Brew in a solid "bag"

Reason I haven't been posting here recently is because I have gone all heretical and gone in a slightly different direction.
I found with full volume BIAB I was getting a lot of trub and wasting ingredients due to cloudy wort into the kettle that was ending up with up to 3L of cloudy gunk per brew. Note I say into the kettle, not out of it, as the wort out of the kettle after a good boil and a floc can be as clear with BIAB as any other system. However clearer wort into the kettle (i.e. clearer wort after hoisting the bag) would be a clear advantage for better wort recovery rates.

Problem mostly caused by BIAB not forming a "real" grain bed that allows for recirculation, a bit of a sparge if desired... etc.

I decided to look at a solid sided "bag" method and came up with a bucket-in-urn idea. I works extremely well, and I have sold my 4 BIAB bags

It goes like this:
20L $6 handy bucket that fits snugly into the electric urn. The bottom of the bucket has been drilled. Into this goes a kitchen strainer from supermarket (bashed into a pork-pie-hat shape and the handles cut off) which is wrapped in a bit of voile for better filtering, and secured in place with some silicone hose to provide a fine false bottom the wort must pass through.

Mash same as BIAB then hoisted gradually on a block and tackle, with a bit of recirculation just using a jug - a cheap pump could be an option - until the wort runs clear, having been "forced" to pass through the grain bed that has formed at the bottom of the bucket.

Advantages: virtually identical to a soft bag BIAB without having to handle a wet hot bag, similar entry cost, better wort recovery, easy clean up. Also because this is a "double jacket" setup, the mash actually loses virtually no temperature during the mash.

It shares with BIAB the basic idea that it removes the grain from the wort, not the wort from the grain (as 3v systems do)

Just thought I'd share this
Cheers

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Believe it or not, in the last hour a guy on another forum has published a picture of a bucketbag he has run up on his mother's sewing machine. Now this has got me really interested

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We love heretics

I think this could be a great idea especially for narrow diameter pots where pulling the bag is much harder than in a wide pot.

Couple of things I'm wondering... Your voille material looks very coarse in the picture. Is it possible your original BIAB bags were too coarse?

I'd also emphasis to people that they need to make sure the bucket is food-grade at high temps.

Great idea mate

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Yep, that one looks very coarse but I was actually looking at the pics in Bribie's first post here. It might just be an optical illusion or something but my voille is a lot finer I think.

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The top pictures were actually a "grain bag" from CraftBrewer which is a bit more open weave than voile, but I have a couple I use as hop socks. Together with the strainer in the middle shot they combine to form a fairly fine filter, I guess as good as voile. The bags are fairly big and I'm wondering if they are also the ones sold by paint stores - could well be - but they can be doubled over when folding to make the filter even more dense, might try that.

The pail is polypropylene which is the same stuff used in those UK "Electrim" boilers, actually a bit more robust than Polyethylene. I think that bucket fermenters are polypropylene as well?

After mashing and cleanup the bag can also be used to filter the remaining wort in the kettle which increases yield even further.

Just as a bit of background, before trying the "solid bag" method I built a lauter tun

Using a $60 false bottom and:

BIAB as normal but with a thicker mash
hoist bag and tip all the contents (grain and any wort already collected)into lauter tun,
recirculate with a jug pouring gently onto the grain bed until the wort is running clear - and boy was it running clear

do a fly sparge with very hot water until the runnings hit 1015
collect wort in a couple of bowls
pour all back into urn and boil as normal
It made great wort but I won't be doing it again as the hassle just isn't worth it to me. It's basically what a lot of the micros do, using one pot as mashtun and boiler, with a lauter tun on the side.

The process took me about 6 hours and at the end of it I had more vessels to clean than the kitchen at the Calcutta Railway Station
So the false bottom has now been sold and back to a single pot system

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Just to bring the thread up to date, although I was getting better efficiency and trub control with the "brew in a bucket" system, that's at the expense of having to do a sparge to extract the goodness that is left trapped in the grain in the bucket. So by the time I've done the extra drain and the increased boil length to bring the wort level back down to what it would have been with "pure" BIAB I felt I was really no further ahead.

So I'm back to BIAB.

Total cost of experiment <$20 so I'm not complaining.

but sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.... (J Wayne)

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good to have you back

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Experiments are always fun. Good on you Beachbum .

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