Why do you do what you do?

[FedoraDave]

I just want to stimulate some discussion on our individual brewing practices; most specifically why people have chosen the conversion process they use, whether it be a mash tun or BIAB. I was reading in the BIAB forum, and it struck me that large beers, and/or large batches would be a real strain for someone using the BIAB process, and a mash tun would be so much easier.

Me, I do both (as well as having developed some extract recipes, but I'm not including those for the purposes of this thread). I constructed a mash tun out of a 5-gallon cooler and some C-PVC tubing. I make my 5-gallon batches in that. For my 2.5-gallon batches, I do BIAB because I don't feel like hoisting the tun out and washing it for only five or six pounds of grain.

So, in a non-judgmental way, I'd like to know how people decided on their process, and what led them to that decision, and why they stick with it rather than explore other options.

[ScrewyBrewer]

For me I just wanted larger batch sizes, automation and temperature control in my brewing, so I went with a 15 gallon RIMS eBIAB setup. My 5 gallon mash tuns are still around if they're ever needed and I could brew a 10 gallon batch using them if I chose to. For the mash tuns I used braided stainless steel for the grain filters and in all the years of brewing with them I never once had a stuck sparge.

What were the trade offs? Well removing grains from the mash tuns, cleaning them and storing them away was harder to do. When brewing with eBIAB I just invert the bag of grains and empty them into a garbage bag lined 6.5 gallon plastic fermentor. Once the garbage bag is tied off I lift the bag out of the fermentor and put it right in the trash, saving me considerable time on brewday.

I was able to brew an 8% Scottish Wee Heavy using the eBIAB system but it had to be a 5 gallon batch and there was plenty of room to spare. Typically my 10 gallon batches max out at around 5.5% to 6.0% alcohol which is fine for most of the beers I brew. Initially I did have some reservations about going eBIAB, but thanks to the many tips and suggestions I received here at The Borg, my transition to eBIAB went very smoothly. After brewing on my current system for almost 2 years now I can honestly say that I could not have been more pleased with my decision to switch brewing methods.

[Beer-lord]

I started out in college and early married life, brewing with the bare essentials starting with un fresh canned malted, brown hops and almost nowhere to buy them. About my last year I went to all grain and it was WORK! So, when life got in the way, a kid and owning a business, I stopped. When I started again I wanted an easier way or I thought I might stop again. BIAB wasn't even thought of when I started but I read about it while doing the Mr. Beer thing and decided to give it a try and love it and have never looked back.
Is one better than another? Nope, they both work very well though it would be lots of work to do a large amount of beer at a high gravity with BIAB but as I brew in the 6% area, this works fine for me. Once you decide how you want to brew, things start to get easy and work even better for you and that's why I've concentrated on water lately. The rest of my process works just fine.

I don't know what the future holds but as I grow older, I may need to look at the new fangled toys that brew but I still have time to hurt myself before then.

[MadBrewer]

I started out with Mr Beer, went on to extract with steeping grains and adding hops, did some partial mashes and then All Grain. Once I went all grain I did play around with BIAB a bit. I used to brew a lot of smaller batches (3 gal and sometimes smaller). This was when I had more time on my hands, was at home a lot with my son, had a different work schedule and less of it. It gave me the opportunity to brew a couple times a week and brew lots of variety. But as things changed, family and work kept me busier. But along with that, as I advanced in my brewing with temp control, kegging and all that I decided it made more sense to focus on a solid, repeatable process and went to 6 gal all grain batches. Looking back I have no regrets going about the learning curve the way I did.

My setup and process now allows me to focus on quality over quanity. I don't brew as often, but I dont' drink as much either. I have a 7 gal cooler mashtun that keeps temps incredibly well. The BIAB thing was ok, but keeping temps was always a hit and miss thing. I use a false bottom for the durability. I used bazooka screens and braids for years but they don't always hold up well. I made the investment in equipment that I can use for a good long time and again have a repeatable, yet simple process. I have a kettle that I can get a few more years out of and recently bought a dedicated SS pot for sparge water. I like simple but I like doing it with nice equipment I recently built a basic HERMS and used it a couple times, but with all the hoses, the pump, temp controller...etc it's just more work than it's worth when the mashtun I have works as well as it does. Notihng against those that brew that way. It's cool to have the automation and see digital temp readouts and flip switches...but it doesn't make any better beer. The same goes for BIAB or partial mashes and even extract brewing. I've never been a brewing snob, brewing is brewing and we all do it our own way. It can be as simple or complex as we want to go and in the end you will have beer.

I tend to make my improvments/upgrades at the begining of each year if there are any. Right now, I'm pretty content. I do not need any equipment, I got plenty of gadgets and toys for now. There's not much I want to change with my brewing. I have checked out new kettles, but it's not something I NEED but there are features on new kettles I would like to have, so maybe the begining of next brew year I'll splurge.

[BigPapaG]

Like many here, I too started out with MB.

Had been a wine maker for over 15 years and had never considered that I, a home wine maker could possibly brew beer... After all, didn't it require expensive equipment, temp control, carbonation and packaging equiptment... And how the heck would you cap your own bottles, let along get beer into a keg! (Note that for most of my life there was a spare fridge with a commercial Sanke keg in it... And sometimes, there was beer in that keg! )

Anyway, as a gift from my youngest son, we made beer! And we did a good number of batches...

I was hooked of course and began to use my google-foo to find out everything I could about this new adventure.

My Local Wine Supply Store (LWSS?) as it turns out was also a LHBS so I asked a few questions there, bought some hops, yeast and un-hopped extract and began designing my own recipes... Imagine the pride and joy of serving my own creations to family and friends...

