Calling all BIAB’ers. I’m going to start brewing this way from extract and will be upgrading my kettle to a 10 gallon(still only doing 5 gall batches). Anyone brewing this method find it’s worth buying a kettle with a temp guage? Or does a hand held therm work just fine? Big jump in expense which I’m trying to avoid but will if it’s a ‘must’.
Thanks,
Smitty
Do have a temp controller and chamber for fermentation? That is WAY more beneficial of an item to have than an in-kettle thermometer/brewmometer. I would put the money toward that. You can always add the no-weld brewmometer later.
I use a thermapen for my BIAB batches, which works great. I will say that having a great thermometer is money really well spent. With thermometers, I am a firm believer that you can spend $100 over a number of years/months, brews, frustrations, and poorly-cooked meats, and wind up with a drawer full of junk, or spend the $100 or so on one of Thermoworks’ products and avoid the headache.
EDIT: I actually have an in-kettle weldless brewmometer in my kettle and still rely on the thermapen. The only time I really use the in-kettle is when chilling the wort.
Even the best stirred mash in the universe has inconsistent temperatures in different spots. The best way to measure mash temperature is to stick a thermometer into 3-5 different spots and take the average. That’s what I do. That’s what I will always do. I have no need for a thermometer that cannot read several different spots within the mash simultaneously and take the average.
I think that would just provide you with something on which to snag and tear the bag as opposed to being actually useful.
+1 for the thermapen. I held out for one of their occasional sales and got 1 for around 75-79 dollars.
+1 to all the above!
Drill a hole in the lid and stick the thermometer in it. Regular dial type works fine for me, always had trouble with digital thermometer so gave up on them.
Haven’t done a BIAB, but on my mash tun I’ve put a Tee on the outlet, so straight in is where my thermometer goes and the side port of the Tee is where the valve goes. Do you vorlauf while BIAB? Thats where I watch my temps as I mash. Sneezles61 :cheers:
I use the thermapen too, but I recently added their chef alarm to the arsenal with an extended length probe for the kettle. I think I’d be happy with just the chef alarm. I set the temp for my strike water, and turn on the burner, and it beeps when it’s time to mash in. Same thing for sparge water; and again for pitching temp. The pen still gets used for recording the actual mash temp, and gravity sample temps; but the chef alarm could handle that if I didn’t already have the pen. The chef alarm is much cheaper too…
Sounds good.
Thanks ya’ll.
I have to second the opinion on snagging the bag and tearing it. This happened to me on my first biab with a ten gallon megapot that had the thermometer. I ended up plugging the hole in my kettle with a pipe plug and the original o-ring and hardware from the thermometer
I remember writing that post; can’t believe it was 2 years ago. I feel old AF now.
U r. Love my thermapen 
The thermal pen is good to use, but, think of the stratification… If you are vorlaufing then it may not be as big of an issues… My first BIAB setup, I put a TEE on the out port. There is where I put in a Blichhmann thermometer, and the stem didn’t make it into the kettle… As I would vorlauf, I could watch my temp… My routine was … vorluaf, stir, and repeat every 5-10 minutes… Sneezles61
