Move to all grain for less than $10

[Chubber]

Over on another forum there has been some discussion of a method of doing an all grain brew with one pot and no fancy equipment. The Aussies kind of came up with the idea, and they call it Brew In A Bag, BIAB. You can read about it here: BIAB on TBN (http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4650&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0)

I went ahead and tried this for a London Porter that I brewed this past Saturday. Here are my experiences:


OK all you poser 'tards, I put my money where my mouth is. I found some 100% polyester super tight weave and heavy duty fabric at Wal-Mart. I asked for voille, but the battleaxe that cuts fabric looked at me like I was a window licker and might start eating frogs right there in the store. So I found what I needed by assuming: 100% polyester (no absorbtion in the fabric and no strange flavors), strong and no color or surface finish. What I got was like wedding dress material and heavy. 2 yards set me back about $10. Oh, and some heavy rope cost me $5 but I still have 35 feet left. I sewed it up with blind rolled seams and used 100% polyester upoholstery thread. That stuff is tough!

Saturday I brewed a London Porter in a bag. I have pics.

My daughter models the bag. She is wearing no pants, which is why she isn't in any of the other pics, you pervs.
http://sarah.smugmug.com/photos/146011816-M.jpg

Random crap:
http://sarah.smugmug.com/photos/146012624-M.jpg

You think you guys have a nice system, check out this. The bag will actually go about 1/3 of the way down the outside before it comes off the bottom of the keg.
http://sarah.smugmug.com/photos/146013338-M.jpg

First, I made a big rootbeer soda. (Nah, that's mash)
http://sarah.smugmug.com/photos/146014020-M.jpg

Done mashing, ready to sparge:
http://sarah.smugmug.com/photos/146014303-M.jpg

Holy crap, that is heavy. Now, the material that I chose is very tight weave. You can breathe through it, but it would not be easy. And when it is wet, the water runs even more slowly. I forgot to mash out, so I pulled the bag on 154 degree wort instead of heating to 165 first.

I had to rig a "bag lifter". There WAS friggin' in the riggin'.
http://sarah.smugmug.com/photos/146014850-M.jpg
(My 3 year old daughter took that pic.) I kind of lifted the bag a little at a time, let the wort run down a bit and lift it a little more. It still took 20-25 minutes to "sparge". But I was heating the kettle the whole time (bag completely clear of the water so it wouldn't overheat) so I boiled about 5 minutes after finishing the sparge. Next time I am using a pulley to lift the bag.

If you lift the bag too fast, some of the wort runs down the side of your keg. And burns and gets stickey under foot. Mmmm, burned sugar smells.
http://sarah.smugmug.com/photos/146015270-M.jpg

Boil, immersion chill, ice batch chill while oxygenating and pitch. Mmm, mmm, good:
http://sarah.smugmug.com/photos/146016213-M.jpg

Well, here is how it worked out. Efficiency: high. I missed my pre-boil gravity by 4 points, but I had 1 gallon too much water. (I had to add extra water when mashing as my temps skyrocketed as I was heating. Next time I think that Ill get the water to about 156 and just put in the bag with the grain. I had put in the grain at about 150, so I could stir and adjust temps, but the temps were very different near the bottom vs near the top, even with stirring. I haven't done the math yet, but I expect about 80% efficiency as the recipe was set up at 75%.

Time was about 1 to 2 hours less than the average brew day. I mashed for a solid 90 minutes, probably more like 110 minutes by the time I got it all "sparged" out. But cleanup was much easier. Just took the bag to the garden and dumped it on the blueberries for mulch after it cooled. Only cleaning 1 pot was really nice too. Of course, the proof will be in the bottle in 2 or 3 weeks, but so far so good. If I had another yard or two of it I might be tempted to use the same cloth for a boil bag. No hot break or hop trub would get through it if it was not squeezed, I am sure of it.

I might just be doing this again.

I can see where mash pH might be an issue due to the "thin" mash, but with all of the roasted grains in this recipe, the pH was still plenty low for the enzymes to do their stuff. And it doesn't really scale to large batches. So you guys who do 20 gallon batches are going to be SOL. But for the majority of us, this might be the key to moving more people to all grain from extract.

