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I did my first ever BIAB last week scaling back from 2 vessel (Cooler MT and Pot). It seemed way too convenient, easy, and time friendly (3 hours excluding pre-brew list of crushing and measuring). I nailed everything on my brew sheet exactly including volumes, OG, and temps (despite a bit of fucking around to hit mash temp initially, but I didn't account for cold grain. It only took 3 miniutes or so to adjust with my eKettle). Fermentation took off like a bullet with US-05 and finished dead onto the gravity I wanted and the gravity sample tasted great.

Sound too good to be true? I think so too... what's the catch? I've heard that there can be body problems associated with a full mash, but I'm thinking that's a red herring given some of my latest reading.

When things seem too good to be true they usually are, but I can't see myself doing cooler mash ever again if this turns out so great.

So let's hear some problems people have had with BIAB

It's a solid method that a fair number of the members on here use to brew and I don't think you'd ever find that it produces an inferior beer. The biggest issue I can think of is the size of the pot that's required to do BIAB as compared to multi-vessel setups.

I've only ever done BIAB. You've done both now. Here's a 3 vessel brewer turned BIABer. He's on Basic Brewing Radio a lot.

For me the caveats are:

- More trub, which takes up valuable fermenter space.
- Harder to do 10 gallon batches but I can accomodate. The bag is more unwieldy and harder to squeese. I get slightly less efficiency and a bit higher wort los to absorption vs the 5 gallon batches.
- If I want to go with 15 gallon or larger I'll be doing it with two vessels. I's still do full volume, no sparge.

It's hard to lift a really heavy grain bag and let it drain. A block and tackle is the answer to that.

biggest downside is like jimmy said, need almost the same size pot to do a 5gal BIAB as you do to do a 10gal regular batch. and i dunno if anyone does 10 gallon biab (edit - apparently rubbertoe does!). so it works great but doesnt scale up super well. i too find it super convenient and speedy, but also do pot and cooler batches from time to time.

Trevor, heard you had success. I'm switching from extract to bias on my next batch. However confused to shit on how to calculate my efficiency.

Keith wrote:Trevor, heard you had success. I'm switching from extract to bias on my next batch. However confused to shit on how to calculate my efficiency.

Efficiency is just a function of your what your OG is based on your grain bill and volume. I look at it as how close I get to my volume and OG and never really stress out about it anymore. Even on the most horribly inefficient batches I've made great tasting beer.

I set my software to 75% usually.

For example, if I build a recipe at 75% efficiency and the OG is supposed to be 1.050 and I hit 1.055 with the same volume then I know I got better efficiency and tweak the numbers in the software to find out what I had. If I got 1.049 I do the same. I'm usually around 77% with cooler MT but my BIAB attempt was dead onto 80%

Potential catch ...changing from a system you know well to a different one can take a while to perfect your brewing on the new system. BIAB is simpler so less room for error and it must be easier to go from 3 vessel to BIAB than it would be to make a move the other way. No worries about over-sparging. I spent the longest time doing BIAB plus a 4 gal batch sparge so I could get a double batch from a 16 gal pot. Now I have a 20 gal BIAB mash pot and doing full volume mash. I like to pump into a second boiling pot rather than pulling the bag for my 10 gal batches. Less mess in the kitchen, and I have a boiling pot with a built in cooling coil.

GuingesRock wrote:Potential catch ...changing from a system you know well to a different one can take a while to perfect your brewing on the new system. BIAB is simpler so less room for error and it must be easier to go from 3 vessel to BIAB than it would be to make a move the other way. No worries about over-sparging. I spent the longest time doing BIAB plus a 4 gal batch sparge so I could get a double batch from a 16 gal pot. Now I have a 20 gal BIAB mash pot and doing full volume mash. I like to pump into a second boiling pot rather than pulling the bag.

The beauty is I'm using the same pot with the same boil off rate and require the same pre-boil volume, so once I plug the numbers in I get exactly what I need. Electric is super easy to ensure consistent boil off simply by marking the knob where you feel comfortable with boil off.

I love BIAB. I have a 15 gallon pot and single batches are a breeze. If I do double batches I can only mash 42-43 litres plus grain in that pot so I need to us my 15 L pot with 12 L plus around 5 lbs of grain I hold back. A larger pot would solve this issue but my efficiency is great and by doing this I save a few lbs in weight when I pull the bag. I use the small pot mash for a little sparge after I pull the bag and pour it over the larger grain bag. I need fermcap as its pretty close to the rim when I start the boil. Higher gravity brews can be harder as it thickens the mash and I can loose efficiency but for my Double IPA's I add some corn sugar to dry it out and it solves that issue.

I'm planning to rip out an American Stout this week for my second BIAB. I can't see the necessity of 10 gallon brewing if it only takes 3-4 hours to make a 5.5 gallon batch

jtmwhyte wrote:I'm planning to rip out an American Stout this week for my second BIAB. I can't see the necessity of 10 gallon brewing if it only takes 3-4 hours to make a 5.5 gallon batch

10 gallon batches can come in handy if you have a friend that wants to split on a batch and it's not that much extra time to do it! Welcome to BIAB, it's addictive and very straight forward.

One catch that is pretty important to me is the mess. There is no way I could have a dripping hot bag of grain around in my kitchen, with my 2 vessel set up, I drain my mashtun into the kettle, empty the spent grains into a garbage bag mess free. Apart from that and the need for larger kettle, I don't see many drawbacks and I might make the switch if I start brewing outside again.

Just did an American Stout. I hit two points over my OG with more volume than expected.

My efficiency went up when I switched to BIAB as compared to batch sparging.

TimG and I are doing biab in a cooler. Even easier than traditional biab.


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sleepyjamie wrote:TimG and I are doing biab in a cooler. Even easier than traditional biab.


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Yeah, the cooler BIAB works pretty slick. No lifting the bag, your mash temps are more stable, and you can increase your batch size by adding a "sparge" or using a larger cooler. It was a good trade-off between straight up BIAB and the traditional batch sparge method with a false bottom/manifold.

Jimmy wrote:

sleepyjamie wrote:TimG and I are doing biab in a cooler. Even easier than traditional biab.


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Yeah, the cooler BIAB works pretty slick. No lifting the bag, your mash temps are more stable, and you can increase your batch size by adding a "sparge" or using a larger cooler. It was a good trade-off between straight up BIAB and the traditional batch sparge method with a false bottom/manifold.

My 36qt Coleman extreme is set up for this, but I need the wife to make me another bag. The one she made for my pot is awesome enough that I'm making her a pineapple Pale Ale as a reward.

I also remembered that I have a 150qt Igloo Marine cooler at the old homestead in Cape Breton. That would be a beast for full volume BIAB with 10 Gallon Batches.

I don't believe there is a catch. Or at least not one big enough to discourage the average home brewer from biab. I think a lot of brewers are impressed by fancy gear and tend to over complicate things. I think that many American brewers learned to brew from the big breweries post prohibition so a lot of big factory techniques were brought home and are not really nessisary at that scale. If you look at Australia for example it's almost exclusively biab.

I could be wrong but that's my understanding.

I BIAB and love it!!! I have done many batch sparges and have the cooler and tried different ways. BIAB less equipment and simple. I rest my mash bag over the kettle using the center rack from the oven. Then slowly trickle the sparge water over the grains. I get about 80% efficiency with this method.


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Have you found the downside yet?