Help Using 2 X 19ltr Pots For Biab

[Beer&Kebab]

Hi everyone.. I have made several brews using a cheap 28l Eski and a piece of Swiss Violle material not even fashioned into a bag. I would just lay the material into the Eski and wrap a piece of elastic around the outside of the eski. I would mash 4kg in about 14 lt of water then after an hour I would add about another 8 - 10 lt of near boiling to perfrom a mashout. Stir like buggery, bunch the material and carefully pull the grains out and put into a bucket to drain. Transfer the wort to the 2x19lt pots and then comence the boil. This was working OK until the local mice decided to take to the eski and eat holes in it. I guess there was enough residual flavour there for them to go at it. There was nothing inside the eski. They kept going even after I removed the lid. Anyway, I now want to try using 2 x 19ltr Big W pots that I have to do the mash. I buy 25kg bags of JW pale grain crushed. So I try and use it pretty quick before the enzimes die and the bloody mice find it. My question is how would experienced BIABers go about this. I am thinking of mashing say 4kg of pale in one pot with say 14 ltrs and then heating the other pot with 10ltrs and then transferring the bag for a mashout to the 2nd pot. I have no idea what temp the 2nd pot should be or if those levels sound good. What do people reckon ?

 

[seemax]

No sure on the exact volumes but your proposal could work.

4kg with 14L... lift and drain and should be left with maybe 11L worst case.

Meanwhile heat 12L to 76C in the other pot, dunk the grains into this, stir hard, sit for 5mins, then drains as much as possible... at a guess you would be left with 11L maybe. A side note though, the 2nd pot will have a low SG compared to 1st due to 2nd runnings... i would measure and use beersmith to adjust for hop utilisation.

So your preboil volume is 22L, post boil about 18L. How do you drain the pots, with a tap on just tipping? If no chilling, I would just tip it all in together, trub and all.

OR... if you have the time and money, get a 50L plastic tub with lid from bunnings ($10-15)... fit a plastic tap (drill hole and nut).. and you have a BIAB mash vessel...

 

[Beer&Kebab]

That is pretty much exactly what I am aiming for.. 22l preboil 18 post. Hopefully somewhere around the 1045 mark. The 50lt tub from Bunnings is like my old eski.. Plastic. Not mice proof. I just wanted to give the 2 pots a go and see how efficient I can get it. It is hard to work out the temps. I thought 77/78 was a the ultimate mashout temp. So if I added the bag from a 66 mash to a 76 pot my guess is it would only be about 72 degrees once stirred.

 

[katzke]

That is pretty much exactly what I am aiming for.. 22l preboil 18 post. Hopefully somewhere around the 1045 mark. The 50lt tub from Bunnings is like my old eski.. Plastic. Not mice proof. I just wanted to give the 2 pots a go and see how efficient I can get it. It is hard to work out the temps. I thought 77/78 was a the ultimate mashout temp. So if I added the bag from a 66 mash to a 76 pot my guess is it would only be about 72 degrees once stirred.

Well because BIAB is supposed to be easy I would just split the grain and do 2 mashes, one in each pot. Then you could combine them when the volume works out. With only a 19L pot to boil in I would think mashing a little thick like you would make a smaller volume higher gravity beer would work and not hurt the efficiency too much. Then you could just top off the fermentor for your final volume. This would limit you on higher gravity brews because of efficiency but it would still work for even those brews.

Or to keep it even more on the simple side do a partial mash and use Dry Malt Extract for the rest.

 

[WarmBeer]

Buy a cat.

 

[joshuahardie]

Having done this before, I found it way easier to do two simultaneous mini BIAB's rather than swap the bag from one pot to another.

I found that just adding hops to one pot was the easiest way, and blend the hopped and the unhopped worts into the fermenter

Good Luck
Josh

 

[Beer&Kebab]

Buy a cat.

I am surrounded by cats. Neighbours on both side have them. Doesn't seem to do any good.

2 votes for doing 2 mini mashes and combining after boil. I like the idea. The less I have to drag the grains in the bag around the better. I would just spl;it the hop additions evenly into each pot as they are boiling.