BIAB sparge?

I'm a newbie heading towards my first brew in my shiny, new Peco boiler (well it's not actually arrived yet, but I'm getting ready). After lots of research and study, I'm feeling reasonably confident about most of the process other then the sparge. Lots of the stuff I've seen/read about BIAB doesn't include a sparge and the ones that do seem to be rather messy affairs.

Anyone got any advice on this? I'm assuming that if I don't sparget then I need to adjust the volume of water used in the mash?

What volume can you fit in peco?

My routine is technically not BIAB but it's developed from it. I put 20l in mash boiler with about 5kg of grain in a bag. After mash I open tap and have a constant slow flow into a FV, from which I use a jug to pour back over the grains slowly through a colander. Do this until I can't be arsed any more then lift bag out and drain into bucket.

While doing this I've boiled about 8 litres in another pan, check how much water I have left in the mash boiler and then add water to the sparge bucket on top of the bag so that the boil amount will be up to 26 litres. So if 18 litres left in the boiler after mash, add 8 litres to the bucket on top of BIAB bag. Leave 10 mins then lift bag out ,squeeze and pour sparge water in.

Efficiency has been inconsistant using this method to be fair, but never below 70%, often I overshoot calculated OG and had 85% doing this before.

Hope helps a little. Couple of others do similar techniques to this i think, but with more consistant results.

Here's what I do for a 10L batch:
I mash with 6L water, then dunk sparge into 7L of cold water.
I also squeeze the bag.

Thanks for the advice. I'm now a bit confused about temperature. I'm not going to be too worried to start off, but I would have thought there would be quite a difference between using boiling or using cold water. I'm sure it will be easier once I've tried it, but I think I'm going to need a second bucket aren't I?

The Peco says it holds 33l which seems a pretty good amount.

In terms of sparge water, just get it to about 72c and by time you clart on with the running and colander bit it will drop a little.

If you've got a 33l might be best to just go full BIAB and forget the sparge bit. See what efficiency you get and come back for a little advice. In terms of starting water, I normally lose about a litre per kg of grain on average after a bag squeeze so depends how much you want to boil/FV.

Excellent, thank you. I'll give it a go and report back soon.

According to Brulosophy (http://brulosophy.com/2016/04/11/sparge-temperature-pt-1-standard-vs-cool-exbeeriment-results/) there is no noticeable difference in the finished beer from utilising a cold or hot sparge, so I save myself the bother of heating up another pan.
I use my bottling bucket for the cold sparge, leave the bag in for 10 minutes, squeeze, then pour the wort back into the pot with the first runnings.

Technically there isn't a sparge with BIAB you mash at full volume.

I have the same kit and do a dunk sparge. I have a large tea urn so I heat up around 15l of water to 75c. I lift bag out of the peco post smash, giving it a good squeeze (usr gloves) I then pour over about 5l of water so it goes through the grain. I think dunk the bag in the remaining 10l and leave for about 20 minutes giving it the odd squeeze and dunk. I think add that water to the boiker to get the required volume.

If doing a full mash you will need slightly more grain.

What kit are you getting with the deal?

Leon103 said:

use gloves

Click to expand...

+1 for this. The grain stays hot for a long time and so a pair of marigolds are a blessing!

What I haven't figured yet is a good strategy for holding the bag up in one hand, squeezing with the other and still catching all the good wort...

I cold sparge in the fermenting bucket and leave it there for 15mins, whilst I get the main wort on to boil.
Grain is cooled down and I can lift/squeeze and dump that wort in to the rest. I then finish off the boil to the final volume I want.

I have to do it this way as I only have a small pot and only do 8l BIABs (2 demijohns)
I do 7l in the mash and sparge with 4 litres. I lose a litre to the grain giving a 10l preboil volume and 8l end vol.

-Bezza- said:

+1 for this. The grain stays hot for a long time and so a pair of marigolds are a blessing!

