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Brew in a Bag Introduction

Always looking for new ways to spice up our brewing process John and I decided to start thinking about Brew in a Bag. Brew in a bag, BIAB, has been gaining popularity over the past 5 years or so. Its a bit quicker and less intensive than traditional all grain brewing methods, but there seems to be no complaints on the web regarding a sacrifice of quality. John and I discuss some of the higher points in this Brew in a Bag introduction.

Brew in a bag start with this basic premise, you are going to mash in the same vessel that you plan to boil in. This means you’ll be removing the grains from the pot but leaving the liquid portion, wort, behind.

This is cleverly accomplished by using a mesh bag to hold the grain in. The bag and grain are removed after the mash leaving the wort in the pot. Of course you need to have a big enough bag, and you need to have a larger enough pot to contain the wort and the grains. Luckily this seems to play perfectly into most extract brewers current equipment kit.

A simple 5 gallon stock pot and a good nylon mesh bag will have you making brew in a bag beers at less than 5 gallons in no time. If you are used to doing a concentrated extract wort boil the a 5 gallon pot is probably what you already have; you just need the bag.

You can go a little bigger and invest in an 8-10 gallon pot. Get a bigger bag. And you are right back to 5 gallon batches again but doing it all grain. BIAB starts with heating the strike water in the kettle. Then opening and stretching the bag across the pot opening with the body of the bag down in the water. Then you add your grains right to the bag. You stir carefully so as to not pull the bag away from the pot. The best thing about mashing right in a brew pot, on the stove is that if you miss your temps you can easily add a little heat and keep stirring the grain to get back to your desired mash temp. You can even raise the temp to mash out levels using BIAB system. Although that isn’t usually necessary as once the grain bag is removed you start heating the wort to a boil right then.

So why would anyone that is already an established all grain brewer consider brew in a bag? For one its a little cleaner and faster process to get a batch going. Pretty attractive to us family brewers with little time on our hands. As I already eluded to, small batch brewing is very easy with BIAB. Another great reason to BIAB is experimentation and small batch sizes. One doesn’t have to commit to a full 5 gallons of Belgian Dark Strong if you’ve never made it before. BIAB is also a great way to experiment with new grist ingredients. BIAB also makes it much easier to try 100% wheat or rye beers (although I have heard 100% rye is pretty hard to swallow).

We look forward to getting a couple bags and giving it a try in the near future.

Do you brew in a bag? Are you ‘bag’ curious?
Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comment section.

BREW ON!

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5 Comments

  1. I cannot believe you ended that post with a question about being “bag” curious. Dude………

  2. Glad to see you discuss BIAB on your site. It is a good way to do all-grain brewing especially for those who have limited space available (I live in a downtown apartment). I can use one vessel to mash and boil on my electric stove in my small kitchen and still do 4,5 gallon patches. For anyone interested, I’ve made a small guide available at : http://halffullpint.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/biab-all-grain-brewing/
    Good luck with your BIAB experiments!

  3. Hey Tero! Thanks for the comment and thanks for the link. Always great to see a different perspective on how people do things.
    Cheers
    Mike

  4. brewella deville

    I do one gallon test batches using the straight up BIAB method and love it. I do 2.5 gal batches, indoors on a gas stove with a hybrid BIAB/cooler method. I really wanted to go full BIAB for simplicity’s sake, but ended up with my hybrid method because if one pot is big enough to hold all my water and all my grains, my stove just can’t seem get it to the boil, and if my stove can get another pot to the boil there just isn’t room for everything. I would probably have to go outdoors with a propane burner and a bigger pot and that just isn’t an option right now. I just line the 5 gallon Igloo cooler with a bag, dump all the water in at once, and go from there. I know some people worry about cloudy or tannic beer with BIAB, but I’ve just never had that problem, and cleanup is still very easy. For me it’s much simpler than old school sparging or batch sparging.

  5. Dave Watson

    I was an extract brewer for 8 years, and was intimidated by AG brewing, since it required building mash tuns, worrying about pH, stuck mashes, etc., and seemed really scary.

    I watched a couple BIAB tutorial videos on youtube, bought a 5-gallon paint strainer from Lowe’s, and did my first AG BIAB brew – and it was SO FREAKING EASY. It was a 2.5 gallon batch of a 1.038 OG session saison, which turned out absolutely fantastic. After that I was hooked, and did a TON of BIAB brews.

    BIAB works really well for lower-gravity and/or smaller batch sizes, but lifting the grain bag gets to be a pain, especially with more than about 8lbs of grain. I have now built a couple cooler-style mash tuns, and prefer brewing that way (mostly due to the lazy factor), but BIAB is a great way to start all-grain brewing, or to do a mini-mash. I would recommend it without hesitation to any new brewer, even for their first batch, provided they have somebody to walk them through the steps.

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