Switching from BIAB to AG

[Spartangreen]

Currently I do BIAB, and (IMHO) make good/great tasting beer @75-80% efficiency. I made around 100 gallons in the last year using this method. BIAB is pretty easy, I raise the temp up to 165F to do a "mash out", dunk the bag in the water a few times, squeeze the bag, then boil...etc...

I recently purchased a 10g Home Depot round cooler and made a plumbing supply manifold in the bottom with a ball valve. So everything you need to go all-grain.

My plan moving forward is batch sparging by using one of the online sparge water volume calculators.

So can I just add my grains to my hot mash water
Drain it after 60/90 minutes into my kettle
Add the entire sparge water back into the grains
Mix it really well let sit for 10 minutes
Drain that to my kettle, to meet my desired pre-boil volume.

Is there any issue with my plan?
Cheers!

 

[LLBeanJ]

Plan looks good.

You do realize that when doing BIAB, you're doing all-grain, right? The only difference between BIAB and traditional mash/lauter tun (MLT) brewing is the lauter, i.e, removing the grain from the wort (BIAB) or removing the wort from the grain (MLT). Everything else is the same.

 

[trboyden]

I love it when people go out, buy the equipment, and then ask whether they are doing the right thing or not! :smack:

 

[Spartangreen]

I do understand both methods are "all grain" as there is no extract in the equation. My question was about feedback on my method.

There seems to 800 diffent methods for sparging out there, using various methods of complexity. BIAB is simple, and I want to translate "simple" into using a mash tun instead of a bag.

Is there something i'm missing by...As stated above, by "removing the water from the grain vs. removing the grain from the water"?

 

[RyRae]

Just make sure to drain off a few quarts of wort, and then add it back to the top of the MT, to set the grain bed prior to draining your first runnings. I've noticed that the slower I drain the first runnings the better efficiency I end up with in the end. It normally takes me 45-60mins to drain my first runnings. I have no clue if there is science to back that up, but its something i've noticed. Hope you didn't burn a couch to stay warm during this polar vortex, being a Sparty and all. That was a hell of a game. Cheers!