What all grain system would you buy?

[Woody]

I always say to anyone looking to get into the hobby or the all grain side of it to find a few brewers with different styles and go spend a morning or afternoon and help them brew. Eventually a system or style will speak to you. Set ups are as unique as the personalities on this gold nugget of site. What's right for me might not work for you. So many variables with regards to time, budget level, ability or DIY and ingenuity. I'm not the most handy guy in the world so my 15 & 19 gallon BIAB set up pulling the bag and propane burner work great for me. There are diadvantes to this method like any but it works for me. I ferment in the pot and rack to carboy after 7-10 days and find temperature control doable with heating belt and cool basement floor when needed. I use brut force to move things and there is risk to doing that as well. You will find a set up that works for you so brew with some of the great people on this site and I guarantee you will find what you seek. As a saying I read once goes "When the student is ready the teacher will appear." Allot of teachers around these parts.

[Keith]

Well said Derek.

Wes,
I'm in Lr Sackville, you are welcome to come check out my 2 tier setup when I brew next. There is cleaning involved, but I'm so use to it, really it isn't much, and most of my cleaning is done before the brew day is over with the exception of the pot.

Brewday Cleaning & Sanitizing
[*]Fermenters - Unavoidable with any setup, unless you go with a all in one. Then your cleaning is done prior to boil, disadvantage 1 brew at a time.
[*]Pot - Typically I give a good rinse and wipe down. Swirl with Starsan. Boil disinfects pretty good. I flush the ball valve out well with hot water, then rinse with starsan. Typically tear this down for a inspection the night prior.
[*]Mashtun & Bag - I rinse the MT well, wipe it out with star san. Once again I tear the ball lock down for a inspection each brewday. Bag gets rinsed well and hung to dry. I boil this every now and then.
[*]Hoses - Gets cleaned when I do my fermenters
[*]Pump and lines - I recirculate boiling wort to sterilize. flush with water and star san. Soak hoses in star san after use and hang to dry.

That's really it til you get into kegging.

[GuingesRock]

Agreed, a good Derek post. He makes a good beer also

You are welcome to check out my home made rig some time as well if you like. I'm making a California Common Lager this weekend.

Also, people spend $15,000 + on a Ski-doo that they can ride on a few times per year. They go over $100 mph these days and it’s quite easy to kill yourself on one. After a few years you’d need to get a new one and the depreciation would be incredible. It’s very cold riding one of those at 100mph I’d imagine also. A fancy brew pot will last for years and years. Maybe even centuries.

I'd say if it's something you've chosen to go for, it makes a lot more sense than getting a ski-doo. Don't get an expensive system you won't be happy with, because you'll only end up getting the one you really wanted later and putting the other one in the shed. Think carefully about if you are going to want to do 10 gallon batches eventually. If you get a system that will only make 5 gallons, that could lead to redundancy later as well. All my five gallon stuff became redundant when I decided I wanted to do double batches. The other thing to look at is whether the system will be big enough to do high gravity all grain brews. There’s nothing worse than having a 5 gallon full volume mash system, say, that you can only do low gravity brews on. The Braumeister is like that.

[Jimmy]

I always say to anyone looking to get into the hobby or the all grain side of it to find a few brewers with different styles and go spend a morning or afternoon and help them brew. Eventually a system or style will speak to you. Set ups are as unique as the personalities on this gold nugget of site. What's right for me might not work for you. So many variables with regards to time, budget level, ability or DIY and ingenuity. I'm not the most handy guy in the world so my 15 & 19 gallon BIAB set up pulling the bag and propane burner work great for me. There are diadvantes to this method like any but it works for me. I ferment in the pot and rack to carboy after 7-10 days and find temperature control doable with heating belt and cool basement floor when needed. I use brut force to move things and there is risk to doing that as well. You will find a set up that works for you so brew with some of the great people on this site and I guarantee you will find what you seek. As a saying I read once goes "When the student is ready the teacher will appear." Allot of teachers around these parts.

Agreed.

Some people like brewing on a 3 vessel - I did it and hated it

Then I switched to single vessel BIAB, it was a huge step forward.

Then I switched to 2 vessel (cooler BIAB) and found that even better.

Now I brew with the BIAC and have an even easier brew day.

To address the OP's question about spending $5000 on the BIAC:

Really it all depends on the person. My personal suggestion would be to start out with BIAB (if you haven't already done all grain). You can pick up a pot and burner for BIAB and will have no problem selling both at minimal loss. It will give you an idea of the all grain process, and you'll get to know what you like/don't like about brew day. From there you can start researching systems that will solve the problems with the current setup. Once/if you move on to a different setup, you'd have no problem selling your no-longer-needed brewing gear.

