Anyone else use a sous vide cooker to do a BIAB mash? Pictured is my BIAB sous vide mash with “dunk sparge” in the kettle below.
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I have read of others having luck that way. A friend gave me an immersion heater from a chem lab. The real deal. What was interesting about it is that it had a big propeller to move the water. It had a short however and kept triggering my GFI so I gave it up
I get better mash efficiency with this method compared to a single pot BIAB no sparge method, but it’s also more of a bother with more stuff to clean afterwards.
Brewing is alot cleaning… I like my single kettle BIAB… My efficiency is right around 80%. Knowing that, then I adjust my grainbill… Sneezles61
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Just out of curiosity, how are you sparging to get that efficiency?
I BIAB mash at pretty traditional water/grain ratios, then pull the bag after the mash and sparge by running 190is water through it to get my full preboil volume. I get very high efficiency that way.
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@dannyboy58 I’ve been thinking about doing this as well. Mostly since I can get more volume out of the single vessel brew kettle. I need to etch some markers on the inside of my kettle
Yea that’s the main reason I started doing it that way. I can do 10 gal batches in a 16 gallon kettle with no problem.
I’ll have to try that. I’ve never actually done a tradition all grain mash. You dont worry about clear running wort or any of that jazz do you @dannyboy58
In my 20 gallon kettle, I do a full volume mash… Lift the basket and vorlauf when the wort is 170… I stop when I’m up to 180… Sneezles61
Nope. The bag is less porous than a bazooka tube or water line used in a cheap n easy type mash tun. So no vorlauf needed and you’d just be clearing it into the kettle anyway. I pull the bag and use my pump to run water from the HLT through the grain until it get my preboil volume. Before I got the pump I did it like @squeegeethree illustrates above.
what? vorlauf? how? isn’t your basket suspended over the kettle? where are you vorlaufing into?
Doesn’t really make sense to me since by pulling the basket you’ve already put your first runnings into the kettle…do you run them back through the grain basket?
Yeh well I couldn’t use the exact ratio for tradition because there is almost 4 gallons of water between the bottom of my kettle and the bottom of my basket/grain bag. My system does recirculate though…
Yes, vorlauf means to recirculate… Since I have a pump, I can recirc over the grain to sparge, rinsing…
Even when I did a traditional mash, I was doing it this way… I did ditch the traditional HLT sparging method… Sneezles61
Yea I know what vorluaf means. I guess I’m wondering what you’re gaining from this practice. My understanding of the purpose of a vorlauf was to clear the runoff by pushing it back throug the grain bed before running it off to the kettle. Since you’ve already run it into the kettle by lifting your basket or bag I would think you’d get minimal benefit from a vorlauf in BIAB. Any particulates that make it into the kettle are probably going to settle to the bottom rather than get pumped back and filtered by the grain bed.
You have a false bottom in the kettle? Yea four gallons is a lot. I sometimes use a false bottom if I’m going to add heat to the mash but mine only leaves about 2 gals underneath and I recirculate if I’m doing that to spread the heat as well.
No I have an electric coil in the bottom and the basket hangs above that
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I was certain you know about vorlauf… But perhaps some others are new and curious…
I used to not do that and my efficiency was a bit lower… Sneezles61
