Hello all. I've been brewing on 3-vessels for a long time, but these are my first serious steps into BIAB. So, I've been reading around the forum and now wanted to check if the resulting plans are reasonable:
Volume: I want to do double corny batches (~40L) and occasionally single-keg (~50L or 13 US gallon) batches up to OGs of about 1.060 or so - as full volume mashes. It appears that a 70L (18.5 US gallon) kettle would be possible but that 100L (26 US gallon) would be more comfortable, so presumably 100L would be best.
Base thickness: I already have thin stock pots in either size, or I could buy a thicker compound-based one; reading around I gather that thin pots are okay with a well dispersed flame and have quicker heat transfer, whilst thicker-bottomed ones spread the heat better. As my burner will be reasonably well dispersed I may stay with my thin pots, HOWEVER they are really quite thin, 0.7mm (~1/32", ~23gauge), and I will be wanting to add heat to take wheat beers from a 43C (109f) ferulic acid rest up to mash temperatures without denaturing the enzymes. Under these circumstances, would anyone advise me to buy the thicker pot?
Warm air blanket: Finally, to save gas I'm going to have a shroud around the kettle, to direct hot gasses up the side of the kettle and prevent the wind blowing them away from it. This will hopefully improve heating efficiency a bit, and (being hotter than the kettle) these gasses will also prevent it losing heat from the sides too. Thats pretty tried and tested by other people for boiling kettles, but I'm thinking that for BIAB I could also use it with a (very) low heat during the mash - just enough to keep a warm blanket of air in the shroud around the kettle, and so stop the mash cooling almost indefinitely. I guess that I wouldn't need to be too accurate with the burner control, as long as the temperature differential is kept reasonably small it would take a long time for that much grain and liquor to change temperature noticeably. Does this sound reasonable?
Any thoughts or ideas would be much appreciated!
Cheers
Kev
Please sanity check my ideas for a gas-fired kettle design
Post #1 made 9 years ago
Last edited by Kev888 on 23 Jul 2014, 19:56, edited 1 time in total.
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