2 Comments on “Interesting article about Brew Bags

  1. Interesting… I’ve been leaning towards using a bag in my tun along with the manifold, but I might actually just ditch the manifold and just use the bag… even though I spent fucking days making my manifold..!!

  2. Good article but I think it is a bit misleading in places and does have some dubious statements. I can definitely recommend using the bag in the tun as it has made draining and sparging incredibly quick and easy with not even a hint of a stuck sparge; however, I would not say that it means you can always do away with a manifold or false bottom. This will depend a lot on the design of the tun and placement of the tap, from personal experience if you drain a tun with a full mash bag in it straight through the tap the bag and grain may come to rest against the tap hole as it sinks drastically slowing or even stopping flow. It can also cause wort to pool around the sides and not drain from where the tap is unless the tun is tipped or the bag lifted. You could get around this by suspending the bag slightly off the base of the tun so it effectively forms a false bottom itself but for me this is much more faff and it will be much easier to stick with a manifold/false bottom.

    The stuff about sparging is poorly worded IMO and I don’t believe the statement that BIAB will achieve as good or better efficiency than brewers who sparge is true at all as a generalisation (assuming they refer to full volume BIAB). Now let me qualify that slightly by saying that you can and I DO get good efficiency doing BIAB 70% plus is definitely possible with a no sparge process and thats absolutely fine by me BUT when I batch sparge I will generally see up to 10%+ higher efficiency than using full volume no sparge methods. Its always seemed pretty logical to me that rinsing the grains through in some way through sparging is going to help extract additional sugars (not all of them but again that is poor wording in the AHA article referenced) and I have consistently seen that proved through my own experience. Full volume is great for speed and convenience and will produce great beer but you should be prepared for different efficiency versus sparging methods.

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