More confusion still ensues when people then go on to say how they are also chasing a more 3v-like sparge from the bucket - unless you've got a second bucket to soak the first(tun/bag-ish) bucket in for a period of time then you're still just rinsing (and if you're doing this I'll ask you to count the vessels you're using and cleaning). As already stated by someone vastly more informed than I (and someone who is much less prone to voice any sort of disapproval so that should have your ears pricking up already) you're doing away with many of the simplicities of BIAB(ag) when converting to BIAB(ucket) (bloody hell, having to make that distinction is reason enough to do away with the idea) or BIAU or whatever nonsense you guys end up calling it.

You know, good luck and good beer to anyone who is doing it but don't pretend you're doing something better - you're inheriting the bulk of the flaws of both methods and doing away with many of the positives.

I am looking forward to "HELP! Stuck sparge in stove-top beach-pail in a Big-W stockpot!" threads though.
 
Good luck around here, mate.
 
The incredible detail I'm getting with regards to why this isn't a good idea just keeps growing and growing. I think I'm going to make a list as a sort of FAQ so that if anyone is thinking of giving it a go later, they can take these important facts into consideration before hand so that they make the correct decision for their own circumstances.

A working draft:
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.

Feel free to add to it guys. You too Darren, have fun mate. You are on my ignore list anyway so it won't bother me at all.

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.
 
isn't it just like a ghetto braumeister?
 
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?
 
Mark, I'm currently working out the process on a Bucket-In-Bucket system which I inherited from an old brewer from way back - (http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=58730&st=0). Personally I don't care if it's easier, harder or a wierd mix of the two, I have the buckets already and I'm going to get them working brilliantly. I have an esky lying around to make into a mashtun one day but not if I can see these buckets working well enough. Don't let the nay-sayers detract from the results of your experiment...

When I have used a bag, it was easy to clean, the bucket is a bit of a bitch in comparison, I'll sort out an easy way soon enough.

I like the idea of a recirculating pump, I have done mine manually with the jug but a pump would make it far easier especially if doing step-mash or ramping to mashout. I'm keen to hear how your experiments go with the pump and what you settle on as far as wort return (I used a plastic lid on the grain bed but it was literally a bit hit and miss).

Good luck mate!

Cheers,
Shred.
 
One thing i certainly agree with is that the bucket will be easier to handle in the sense that it won't bulge and drip everywhere as a bag does as you pull it out. This was a large factor in me giving up the bag.

As for the 15min recirc, you'll definitely get extra clarity as opposed to just pulling the grain out. How are you doing this, Prior to lifting or after. If after, i'd lift the bucket only to just at the level of the wort in the urn to minimise the splashing (and HSA) as the wort made it way through the grain bed and back into the urn. Or look at some way of allowing the wort to gently return to the urn
 
Thanks Shred.

argon, yeah I found the same with the bucket and yeah this is my last attempt at single vessel brewing. If it doesn't work, I'm getting a mash tun and doing two vessel brewing. The reason I haven't gone straight to that is because this idea has piqued my interest as an easier and cheaper way to overcome the issues I have with the bag.

The bulging of the bag, the dripping, the lack of hook which requires me to use a second pot, tying it up on my vice on my garage bench so it can drain into the second pot. Then when I want to transfer from second pot to boiler worrying about it still dripping on the floor, making me think I need yet another pot to swap in there to catch drips!

I also find cleaning the bag an absolute pain, worse than cleaning out the boiler afterwards. I can't imagine I'd find cleaning the bucket a pain. When the filter is removed it's tiny and can be rinsed under a tap easily. The bucket itself is rigid and can be hosed / wiped out.

With recirc I was led to believe that the bucket would need to be at least at the level of the wort, or higher, to ensure recirculation occurs correctly. I intend to have it as close to the wort as realistically possible, so I guess at whatever the desired pre-boil volume is plus a centimetre for good measure.
 
I think the problem you had with the bag was probably the lack of a skyhook

fair enuff. There was a reason I only did one BIAB without one ;)
 

Latest posts

Back
Top