What I haven't figured yet is a good strategy for holding the bag up in one hand, squeezing with the other and still catching all the good wort...

Click to expand...

In my old house I had a pulley system that worked well but did a brew recently in the new house without one. I use a large sieve rest the bag over my boiler whilst squeezing etc

The advice I would give you is: use the brewsystem you're using in a way which utilises its strengths.

For BIAB the strengths are:
- Cheap
- Very fast
- You only need one vessle to brew in (also part of cheap)
- Easy to make small batches

When you're going to do a sparge you're always messing with these strengths. It takes longer, takes more material (a pulley if you're doing big batches) and it generally gets a bit messy.
I understand the wish to get the most out of the system you're using, but sometimes you got to ask yourself wether or not it is productive.

If you want to sparge and do bigger batches, it's far simpler to just make a new filtering system. You take 2 m of copper, some connecting copper pieces and a saw and in an hour you make something like this:

For a full boil mash BIAB, is there a general % increase in grain required?

Since I've been using my new boiler, I've been doing no sparge. To avoid losing volume though, I've been using my software (Beersmith 3) to adjust the quantity of grain and hops, and topping up before the boil, and also into the fermenter. Usually works out roughly that I add 6 litres before I boil, and another 3 to the FV. Thanks to the software doing the calculations, my IBUs and OG have been bang on target, as has my volume into FV for both brews with my new boiler. This is probably mostly thanks to guessing correctly that my brew house efficiency would be at around the 70% mark too though, it's meant that my equipment was "dialled in" from the off... I'm using slightly more grain, but it's less work and mess, and I'm hitting targets bang on. So much less work that I usually have the energy to completely clean up after my brew day.

My old boiler, because I had my 33 litre (although realistically that's to the brim, and not allowing for displacement by things like bazooka filters etc..) pan (which is now my boiler after been converted) I used to do a sparge, heating my sparge water in the pan, draining my boiler after mashing and then doing a sort of hybrid fly sparge then dunk sort of thing, and got my boil volume that way. I got a higher brew house efficiency doing this, used less grain, and overshot my target OG every single time pretty much. BUT it was more work and more mess... So much more mess, that often I'd have to finish cleaning up my boiler etc the next day as I was too tired and achy to do it on the same day....

Swings and roundabouts.

Really appreciate all the advice offered here. It is, as mentioned by some of you, the thought of trying to suspend the brew bag whilst pouring hot water over it that had me a bit concerned - I think I'll probably go for a no sparge approach to begin with and then experiment as I gain more experience.

I've got two kits coming to begin with, both single hop IPAs - a Citra one and a J-lime (which I thought I'd try as I've never come across it before).

I used to put a cake cooling rack on my pan, rest the bag on that, still do in fact.



I tied the draw string to the washing line in that pic, mostly just for my amusement to be honest.... lol

A more sensible approach, put a set of ladders over the top, and use it as an A frame with a hoist arrangement attached. This is detailed in Brew by James Morton in fact.

Dunk sparge is dead easy. After mashing I hoist the grain bag up (I've got a pulley in the shed roof above the boiler) and leave it dangling while it drains. Before doing this I've sanitised my FV and put 2 kettlefulls of boiling water and one of cold into the FV - this is my sparge water. When the grain bag has stopped running and I've squeezed it a bit, I lower it into the FV, open the top and give it a stir to allow the water to penetrate. Then I hoist the bag up again, let it drain into the FV, then hoist it up again and leave it dangling above the boiler. Then tip the spargewater into the boiler.
In case this sounds like a lot of messing about, it takes about 10 minutes and what else are you going to be doing while the boiler heats up?

How do people fix the bag to the pulley rope? Not sure my bag is big enough to get a knot in but perhaps that just means I need a new bag.

Tie a knot with the string from the bag and the rope

My bag has two small loops for handles. I put a bungee cord (£1 from Tesco) though them and then round the curtain rail support thingy above the kitchen window. When I BIAB I only do 10ltr batches so it's not that heavy.