First Brew In A Bag Attempt

When I brewed the Hefeweizen, I decided that I was going to try to do it as a Brew In A Bag(BIAB). I had seen several podcasts on the technique, but had never given it a try. I had purchased a couple of strainer bags from my LHBS, but hadn't given them a try yet. So, with a dirty mash tun, and me being lazy, I decided that today was the day. So first, I added 4 gallons of 60 degree water to my clean boilermaker. I then fired up my new Bayou Classic Burner, and brought the water up to the typical strike temp for a single infusion mash for the 9.5lbs of grain.

I then, with the assistance of my wonderful wife, put the grain into the straining bag. The bag was about 1.5' x 4'. In retrospect, I would have preferred a wider bag, as I the bag was too small to hold open on the sides of the boilermaker. Once the bag was in, my wife would hold the bag open, and I would stir the grist as I would if it were in my cooler mash tun. I kept the temp pretty steady at 154 degrees F for 60 minutes. I would stir the grist every ten minutes. Once an hour passed, I slowly pulled the bag up out of the wort, and slowly twisted it, trying to force as much of the wort back into the pot. I then set the ball of grain up onto a very strong strainer above the boilermaker.

I then heated up another couple of gallons of sparge water which I then poured slowly over the bag. Once it was all said and done, I had about 6.5 gallons of wort in the boilermaker, and had squeezed what I could out of the grist ball. If I do this again, I will definitely get me some nice Blichmann brewing gloves for squeezing the ball..... IT'S HOT!! From there its the standard boil process for your given style of beer. I boiled this one for about 75 minutes, enjoyed a home brew, got it into the fermenter, and inoculated it with some hungry yeast!