Brew in a Bag v All Grain. Difference?

[benchharp]

Hi,

I'm enjoying doing small batch brewing sometimes splitting off the wort in order to try different dry hopping schedules/ whirpools etc.

I've been looking at a few minor upgrades, simply to make brew day run a little smoother.

One idea was to purchase grain bag.

When i've seen recipes, i sometimes see them listed as BIAB and sometimes as All Grain, which suggests to me that there is a difference in technique.

So if i started using a bag, would i need to adjust my recipes or is it simply a cleaner way of working?

[vacant]

Don't adjust your existing recipes without seeing what BIAB can do (compared to your batch sparge?)

• just pull the bag - lowest efficiency but if you want a short, easy brew day just add 10% more base malt to the recipe
• do a mash out
• hold back some liquor and rinse the bag to extract more, lastly squeeze the bag
• order fine crush grains from shops like Malt Miller as you can't get a stuck sparge
• wait for someone else to come along and add tips I 've missed

If you really care and your experiment produces a very low extraction maybe boil off before adding any hops to get the SG up to the recipe's pre-boil SG.

[Galena]

I am very new to brewing so don't claim to know anything but I amjust about to start with BIAB, I brew with a 30L electric mash tun/boiler (Kaiser Fullhorn) but my thought are as follows:
Bring total volume of water up to mash temp and drop all but mash volume into a HLT for later sparging.
Mash in the bag and then drop the wort into a bucket to allow space to sparge from HLT
Sparge into the boiler and then add wort to boiler and away we go. I know many BIAB people don't bother with sparge but that seems a simple way to do it to me with minimal kit.

[vacant]

Water -> HLT
Wort -> bucket
HLT -> boiler
bucket -> boiler

That's four extra transfers plus another insulated HLT. Process ends up pretty much a conventional batch sparge.

When I first saw the Australian BIAB method, the quicker/simple/easy brew day and minimal equipment appealed to me.

[aamcle]

Just the mechanics, it does the same thing.


Aacle

[Jocky]

BIAB is all grain. Don't let anyone anyone say different.

The simplest method is that you mash with the full volume of water, which means you'll get slightly lower efficiency vs a sparged system and you might have to up the base grain to compensate. It's easy to put up with that for the simplicity of the system.

[Leard]

I'm able to achieve 75% efficiency with a BIAB system. Use a fine milled grain and introduce a sparge step but draining and squeezing the bag out into a bucket and transferring that back. The few points extra of efficiency you might get from a sparge system isn't worth all the extra effort and equipment.

[Kev888]

BIAB is simply one form of all-grain brewing, but the amounts of liquor (water) involved can be arranged somewhat differently to many other methods, and the efficiencies might be quite different too, so recipes that try to prescribe these may sometimes list it separately. True (original) BIAB would mash full-volume (i.e. in all the liquor) and so have no sparge stage, whilst traditional grain brewing would mash in much less of the liquor and then be carefully sparged. But these days there are so many different ways and combinations of doing things that distinctions have become very blurred; you really have to adapt the recipe to your own circumstances and efficiencies etc. unless the author's situation and yours are identical.

Whether a bag, in and of itself, would be of any benefit to you depends partly on how you do things and partly on how you might change that to employ one. In some cases it might simply duplicate the function of an existing false-bottom or manifold with relatively little change or gain, in others it would allow you to brew differently. A bit more info might be needed to say much more, really.

FWIW though I'm quite a fan of true/original BIAB for small batches and trials, or making wort for starters. It is quite time-efficient and has minimal requirements for equipment. It also has fewer losses to dead-space and the bag is also very free draining so fewer losses to grain absorption too; losses can really be crippling in small volume brewing. Though of course many people brew their normal batches with BIAB of one form or another, and it works there too.

[Haydnexport]

I'm able to achieve 75% efficiency with a BIAB system. Use a fine milled grain and introduce a sparge step but draining and squeezing the bag out into a bucket and transferring that back. The few points extra of efficiency you might get from a sparge system isn't worth all the extra effort and equipment.

That's a pretty impressive number? can you tell me what volumes you ar using grain and water wise? There is no point sparging with wort as it won't absorb any more sugar than it already has, you cant put more into a cup that is already full.

[Leard]

I'm able to achieve 75% efficiency with a BIAB system. Use a fine milled grain and introduce a sparge step but draining and squeezing the bag out into a bucket and transferring that back. The few points extra of efficiency you might get from a sparge system isn't worth all the extra effort and equipment.

That's a pretty impressive number? can you tell me what volumes you ar using grain and water wise? There is no point sparging with wort as it won't absorb any more sugar than it already has, you cant put more into a cup that is already full.

My last brew was 75.3% mash efficiency. 4kg of grain into water of about 28L, left for an hour at 69C, dropped to about 66/67 by the end. Then I allow the bag to drain and squeezed it to get a pre-boil volume of about 26L. So I lose roughly 2L to grain absorption.