Brew in a bag in a mash tun? lols.

[RobWalker]

Humph, so something's striking me and I reakon it could be a good AG solution.

For all grain brewing, you need a mash tun coolbox, boiler, chiller. My chiller is a no-chill cube, boiler is on the way.

For BIAB brewing, you mash the grain in your boiler using your full water volume, and get good efficiency. The water is then immediately boiled, no sparging.

Rather than go to all of the effort of converting your boiler with a false bottom and what have you, is it plausable to do this?

1) Mash in a coolbox with a tap attached, standard AG method, using the full water volume, grain in a mashing bag.

2) When mash is completed, lift the bag and let it drain out completely (maybe do this over the boiler?)

3) Transfer liquor to boiler, and begin boiling. Grain bag would have eliminated the need for a filter system on the coolbox because it's just liquid that's gonna go through.

It would require a large coolbox, but would this work? Argos currently do a 42 litre for £30, and I have a £35 voucher with no reason to use it!

 

[calumscott]

Erm...

To do this you would:

Heat up your mash water in your boiler (acting as a HLT).
Add the full length to the mash tun
Dough-in into a bag
Remove bag and drain
Pump wort back to boiler, now acting as boiler

Why *wouldn't* you bung in the false bottom?

You can then achieve the same BIAB effect just by mashing the full volume.
You also have the ability to mash and sparge if you so wish.

But saying that...

If your grain bag was big enough to fit fully inside your tun - like a sort of tun-liner... it would act as the false bottom anyway wouldn't it (so long as you had a well enough built scrounger that didn't block up I guess) which would then also give you both possibilities but without the expense of the false bottom - just a scrounger device and a tap...

...I think?

 

[RobWalker]

Ah, you have a point...transferring from boiler to coolbox back to boiler is pretty pointless...

 

[calumscott]

It's not really. That's exactly the setup I'll be buliding because then I only need one heating pot, one burner, one set of taps and scroungers and whatnot keeping the cost down.

I'm going with 70l HLT/Boiler and a 50l tun which means that I would be able to, should I wish, use exactly that process. Heat the full length water in the HLT/Boiler, transfer all to the tun, dough in, mash, drain off to an FV and pump back up to the HLT/boiler.

Or, in theory using a bag: Heat the full length water in the HLT/Boiler, transfer all to the tun with the bag in place, dough in, mash, remove bag and pump directly back to the HLT/Boiler from the tun.

Or, Heat the water, transfer the initial mash volume to the tun, dough in, mash, sparge, collect runnings to an FV and pump back up to the boiler.

With that setup you have the ability to do things like mash-out (which, to be frank I don't actually understand any of yet), sparging, your "BIAB stylee thing which might just work" or a more "normal" full length mash etc. I have to think that having the flexibility to be able to do all of that has to be a good thing!

 

[RobWalker]

Yeah, I'm thinking similar. But then on the other hand, it would take about 15 quid to convert a home made boiler to a bigger one, and the coolbox is a set size. More than anything, I just don't wanna reach the point where I'm having to maxi-biab or anything. It's very doubtful I'll get to batch sizes past 23L. Quite frankly I find them too large to really play about with recipes as it is.

But I do see what you mean about the flexibility. On the other hand, there's no reason I can't buy a seperate mash tun later on - plus the insulation on the boiler for mashing would help the boiler hold temperature better.

Mash out improves your efficiency and deactivates the enzymes btw, I forget what the effect of that is.

 

[calumscott]

I think there is mileage in the idea - even if it is just to get a really speedy - no-stress brewday in.

I have no idea what the timings are and how long sparging and mashout would actually take but as I understand it those are the labour intensive parts.

Bringing your water up to mashing temp gives you time to get your ingredients and other gear ready.
Dough in and you're free until your mashing time is up.
Straight into the boiler and once you have your steady rolling boil its just a case of popping back and hopping on schedule.

That really does sound effortless, and for tried and tested favourites I don't see why it wouldn't be a great option to make quick stock batches of "house" beers...

 

[Buzzing]

RobWalker,

I do BIAG style AG brewing in a 50 l keggle.

The false bottom is really not an issue at all.

I use a circular stainless steel mesh (catering places sell them, I think it's a type of oil-spatter stop ?) that simply sists on a circular stainless steel frame (used in a gas-bbq set).

These two just simply sit at the bottom during mashing and gets removed after the removal of the grain and prior to boiling.


The process you describe would force you to dough in at strike temps, prevent you from doing a stepped mash, make for a longer brewday and result in more cleaning.