[MrNate]

Brilliant. I always love it when conventional wisdom gets knocked sprawling by simple experimentation.

[danno]

was that a 10 gallon batch, or a 5?

[Chubber]

That was a 6 gallon batch, but my pre-boil volume was about 8.75 gallons. I did a 60 minute boil on it. With my equipment I would expect that a 10 gallon batch would be the upper limit on size, and getting all that grain in there with the water will be tough.

[vw addict]

I'll take my Brew Magic system and 5ish hour brew days thank you. I hate the "cutting corners" of a perfectly good hobby.

[Chubber]

Hey, it isn't for everyone, and it isn't going to work for all styles perfectly. But if money is what is keeping you from making the step up from extract brewing, this is a good intermediate step in cost and complexity. I can get all of the fresh grain flavor and recipe options that I wanted when I moved to all grain without worrying about sparge rates, multiple tiers, sparge arms, three different pots full of hot liquids, etc.

I think that many brewers think that the only way to make good beer is the mimic the pro brewers equipment. But pro brewers do a lot of what they do because of the huge volumes they work in and the efficiencies they need to make it profitable, not because it would make better beer. Me, I like to think outside the tun and try to get more people interested in making good beer. Nothing says you can't go forward from such a system, or back, but that is up to you. And not everyone has an extra $1,000 to $3,000 to get a big "system" right off the bat.

[barleyburps]

I love innovation as much as anybody, but how am I going to lift that bag when i'm 80 years old???

[Chubber]

Originally posted by barleyburps
I love innovation as much as anybody, but how am I going to lift that bag when i'm 80 years old???

http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/content/Item/22/12/01/i221201sq01.jpg

Can be found for around $10 at Harbor Frieght or $15 at Cabelas. You don't need the gambrel.

[Otis_The_Drunk]

I'm thinking more along the lines of it being a giant hops sack that is used for extream hopped beers. Hang it over the kettle long enough for the wort to drain off the hops. I'm thinking silk screen.

[wortchillergoal]

Originally posted by Chubber
OK all you poser 'tards,

As much as I found the information in the post interesting, I must protest the use of any form of retard in this fashion. I find it boorish and crude as do many parents of special needs children. It matters to us not if our child has Downs Syndrome or some other type of disability. Please do not use any form of that word, thank you.

[SirVeza]

I thought the apostrophe in "'tards" stood for "bas".

[Chubber]

I am voting for "leo" to come before "tards", but that is just me. (The original post was to another brewing board that is a little more freewheeling than this one I guess.)

Anyway, I did another BIAB brew tonight with a Russian Imperial Stout, shooting for a final gravity in the 1.087 range just to check the ability to do bigger beers.

Space was not a problem at all. I still had a "thin" mash with 10 gallons of water pre-grain, shooting for a 6 gallon batch. The bag I have is too thick. With the thicker wort it took forever and a day to drain and I know I left at least a gallon in the grains that just wasn't draining. I need to get some slightly thinner material. Silkscreening material might be just the ticket. Where would I buy that?

I didn't have any trouble making my gravity. In fact I was about 2 points low, but I had shortened my 90 minute boil by 15 minutes due to an empty propane tank.

Ill be putting my London Porter in the bottles in a few days, then tasting a week or so after that. Then the real proof will become evident.

[SirVeza]

Chubber,

Do you think that something like a white poly seed bag would work? I get barley in bags like that. The weave is not super-fine, but the husks would surely plug up the bottom and act as a filter. I guess my concern is the clarity of the wort.

I may give it a test on a small batch. Thanks for the inspiration.

Dan Carol
Homebrewing in the Philippines (http://homebrewinghobby.blogspot.com)

[Chubber]

Originally posted by SirVeza
Chubber,

Do you think that something like a white poly seed bag would work? I get barley in bags like that. The weave is not super-fine, but the husks would surely plug up the bottom and act as a filter. I guess my concern is the clarity of the wort.


Dan,

You don't mean burlap, right? You mean the poly replacement for that? I see rice in it here sometimes. I guess it might work. It will be HEAVY when wet. (probably 4 or 5 times as heavy as the same amount of grain) And the original design calls for a sack that you can put your brew pot IN, then it will be big enough to put in your brew pot.

