BIAB setup upgrade?

[skipper564]

Me and my father have been brewing LME. We are looking to make the next step up to BIAB. We have 3 pots ( 1-3gal and 2 that are roughly 10 gallons a piece). Any advice as to what upgrades we will need to start BIAB?

 

[solbes]

The two 10 gallon pots will be perfect. You should be able to mash 15 lbs easy with that setup, and then dunk sparge in the second 10 gallon pot for 10 minutes. Combine worts and boil away. Easy.

A couple of things you will eventually want. You can get 2 five gallon paint strainer bags (nylon) from Lowes/HD for $5. That will work fine, but is not quite fine enough to prevent all the flour from entering your wort. A custom bag made from fine mesh voile will reduce your trub loss as you rack out of primary.

Next would be a grain mill. For now you can double mill the grains at the your local store, buy a cheap corona mill ($25-30), or bite the bullet and get a double roller mill that attaches to a drill ($100-250).

Nice to haves are turkey fryer baskets and rope/pulley system to suspend the bag as it drains above the wort. Propane burners are nice for garage brewing. Immersion chiller for full volume boils if you don't already have one.

 

[wilserbrewer]

For a five gallon batch, a ten gallon pot should be adequate for an average gravity batch. So basicly you will need a method to heat / boil the wort, a BIAB grain bag to line the brew kettle, a decent thermometer to monitor temperature, some blankets, towels, or old winter coats to insulate the kettle during the mash...it's not that difficult! Happy brewing!

 

[Foosier]

I agree with Wilser. The bag is number 1. A big voile bag will make your life easier. You can make them your self if you know someone who sews or buy one from Wilser. I assume you have a burner since you already have 10 gal pots. If not that is key.

Last thing you need for sure is a chiller. You will absolutely need a chiller of some sort or it will take forever to chill unless you do no-chill.

That is the bare minimum equipment you need.

As you scale up, the grain mill is a really nice item but your LHBS likely will crush for you. Just be sure to ask for double crush to improve your efficiency.

 

[jtratcliff]

I do stovetop BIAB with one 10 gal kettle for mash & boil, one 4 gal kettle for dunk sparge, and a $4 voile curtain from Ikea. Sounds like all you really need is a "bag".

I can get 12-15 lb of grain and 7+ gal. of water in the 10 g kettle. it gets very close to the top but that's good for heat retention. I don't need blankets or any thing to hold temps within a couple of degrees for a 1 hour mash.

I can't dunk sparge with much more than 1.5 gal in the smaller kettle though, so your 2nd 10 gal will come in handy there.

I use the greenbay rackers mash calculator to check my volumes.


BIAB can be simple if you let it

 

[mb82]

I will third or forth the bag. Voile is great stuff. A grain mill is nice to have also. Oh and a wort chiller is nearly a must have.

 

[daksin]

Yea, apart from a bag, it sounds like you have everything you need. A mill is optional, but important to have if you want to buy grain in bulk.