Hi guys
I'm a member of a local home brew club who mostly do extract or 3 vessel, and last weekend I put on a BIAB demo day. My club has a "club keg" which is owned by the club and a few times a year a brew is done at a mash day and the beer is served over the next couple of meeting evenings of the club until empty, then a member will volunteer to host a mash day, and so it goes. This time I volunteered to fill the club keg and we did a 23 litre (six gallon) brew of a UK Old Speckled Hen attempt.
Club members were shellshocked, because dough in was at 11.45 and the beer was into the cube (I use no chilling, do a search on this great method ) at 3.45 pm - and the three BIAB beers on tap were very well received during the social gathering.

Point of this post being that with BIAB you can make beers as good as any other method, in less time, with less equipment, and with total confidence ..... The whole club is waiting to taste the brew (at the January meeting as we are in recess for Christmas of course) So I have nothing to hide behind , nothing I tells ya

Beer4U wrote:Steve from Gippsland, Vic here...
Followed a link here from PP on AHB. Looks like a friendly little community...

Hi there Gippsland Steve and you others,

It is a friendly community but we are a bit hopeless with the welcome mat in this thread - lol. I save reading this thread up for when I have a bit of time up my sleeve because I really enjoy it but there's too much to acknowledge here whether it be Fulcrum's funny first line above or the fact that Steve lives in a district I worked in for a while. (I lived in Yarragon Steve and glad you found the link ).

Just had a look and this is the thread with the most reads on the site - twice as many as any other thread to date and 150 reads for every post .

So thanks to all of you for providing a great read here and apologies that we don't give your posts here the acknowledgement they deserve anywhere near as much as we should.


PP

Welcome everyone. I think this is a great forum where everyone can learn something.

And a special welcome to The Yank who lives in my neighbourhood.



Cheers
Dick

oz11 wrote:Hi all!

Oz from Kent, UK
Have done one kit and two extract brews, now looking to do a mini BIAB following the guide and the Amarillo APA recipe. Is the finished brew anything like an SNPA? The missus is a big fan of that beer so if it's similar that'll get me some mega brownie points!

Hoping to be able to use my ritchie's boiler and the mash/sparge bag that came with it as a way into AG without extra expenditure. Is the bag going to be okay for this method does anyone know?

The instructions that came with it say to mash in the boiler then run-off and sparge into a separate vessel leaving the grain in-situ, but I'm liking the idea of just removing the bag without worrying about sparging and needing to clean up another bucket.

Many thanks

Hey Oz & welcome to all the Australians, Britons, Americans and Scandinavians showing up of late!

Oz, I've responded to your queries over in the Mini-BIAB feedback thread, it will save cluttering up this thread with discussion and also hopefully help make info easier to find in future.

Whoa- I look away for a second and lo! and behold, even more brewers sign in- a big welcome to all newcomers!
(Nb. I try not to delve into to much discussion here in this thread, but a little bit won't hurt now and then... Mods- feel free to relocate if you think it is warranted.)

thylacine, the Mini- and Maxi-BIAB guides should interest you, might need a bigger fermenter for the latter though! When your registration is approved all of the images and downloads hosted here should become available.

DC_Bob, you should be pleased with the improvements All- Grain brewing can make, once you try it you'll know there's just no turning back. BIAB can be just a step in the process of migrating to AG or it can be the end, for me it is the end but not in a bad way.

No_Secondary (what a gr8 nick!), there's a couple of ways of doing that:
a) Passive lagging: Overheat the strike water by 5-10C, place lagging/ insulation (lots of it where you are), allow to cool to strike temp, add grain, stir and re- cover. Pre- heating everything equates to less heat loss during the mash. Importantly, just leave it be, I wouldn't regularly lift the insulation off to check the temp, stir etc, it will just lose even more heat and gains nothing but pain. I would check it after 15 minutes though and adjust if need be with extra infusion, but other than that just leave it to do its enzyme thing.
b) Direct- heating during the mash: A cake rack or upturned colander covering the base of the kettle to keep the material away from the hot base. You must stir the added heat quite thoroughly and it tends to be unevenly distributed.
I much prefer option a). It is probably nothing compared to yours in NJ, but here in the winter by pre- heating and using loads of insulation I can repeatedly limit the heat losses to around 1C during a 90 minute and longer mash, quite a feat of thermodynamics IMO!