It's hard for me to say if I'd spend $5000 on the BIAC..it's dependent on your goal. You can brew any beer, just as good, with a pot, propane burner and a BIAB. The benefit with the BIAC is really how easy it is to brew. I spend VERY little time actually dealing with the brewing process. There's next to no cleaning, no lugging, no worrying about stirring up a carboy before you keg, no sanitation concerns, etc. It's a "for life" brewing setup that covers basically everything you can think of - ease of brewing, ease of cleanup, space required, it's electric, has temp control, is very sanitary, and does 10-15g batches (as big as I think I'd ever go on a homebrew scale).

I'm not sure what's in that price range (for the 10-15 gallon size) homebrew setups, but I'm not sure there's anything I'd rather buy. It solves every problem I'd have with any other system I'd purchase..so that makes it worth it to me (if you're comparing it to similar priced setups). I'm hesitant to say I'd drop $5000 on it as my first all grain setup; not knowing if I'd stick with the hobby or not...and if you decide it's not for you and want to sell it, a $5000 system isn't the easiest thing to sell.

[Woody]

Thanks Keith and Mark. I'm glad Jimmy chimed in on this thread. 2 years ago when I was looking at going all grain his BIAB tutorial video inspired me to order my BIAB set up and take the leap. Im pretty sure it's still on the site if not Youtube. I'm really glad I made the leap. Quite the learning curve to this hobby that continues to challenge me. But damn it's allot of fun.

[Jimmy]

The jacket allows you to use a fancy chilling machines. I can’t do that for fear the coolant would leak into the beer.

You can do the same thing that I do, and run a glycol chiller with water instead of glycol. Because I let it constantly recirculate, it doesn't require it to be set at freezing temps, but instead it's set at fermenting temp. When I crash cool I set it at 2.5* and that's enough to keep it from freezing up.

[GuingesRock]

That's neat to have that much control. I didn't know you could use water.

[maestro]

Well, I'm no all grainer (yet). For me, I want to keep working on my basics with some additions. I've been adding hops here and there or specialty grains to my kits and so far so good.

Having said that, I already know what I want to buy when it comes time. I'm going to buy a grainfather. If you go to their website, you'll see it's a New Zealand product that is on it's way to Canada. Noble Grape will have the rights to the East coast as I was told in Coldbrook. It's an all in one system for brewing designed to make it easier and maintain temps while brewing. As well, from what I was told, they will not be selling them for bank busting amounts. They haven't given me a price, but I can say that if you bought it from the company, it's a cool $1000 NZD ($946.77). The only downside, is I think they only come in 5Gal options.

As for fermenting, I have to agree that fermenting in carboys is how I want to stay. I'm building a nice fermenting box near the end of next month (tax return pending...) and I think I want to leave it like that.

IMO

[GuingesRock]

The jacket allows you to use a fancy chilling machines. I can’t do that for fear the coolant would leak into the beer.

You can do the same thing that I do, and run a glycol chiller with water instead of glycol. Because I let it constantly recirculate, it doesn't require it to be set at freezing temps, but instead it's set at fermenting temp. When I crash cool I set it at 2.5* and that's enough to keep it from freezing up.

I looked into glycol chillers, very expensive, then aquarium chillers, $300 but have no pump and would be tricky to rig up. I'm now thinking of a thermowell in my pot (fermentor) with a solenoid valve on the cooling water lines from the tap with a controller operating that. That's the original Brewha setup. Did you find that worked ok for fermentation control?

At the moment I watch the thermometer on the put and run the cooling water as required manually 3 - 4 times daily.

And do you have any of those items for sale, now you aren't using them?

Thanks

[Jimmy]

The jacket allows you to use a fancy chilling machines. I can’t do that for fear the coolant would leak into the beer.

You can do the same thing that I do, and run a glycol chiller with water instead of glycol. Because I let it constantly recirculate, it doesn't require it to be set at freezing temps, but instead it's set at fermenting temp. When I crash cool I set it at 2.5* and that's enough to keep it from freezing up.

I looked into glycol chillers, very expensive, then aquarium chillers, $300 but have no pump and would be tricky to rig up. I'm now thinking of a thermowell in my pot (fermentor) with a solenoid valve on the cooling water lines from the tap with a controller operating that. That's the original Brewha setup. Did you find that worked ok for fermentation control?

At the moment I watch the thermometer on the put and run the cooling water as required manually 3 - 4 times daily.

And do you have any of those items for sale, now you aren't using them?

Thanks

I still use the solenoid for initial cooling after the boil (set it and forget it).

I never went the route of using tap water for fermentation control - didn't want to come home to a leak that had been running wide open all day. With the closed system I'm limited to the amount of water in the loop.

[GuingesRock]

That was a worry I had also. I'd been thinking of just allowing a slow trickle to go through the pot controlled by the source valve. That would allow the temperature to adjust slowly and would make the controller more accurate without overshooting and wild temperature fluctuations. Still a risk of some flooding though which is a big concern as you say.