Brew in a Bag - Sparging contraption

[ColmR]

Hi brewers,

Been doing BIABs recently and love the simplicity and cleanliness of the brew day. No mash tun to clean out, etc.. The one downside is efficiency. I'm generally wasting extra malt and brewing smaller batches. Mainly beacuse there's none or very little sparging. Sparging can be awkward without any other large pots, equipment or even a second pair of hands. It's also messy... Taking a bag of malt out of a pot to drain has left me losing a fair amount of wort to the floor.

So, here's what I was thinking. I could make a cheap and nasty stand for the grain bag. I'd simply cut a hole in the bottom of an old fermenter, attach some pieces of wood to the side of it to rest on the pot. I'd then be able to bring the bag up through this and let the wort drain easily into the pot. With this I could also pour sparge water through the grain. Thus getting higher efficiency. See picture below. What do you think of this? Advice appreciated.

Also this then brings me to wonder, should I retire my mash tun altogether for all brews? Is there any reason that the wort I'd be making this way would be worse than with traditional methods?
I can only see benefits. When mashing I've found that with the gas under the pot I can control temp easy. Even ramp up the temp if the recipe called for step mashes and then easily do a mash out.

Thoughts?

[rAdve]

I use colander (actually lid of a fruit basket) the same way. I just lift the brew bag, put colander top of my pot and then I put the brew bag inside of the colander.

It is very easy and good system and I highly recommended. 

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Lots of BIABers do mini sparge like you are proposing, or parti gyle techniques.

Though the biggest bang for buck comes from simple RIMS systems, which are also very important for step mashing. BIAB RIMS will get you into the 80% BHE.

My biggest problem with efficiency in BIAB is not the lower-than-sparging BHE, but the fact that BHE is variable with grain:water ratio. Has a nasty hit when you are aiming for OGs in the 1.065+, and then can get super efficient when you are trying to make light beers.

[ColmR]

Was thinking about a colandar, but with 7kg of wet malt in a bag (IPA) it'd be far too big and heavy. Really fancy doing this.

But what about cons? Anyone see why I'd end up with less than perfect wort?

[rAdve]

Changed post to small batch advice -->.

[Eoin]

I don't understand how you get low efficiency, I get up to 85% and I never sparge. My efficiency normally hits 80%

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[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Eoin I am curious what you do to get those numbers with BIAB.

I tend to crush very fine, I mash out, and I always do some kind of sparge if its a big beer. i do the bucket & colander trick too.

I put a lot of effort into breaking up doughballs in the mash, and I agitate the mash 30 mins in.

I haven't properly measured my efficiency, as it is a bit too much like hard work, but I should probably start doing it again. Got 1.042 @ 23L final gravity/final volume with the weekends best bitter, so I might have a go with that.

[ColmR]

I assume then that the only way to get such hight efficiency in a BIAB mash is that you have a very thin mash. Very high water to grist ratio. So to do this, you'd need a very large pot.

[RichC]

I assume then that the only way to get such hight efficiency in a BIAB mash is that you have a very thin mash. Very high water to grist ratio. So to do this, you'd need a very large pot.

+1to what Eoin said. I've measured efficiencies(when I bother) close to 80% at times. BIAB naturally has a high water to grain ratio. For a 20L brew my mash water would be about 33Litres

[ColmR]

... For a 20L brew my mash water would be about 33Litres

I presume you've a very large pot then? Have you noticed any downsides to your beers when brewing with a very high water/grist ratio? Is PH an issue?

With my proposed method I'll get similar volumes with lower water/grist ratios and still get to use my relatively small 30L pot.

[RichC]

I use a 40l buffalo. I brew with RO water and treat it to get ph right. Afaik the water:grist ratio has no discernible impact.  Check out Aussie/UK forums on BIAB. Guys are winning competitions with it.
I think what ur doin is called maxi BIAB . It's all about making the best beer you can with what you've got. I love my full volume BIAB and will never go 3V but equally there's 3V brewers who wouldn't consider BIAB. There's no real 'best way' to do this. There's loads of different ways

[Eoin]

I do have a 70l copper.....

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[mr hoppy]

I BIAB in a 25l aluminium pot on a gas boiler and move the goods to a picnic box and batch sparge twice in quick succession using a simple siphon. I've noticed that if I stir the mash I get 80%+ efficency as well. I boil 75% of the sparge water vol in advance and top it up with 25% cold water when it's time to sparge, give it a good sitr and drain straight away.

[Eoin]

Just thinking..  I crush my own grain, maybe that has a bearing on my high efficiency.

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