Melbourne Homebrew - hello

[chesl73]

Hi all

From Melbourne and just been doing kit brews over the last 12 months or so, beers have been tasting pretty good but I'd now like to tray all grain brews, the simplest approach to this appears to be the BIAB method so keen to give it a go.

Cheers

 

[boybrewer]

Welcome to the slippery slope . Where abouts in Melbourne are you located ?

 

[chesl73]

Hi

Caulfield side of town.
Any thoughts on best (reasonable selection/price) place to get the grains (milled), hops, yeast?
And you know any of these places selling an actual BIAB bag? Can't be doing with making my own.
I want to do small batches of BIAB as the problem I have now with the kits is I'm making 30L batches and it's taking me ages to drink it so I'm not actually brewing as much as I'd like.
I'm thinking of getting a 19L stockpot (seen one in Big W for $20!) and doing final batch volumes of min 5 to 10L.

 

[GalBrew]

There might be a thread somewhere about BIAB in a Big W pot!

 

[Wonderwoman]

I'm pretty sure Keg king in springvale have the BIAB bags for sale - but you should contact them first to check. They're probably also the closest place to buy grain near Caulfield - I get most of my grain from there. Otherwise there's many homebrew shops who'll deliver

 

[JDW81]

Lots of people aren't using bags any more, they just use a big sheet of swiss voile from spotlight or some such and peg it to the rim of their BIAB vessel.

Grain and grape is an option for brewing ingredients as well. I used to live in Elsternwick and the trip to G&G only took about 30 minutes. They probably have the widest selection of ingredients in Melbourne and they have good turnover so their stuff is in tip top condition.

JD

 

[Blind Dog]

Never bothered with a bag when I did BIAB, just a big circle of Swiss voile from Spotlight - get a square with each side equal to the diameter plus 3.5 times depth, fold it into a wedge like you did when you were a kid making snowflakes and cut in an arc at the larger end so it's a circle unfolded, then use heat to seal the edges. I held mine in place during the mash with a bungee cord

Only issue I had with Big W pot BIAB was siphoning the wort into the cube (I no chill). I found the simplest way was to sanitise the silicon tubing, then hold in a U shape and nearly fill with boiled cooled water, fold the cube end of the tubing over on itself to seal, hold, put that end in the cube ( still bent over) and then the other end in the wort, release the end in the. U e and the siphon should start. a bit of practice (with cold water) helped.