Best BIAB starter kit

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TenaciousG

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Hi all,

looking at getting this to start my adventure into AG/BIAB

http://www.geterbrewed.com/basic-biab-starter-kit-kit-brewers-upgrade/?sl=en

Been doing kits for a while and i was thinking of building a kegerator but after some thought and some convincing off facebook forums, my money is better spent doing some BIAB brews instead to get better beer.

Is this a good starter kit? I've heard mostly good about peco boilers and some bad but I'll return it if not lol. It has the false bottom included too which is much better. I could do stovetop but I've seen 30 odd litre pots for £50ish quid, then I'd need a bag to brew in plus chiller etc and this comes with a kit which would kick start my brewing until I start to do real recipies.

Let me know thoughts and if there's a better kit out there (i'd rather get it all from one place than seperately) and if there is anything else i'll need. I already have FV's etc. from kit brews.

Thanks in advance

James
 
Looks to be good value, my only hesitation would be the size of the boiler. I just did a 25l brew and with all of the water required to allow for losses, plus the grain volume, I needed a 45l pot. So you may be a bit restricted on the batch size and strength you can brew.


I love the smell of mashing in the morning.
 
Looks to be good value, my only hesitation would be the size of the boiler. I just did a 25l brew and with all of the water required to allow for losses, plus the grain volume, I needed a 45l pot. So you may be a bit restricted on the batch size and strength you can brew.


I love the smell of mashing in the morning.

Jesus how much grain were you mashing?

A peco boiler is more than sufficient for biab.
 
I was thinking that surely 33L is more than enough??? That's 10L extra over a normal batch for evaporation should be plenty and I can do a little sparge with a pot I have, rinse the grains into an fv, and add back in for the boil (if needed)
£100 just gonna get it and see. It'll do for a year or so at least
I finish uni this summer so get a full time job soon and can then upgrade and get a keg setup too!
 
Had mine (hbc version) for just over 13 months and very happy with it amd have handled all but my first two ag brews.

Not in a rush to upgrade and would contemplate just replacing if/when it goes....
 
Jesus how much grain were you mashing?

A peco boiler is more than sufficient for biab.

I think he is talking about true biab, which tbf he is right you need 40l+ vessel for it if doing it that way..

What most people use a peco for is a biab mash and sparge so like a hybrid..

Works the same but isn't traditional biab. Part of the beauty of BIAB is that you don't need to sparge you do it all in one hit, mash in, mash out then boil.
 
I'm gonna go for it (for my birthday)
Is it literally getting it to 70 odd, put grains in bag check temp see it's around 66 (according to recipie) letting it sit for 60-90 mins maintaining temp then taking grains out and boiling for 60 mins and adding various hops? Seems just as easy as kits just a bit more lengthy
 
I'm gonna go for it (for my birthday)
Is it literally getting it to 70 odd, put grains in bag check temp see it's around 66 (according to recipie) letting it sit for 60-90 mins maintaining temp then taking grains out and boiling for 60 mins and adding various hops? Seems just as easy as kits just a bit more lengthy

If you're doing BIAB yes you mash and boil..

However like I said above to get 20 ish liters of wort at least you cannot do a straight BIAB on the peco.. It isn;t big enough you will need to mash in there and then sparge.. A lot of people sparge in a seperate vessel such as their fermentor.

Doing this is fine either method works fine its just you cannot exepct to do a simple straight BIAB in the epco and expect to get 23L.

For my smaller stove tops I have to adopt this practice whereas for a full scale brew its a 50l pot on a burner.
 
So with this setup let's say once I've mashed, place bag over a spare FV, pour mash temp water over and then put this wort back into boiler? 30l at boil should give me roughly 21-23l of wort right?
I've seen cold sparging too?
 
So with this setup let's say once I've mashed, place bag over a spare FV, pour mash temp water over and then put this wort back into boiler? 30l at boil should give me roughly 21-23l of wort right?
I've seen cold sparging too?

Sparge water you want to be around 76ºc.

I do full volume BIAB so not going to be as accurate with water figures for your peco but based on what I use you will need roughly about 32L of water altogether (it varies due to the amount of grain you use ect)... For example you may mash with 20L of water remove the grains and then sparge with 12L of water at 76ºc in your fv..

Pre boil you should be around about 27L give or take which will reduce over the 60 minute boil. You will lose some to trub and hop debris which settles in th bottom of the kettle, IF that does get in your FV don't worry at all..

You will be surprised how much more trub you get with AG compared to a kit where you get a pancake.

It may be advisable by the way to just do a smaller batch to get your feet wet. That way if it does goes a bit pear shaped you have less of a disater. (you will learn a hell of a lot from it regardless)
 
Why don't they just make 40 litre Pecos, then it's easily big enough? Or do they?
 
I guess it is because the element wouldn't give a vigorous enough boil with 40L.

Maybe have 2 elements? We need someone dedicated and inventive to produce us a cheap effective boiler that does big enough volumes, boils quickly, doesn't use loads of energy and can be used outdoors!
 
I guess it is because the element wouldn't give a vigorous enough boil with 40L.
I suspect you are right there, I've found that if I wrap an old bath sheet (Towel) around my Pico I get a better boil, not quite a vigorous rolling boil but a good enough boil to reduce 27.5 lit to 23lit. in an hour.
Cheers
 
Maybe have 2 elements? We need someone dedicated and inventive to produce us a cheap effective boiler that does big enough volumes, boils quickly, doesn't use loads of energy and can be used outdoors!

Of course, we want it all! Some people on here have DIY boilers like that with two 2.4kw elements, which they run with two cables from two different circuits. I can't see any companies going for that though, as there would so many people who wouldn't read the manual and just plug both plugs into a double socket. Nor can I see them producing a model which requires a higher rated circuit than you would get in a normal house. They could use a single 3kw element, but it is really borderline for a 13A socket.
 
If you're referring to doing traditional full volume BIAB you wouldn;t need to boil 40L you would only need to get sufficient temp to mash. Like I say 32L of water.. add the grain in and then its up to and over 40L in volume.. you may mash out so thats 75ºC..

After the reductions are done you are still left with 27L thereaboust pre boil volume..
 
My peco can take 28 ish litres then it is overflowing. I did my forst brew Saturday and by time I'd mashed and boiled and syphoned into FV, I was down to 18/19 litres! I just think if I had a bigger boiler, I could have ended up with 23 litres, but then I suppose the lesson is to sparge and add it in to make up the lost volume.
 
I suspect you are right there, I've found that if I wrap an old bath sheet (Towel) around my Pico I get a better boil, not quite a vigorous rolling boil but a good enough boil to reduce 27.5 lit to 23lit. in an hour.
Cheers

that's a really good tip actually. It might be faster I guess.
 
If you're referring to doing traditional full volume BIAB you wouldn;t need to boil 40L you would only need to get sufficient temp to mash. Like I say 32L of water.. add the grain in and then its up to and over 40L in volume.. you may mash out so thats 75ºC..

After the reductions are done you are still left with 27L thereaboust pre boil volume..

I've been wondering for a while, Covrich, how do people add their current beer itinerary to the bottom of their posts?
 
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