You can't really rely on husks acting as the filtering media like you can in a standard mash tun. Lots of grain will spill out before the husks get to filtering. You can't recirculate, this is a one-way trip through the bag. In fact, the Aussies are getting the best results with a mash with a very hard crush, more than you would do for a standard sparging setup. I grind my grain pretty darn fine.

[SirVeza]

Yes, I was thinking about the white polypropylene woven sacks like bulk grains, sugar etc. are shipped in. Say 50 lb bags. They are tight weave, but still breathe. I think they would be a bit small to fit the kettle in though. It may be big enough for 1/2 batches.

I will experiment. If they work, there is now sewing involved, are foodgrade and they are found everywhere. As long as they didn't have something dangerous in they before.

I'm off to look for some fabric today.


Very cool. Thanks,

Dan

[Chubber]

Just to resurrect this thread, my second brew in the bag was an American Rye beer from the Austin Homebrew Recipe with some extra 2-row for a 6 gallon batch instead of a 5 gallon batch.

That Rye just took first place over about 20 other beers in a competition with over 500 total beers. (It has also been a favorite in my kegerator). It was my first Gold Medal and my first competition. The porter above scored well, but the competition was fierce and I let it attenuate too much to impress the jaded judge palates. I brewed that porter to be a low ABV session beer, so that doesn't surprise me.

I have done 6 BIAB batches so far. In fact, this last weekend I used my extra "mash tun" (another converted keg) to do two back-to-back brews, staggering them by about an hour so I could use the same bag. I got two done and in the fermenters in about 7 hours, grind to fermenter and all cleaned up.

I want to try another Rye, bumping the rye from 15% to about 30-40%. No worries about a stuck mash here!

[BrewDog]

Congratulations, Goob, er, Chubber!

[DecoJuicer]

WOW!!

I'm going to give this a try next week. My wife went out and bought the fabric($2 at Wally World) and some rope. She's going to sew the brew bag tomorrow for me.

I was amazed at the simplicity of this, and shocked that nobody ever thought of it before. After I make mine, I'll take it to the LHBS and let those guys sample it. After they have tasted it, I'll come clean about how I made it.

Thanks Chubber.

By the way, what's with that knit hat on that other site??

[BrewDog]

The knit hat is the "asshat". One of the regulars was wearing it in a photo posted early on to the board. It became a cult favorite. There are some funny pics and avatars incorporating it over there.

BTW, the podcasts over there are HIGHLY recommended, especially the Jamil Show ones (the Sunday Session ones have good info too, but there's an awful lot of grabass going on during them, not that that is a bad thing, it is just different, say from the atmosphere here on RB).

[Bob E.]

Sweet!
Has anybody tryed the polypropylene sacks? I can't sew.
...I could rivet it together. :cool:

[krisp]

I'm more interested in the "no-chill" method mentioned deep within that thread.. but I did recently build a wort cooler ....

[DecoJuicer]

Bob,

My wife is sewing me one this week. We already got the material. I'll let you know how it turns out.

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by Chubber
...like I was a window licker and might start eating frogs right there in the store....

Eating frogs is OK, but only as long as they are the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.

[lovenit]

Has anyone tried using a plastic feed sack yet?How much water would I have to start with to do a 5 gallon batch?
________
extreme q vaporizer (http://vaporizers.net/extreme-vaporizer)

[Chubber]

Originally posted by lovenit
Has anyone tried using a plastic feed sack yet?How much water would I have to start with to do a 5 gallon batch?

I haven't tried the plastic sack yet. My material cost me $3 and took 5 minutes to make into a bag. I couldn't get any better than that and I like to make sure it is clean before I go back at it again.

For a 5 gallon batch in a converted keg, I usually put in about 8.5 gallons for a regular gravity. I loose about 1 gallon to trub and stuff, and about 1 to 1.5 gallons to the boil. If you use a lot more grain (like 1.070+) you will need another 1/2 gallon or so because more will be soaked up in the grain.

