[TitoTacito]

Hi guys, I think I know the answer to this question but I want to hear it from the pros. My dad used to make wine and he has a bag he used to hold all the fruit. I've used the bag to brew beer but I don't believe I've been 'brewing in a bag', instead, I use it to substitute a false bottom in a cooler. I put my grain bill in the bag, add all my water to my cooler, and then immerse the bag into the cooler while stirring out clumps. Once temp has been reached I let it sit for an hour. After an hour I get my boil pot, open the spigot on the cooler, and empty the contents into the boil pot. Then I go ahead and sparge the grain from an additional pot through the cooler and into the boil pot once again. Once the boil pot is going the grains are easily disposed of by removing the bag from the cooler and dumping it out.

My clarifying questions are 1. This is not truly 'brewing in a bag', correct? BIAB is not my intent in the first place. 2. Does this method yield any substantial inefficiency vs utilizing a true false bottom cooler? I feel like the end result is the same. Thoughts?

[kpfoleyjr]

I use a bag with the mash tun on my horizontal 3-kettle 10-gallon stainless steel electric brewing setup.  The mash tun has a false bottom.  The idea is to make it easy for clean up; just pull the bag after the sparge and dispose of the grain.  I don’t think of it as brew in a bag.

[TitoTacito]

Using a bag in the manner that we're each describing, is it still necessary to have a false bottom?

[BrewBama]

I use a bag with the mash tun on my horizontal 3-kettle 10-gallon stainless steel electric brewing setup.  The mash tun has a false bottom.  The idea is to make it easy for clean up; just pull the bag after the sparge and dispose of the grain.  I don’t think of it as brew in a bag.

I mash in a bag on top of a false bottom in a MLT as well.  Clean up is as easy as pulling the bag, feed deer, and rinse it off.

[Kevin]

Hi guys, I think I know the answer to this question but I want to hear it from the pros. My dad used to make wine and he has a bag he used to hold all the fruit. I've used the bag to brew beer but I don't believe I've been 'brewing in a bag', instead, I use it to substitute a false bottom in a cooler. I put my grain bill in the bag, add all my water to my cooler, and then immerse the bag into the cooler while stirring out clumps. Once temp has been reached I let it sit for an hour. After an hour I get my boil pot, open the spigot on the cooler, and empty the contents into the boil pot. Then I go ahead and sparge the grain from an additional pot through the cooler and into the boil pot once again. Once the boil pot is going the grains are easily disposed of by removing the bag from the cooler and dumping it out.

My clarifying questions are 1. This is not truly 'brewing in a bag', correct? BIAB is not my intent in the first place. 2. Does this method yield any substantial inefficiency vs utilizing a true false bottom cooler? I feel like the end result is the same. Thoughts?

The technique you describe is MIAB or Mash in a Bag. BIAB is done all in the same kettle that you will boil in.

[ynotbrusum]

Yep, I never really did the BIAB thing in the traditional approach, because I had a grain basket that lifted out on my first electric set up, so I essentially used the bag just as a filter.  I now have mesh bags that fit my 20 gallon InfuSSion mash tun and my 10 gallon Anvil Foundry basket.  They make clean up easy and filter out any possible grains in the wort going to the boil kettle.  Call it Mash in a Bag, if you want, but I do it without a basket in the big mash tun and with a removable basket in the 5 gallon batch Foundry.

[denny]

Using a bag in the manner that we're each describing, is it still necessary to have a false bottom?

No, it's not

[BrewBama]

Using a bag in the manner that we're each describing, is it still necessary to have a false bottom?

No, it's not

I’ve used a filter bag with and without a false bottom and, though it may not require one, I like using one to give the wort a cavity to drain into. It seems to get more wort with the bag lifted above the drain vs sitting in the wort.


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[TitoTacito]

This is all great feedback and reassurance of what I had originally suspected. Thank you! My fresh grains should be here this week and I'm hoping to take advantage of the long weekends to improve my process.

[dmtaylor]

Hi guys, I think I know the answer to this question but I want to hear it from the pros. My dad used to make wine and he has a bag he used to hold all the fruit. I've used the bag to brew beer but I don't believe I've been 'brewing in a bag', instead, I use it to substitute a false bottom in a cooler. I put my grain bill in the bag, add all my water to my cooler, and then immerse the bag into the cooler while stirring out clumps. Once temp has been reached I let it sit for an hour. After an hour I get my boil pot, open the spigot on the cooler, and empty the contents into the boil pot. Then I go ahead and sparge the grain from an additional pot through the cooler and into the boil pot once again. Once the boil pot is going the grains are easily disposed of by removing the bag from the cooler and dumping it out.

My clarifying questions are 1. This is not truly 'brewing in a bag', correct? BIAB is not my intent in the first place. 2. Does this method yield any substantial inefficiency vs utilizing a true false bottom cooler? I feel like the end result is the same. Thoughts?

You have described almost exactly the process I used for the first couple years after transitioning from extract brewing.  I had improvised the same process even before I ever heard of a term like "BIAB".  Basically mashing in a bag, and sparging as well.

These days I often mash in a bag in the kettle (kind of like BIAB) except then I set the bag into a colander, then pour everything back through the grains in the grain bag to filter out particles, then pour sparge water over it kind of like fly sparging.  It's some kind of combination of BIAB and fly sparging.  I got 94% efficiency again today.  Very effective when we sparge.

There must be 1000 ways to brew.  And they all end up with tasty beer.  Cheers.

[Qzm]

There must be 1000 ways to brew.  And they all end up with tasty beer.  Cheers.

*Points to bottle of megaswill*

[dmtaylor]

There must be 1000 ways to brew.  And they all end up with tasty beer.  Cheers.

*Points to bottle of megaswill*

*Points to a top rated IPA*

[Bob357]

I did MIAB for a couple of years with good results. I used an elbow that came within 1/8" of the bottom of my cooler/mash tun. My mash tun was a 10 gallon Rubbermaid with a screw on top, so once I finished sparging, I lifted the bag off of the bottom and screwed the top on to hold it in place. When the wort was almost at a boil, I'd remove the bag and dump the wort that drained out of it into the kettle. This reduced grain absorption to that of BIAB and gave me a boost in efficiency.

[kpfoleyjr]

I think that if you “mash in a bag” like I do, a false bottom is almost necessary - I forgot to put the bottom in once, and when I turned on the wort pump, it sucked the bag into the drain valve and stopped the flow into the boil kettle.  Not fun; haven’t forgot to put in the false bottom ever since.


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[Kevin]

I think that if you “mash in a bag” like I do, a false bottom is almost necessary - I forgot to put the bottom in once, and when I turned on the wort pump, it sucked the bag into the drain valve and stopped the flow into the boil kettle.  Not fun; haven’t forgot to put in the false bottom ever since.


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Don't leave the bag in your MT. Pull it and squeeze it out. Or attach a stainless steel scrunchy to the end of your MT dip tube.