After listening to the April 2nd episode of Basic Brewing Radio and reading the BYO article, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the Aussie-Brew in a Bag (BIAB) technique. Beer Smith covers the basics here, but it’s a simple enough concept:
- Crushed grains in a brew friendly bag
- All water in a brew pot (this includes sparge and mashout and mash water)
- Heat water to desired temp, add grains (obviously compensate for temp loss due to grains added)
- mash for 30 to 60 min at between 148 and 156f
- Pull grain sack out and squeeze it out into the brew pot
- Boil and brew
It sounds like the biproduct on this process is a little bit more cloudy than more traditional brewing techniques, but nothing the fermentation process and some patience shouldn’t be able to fix. It was interesting that those who brew using software like ProMash and Beer Smith can calculate all the water and grain needed by just brewing like you would for a batch sparge.
Now my take on this is that while it’s cool to try different things, I don’t see this as some kind of breakthrough. I have always told people that really all mashing really boils down to is seporating grain from liqiud and finding a way to rinse the grain. If you start there, options are limitless on how you do this process.
In my opinion, people are often spooked by the high cost of buying mashtuns in catalogs. I feel like this drives people to find inexpensive alternatives. This sucks because I see 60qt coolers all the time for less than $30 (if you catch a sale you can steal one for $10 to $15). Throw in some copper, a ball lock valve and you are looking at less than $70. If you want to go the really cheap and easy route, do 1/2″ PVC and the whole thing drops down to like $50. To me, that is totally reasonable and not a bad cost for a mashtun.
One of the big selling points for this BIAB is the low cost. While I don’t disagree that it helps for people that want to dabble in the all-grain arts, I have yet to meet anyone that went all-grain and went back. I generally advise people to get creative, shop around and just build a very simple false-bottom cooler if they want to try rather than try to half-ass something to give it a test run. Plus if you follow these instructions for the “El-Cheapo” mashtun you’ll be up and brewing in no time at all.
That’s just my opinion anyway. I may still try a test batch with this technique anyway, but who knows.
Cheers.