[lovenit]

I finally tried using a feed sack for this brew in a bag method.The feed sack worked great but I think the method did not work so well.I heated up 8.5 gallons of water and put 12# of two row barley in the plastic feed sack.I kept the temp. between 150 and 160 for 2 1/2 hrs.When I checked the s.g.it was only1.020.I always get over 1.060.I took a gallon can and kept scooping out the weak wort and running it through the bag full of grain.I finally got it up to 1.045,which is still not very good.I know many of you were concerned about the weight of the wet grain,my thought was " how can 12# of grain possible ever be that heavy"?I know now it can.Trying to get that feed sack full of wet grain through a 12" hole in my kettle was not easy.I really did not save any time.I would still like to hear from others who have tried this method,an hear how they got any kind of efficency.
________
vapormatic (http://www.vaporshop.com/vapormatic-vaporizer.html)

[Chubber]

One thing that really helps the efficiency in this method is that you can run your crush a little tighter than you normally would. (At least I do). I have a Molina, so I can go as fine as I want, but I don't make flour or anything. I usually get in the 80% range, and I got around 84% on one mash. I often mash 60 minutes, though I will go 90 minutes sometimes. I don't think I have ever heard of anyone mashing for 2 1/2 hours before. Why the long time?

Also make sure that your bag completely fills your boil kettle. It needs to rest against the walls all the way around. This isn't a "steeping bag" like some extract brewers use.

[MrNate]

I used this basic concept doing a stovetop mini-mash and I thought it worked fine. I used one of the big steeping bags, which is big enough to fit my 7.5 gallon brew kettle as described.

Unfortunately, the only real advantage I see to this method is cost, and even that is questionable. For one thing, it's heavy to lift. For another, the sack is more difficult to clean than a cooler with a manifold. If you have a cooler sitting around the house, you could probably construct a manifold or screen for around $10 just as easily.

But it's still good to see innovation, especially in the field of laziness.

[Chubber]

Originally posted by MrNate

Unfortunately, the only real advantage I see to this method is cost, and even that is questionable. For one thing, it's heavy to lift. For another, the sack is more difficult to clean than a cooler with a manifold. If you have a cooler sitting around the house, you could probably construct a manifold or screen for around $10 just as easily.

But it's still good to see innovation, especially in the field of laziness.

I find my bag much easier to clean than my mash tun manifold. It gets carried to the garden, dumped, turned inside out, hosed off, turned back right side in and hosed again. Let it dry and it is done.

And even if you have the cooler for "free" you have to get a manifold, a valve, some tubing, another pot for a HLT, some way to heat it, somewhere to put it for storage, etc.

I do have to make a new bag about every 5 to 8 batches. At least with the material that I am using. I am still trying to find the right mix of mesh size and strength.

Without laziness there would never be any engineering progress.

[lovenit]

I was asked why I let my grain soak for 2 1/2 hrs. The reason was my s.g. reading was only 1.020.I was hoping more time would give me a higher reading,finally by filling the bag with the hot wort it released the malt.I tied my grain sack with 1/2 the top open so I could pour the hot wort through it,this seemed to finally release the malt.I think a grain sack is close to the perfect size for brewing in a bag.If I try this method again I will modify my bag so I can run the wort through it easier.I will also rig up some sort of pulley system to get the bag full of grain out of the kettle.
________
fourth generation subaru legacy (http://www.toyota-wiki.com/wiki/Fourth_Generation_Subaru_Legacy)

[Chubber]

I use a pully too to get the bag out of the kettle. I put a step ladder over the kettle and tie a rope around the top, hang the pully from it (a 5x reduction block and tackle I got from Harbor Freight for $5) and it lets me lift with two fingers. I like to let it drip for a while.

I do "dunk" when my gravities are over 1.055 or so. I lift the bag 1/2 way out, let it drip for a minute or so, then lower it back, push it around the pot again and lift it out slowly. For super big beers Ill do it two or three times. Seems to help efficiency.

[lovenit]

The block and tackle is a great idea,if I try this method again I will make sure I have one.I think re-dunking the mash is the only way to get efficiency up.I had to keep pouring my wort through the mash to finally release the malt.This was back breaking work but it worked.Dunking the bag I filling it with hot wort would be alot easier especially with a block and tackle.
________
rg500 (http://www.suzuki-tech.com/wiki/Suzuki_RG500)