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Would a 42 quart pot be large enough to start biab? Found a wicked buy on a pot, false bottom, burner and drain for 50.

keithforbes wrote:Would a 42 quart pot be large enough to start biab? Found a wicked buy on a pot, false bottom, burner and drain for 50.

I don't access to a typical recipe right now, but you'd be close. Typically I start with 34L plus grain for the mash.

Close Yes, but might not be close enough. It depends on the OG of the beers you might want to brew.

The mash volume for a brew with OG 1.064 (volume into fermentor 21L) = 10.5 gal = 42L (size of your pot). That's too close for comfort. You’d be overflowing when you stirred in the grain (it takes a while for the grain to soak up liquid). Would be OK for a lower gravity brew though.

I actually make 10 Gal batches in a 16 gal pot, but do a 4 = 5 gal sparge. You could always incorporate a small sparge if necessary, but it complicates things.

Incorporating a Sparge works well for me, but only works well because I have a 2 vessel setup. I drain the wort from the mash to the second pot and then add 4 – 5 gallons of fresh water at 170F to the mash, stir and let sit for 10 mins before draining for the second time.

keithforbes wrote:Would a 42 quart pot be large enough to start biab? Found a wicked buy on a pot, false bottom, burner and drain for 50.

If you decide you can't use it I sure could use a 42 qt pot.

jtmwhyte wrote:

keithforbes wrote:Would a 42 quart pot be large enough to start biab? Found a wicked buy on a pot, false bottom, burner and drain for 50.

If you decide you can't use it I sure could use a 42 qt pot.

I may get one anyways for the price and upgrade later on. Bedford Walmart has a few setups for 50.

yeah you can do it, just need a second pot to dunk sparge in. not too much extra complication

That’s the other option. The sparging method I use works better for brewing in the kitchen as it makes no mess. Pulling the bag and dunk sparging in another pot is a bit messy for kitchen brewers and that stuff is sticky. If you are going to sparge anyway and buy two pots, both pots could be a bit smaller. That pot might be just big enough for no-sparge BIAB, I'm still on the fence a bit with that. You can also hold back a gallon of the water until the grain is well soaked and the mash volume is consequently reduced (maybe 10 mins)...might give you enough room for the brew. You can also make the batch slightly smaller if necessary and slightly under fill the kegs. Trub management also factors in there. A bigger pot, or two pots with a sparge, would give you more freedom to do what you want to, with less having to worry about everything (trub management included).

My pots came with false bottoms and I never use them. Firstly I find them unnecessary because I do not need to heat the pot during the mash, and secondly they reduce efficiency by creating a dead space where the water isn’t in contact with the grain. If you want to do a BIAB mash out at the end of the mash, then they enable you to do that more easily, but I never really found that doing a mash out with BIAB was worth the trouble.

ps...if you are doing a sparge and you do want to do a mash out, you can have the sparge water at a higher temperature (170 - 175F) and that will do the trick. That's what I've been doing, but before, when I did full volume BIAB 5 gal batches. I never found that the BIAB mash out increased efficiency. YMMV.

I think I may just find an old Sanke keg and build that out. I probably won't be brewing outdoors yet lol. Way too damn cold for me.