During this time I had been a member of a beer forum that ultimately underwent massive changes, a series of events that led me to migrate here in this forums first days.

Back to process... My extract only batches were being done on the stove in a 6 qt. pan... As I knew I wanted to start steeping grains and knew the pot would be too small, I purchased a 16 qt. SS beauty with a layered bottom that I still use today!

So, I did the steeping grains with extract for a while, the remembered I had a 5 gallon Turkey Fryer setup with burner, pot, pot strainer insert, thermometer etc! Wow! Hello All Grain Brewing!

Well, sort of... See, I live in the Northeast, in a city, with an upstairs kitchen and no garage... The basement is old and unfinished so that was out... (I had already thrown out some wierdly fermented wine over the years so I knew that would be bad for beer too. So, I had to ferment upstairs...

Hauling finished wort, even at five gallons at a time did not agree with my back, and the glass carboys I was using from my winemaking days were fragile and subsequently too dangerous to port up and down.

After a summer of muscle rub and otc pain killers, and with the winter fast approaching, it was Bye Bye All Grain, hello stovetop brewing again...

However, my experience gained proved invaluable upon returning to the stovetop as I was now able to successfully design Partial Mash / Partial Volume brews, topping off in the carboy prior to pitching...

Throughout the years, I have purchased or been gifted all of the siphons, hoses, cleaning gear, bottling and kegging stuff etc so all that was in place.

Today, I still do some extract and extract with steep recipes that I design, but most of my recipes call for a partial mash as it really doesn't take much more time or effort...

And the beer is great... I am proud to say I hold 15 awards gained over a three year period where I was actively competing... Including a First Round Third Place in the National!

More than that, I like it... As do family and friends.

And I must say that has to with the shared collective of info here on the Borg, information and knowledge that has fostered my successes and allowed me to learn from my failures!

Brew On Sisters and Brothers, any way you like!

[alb]

Dave said, "Obey the Hat!" So I do.

[RickBeer]

[bpgreen]

I do BIAB partial mashes. My LHBS has really fresh LME at a great price, so I can brew good beer with extract. But I like to add some grain to it, and BIAB lets me do that without requiring much more in the way of time and/or equipment.

[Kealia]

I'd been doing 2.5G BIAB for about 5 years until this past February when I switched to a 7G mash tun. (I'd also do the occasional 5G BIAB before the switch). I love the beer I turned out and only made the change because I was in a rut and wanted to try something new.

For my BIAB process:
Add grains to strike water to hit desired mash temp, cover pot, wrap with towels and stir every 15-20 minutes during the 60-minute mash. I would hold out some water to "sparge" with and squeeze the hell out of the bag. I always double-crushed grains because that's what I read you were supposed to do. The few times I didn't, I did notice a drop in efficiency.

I'm still dialing in a set process for my mash tun, but so far:
I preheat my mash tun with 1G of boiling water. I drain that, then add my strike water and grains. I do open the tun and strike every 15-20 minutes still - out of habit, I suppose. I mash out, then batch sparge and have been happy with my first two batches on this new system.

I'm also giving away more beer these days to people at my TKD studio, work, etc. so I wanted to move to 5G for most batches so it would be easier to share.

[mashani]

I used to be a long time ago 5 gallon AG mash tun, glass carboys, secondary everything, very traditional brewer as such.

Then to make a long story short (I've told the long story a bunch of times before), I couldn't do that anymore and didn't brew for a long time.

Mr. Beer got me back into brewing mainly because it was ideal for small batch sizes and lack of time available.

Then I got tired of Mr. Beer, so did lots of experimentation to see what would work best for me for small batch stove top brewing, where if I wanted to/had time to do an AG batch I could, but if I wanted to shortcut and use extract to save time, I could. BIAB works well for this. One less thing to clean. I can mash in my oven because it fits. Not too much to lift, since my BIAB capacity tops out at 3 gallons. (if I BIAB a 5 gallon batch, it's a PM).

I experimented with short duration boils with high AA hops to see if that made good beer and saved time. It does. You just can't clone a traditional recipe that way. So I don't clone traditional recipes that way. I just make my own.

I have a brett problem, which led me to trying to leave the lid on my pot more then you are supposed to. I didn't get DMS doing that. So then I decided to try hop stands at high temps with the lid on to keep the blown off oils in so they could recondense into the wort as it cools. I found that worked well, and through trial and error figured about how much AAUs I'd get from that. So that tied into my short boils when I do them. And sometimes I no-chill overnight in the pot with the lid remaining on and deal with the rest of the process the next day. No DMS issues there either.

I also found through experimentation that some hop strains (Armais, Jaryloo are good examples) make really tasty Blonde Belgians and Saisons with short boils. Just choose the right kind of hop. Don't be silly.

So if it works, I do it, even if dogma says it should not work. And I'm more then happy to experiment to see what else works and add more tools to my arsenal as such.

So basically, necessity breeds innovation.

I still do long boil AG batches too, but finding ways to make beer anytime I want to make beer, with lots of time available or not so much, with limited space/equipment - well that's what's kept me brewing.

I don't expect anyone else to follow my process, as it's catered around what I need to do in order to make good beer and be happy doing it.

[John Sand]

That all sounds right to me.
Like most of you, I started on MrBeer, it was a gift. I quickly became hooked, and studied homebrewing. After six mediocre batches of HME (I blame myself) I made a couple of mediocre SMaSH BIAB batches. In started small and simple, and tried to stay that way. I'm thrifty, and I didn't want to spend too much if I didn't stick with it. Mostly I brew 5 gallon BIAB, but love the simplicity of an occasional 2-3 gallon extract+grains. I've been kegging for a year or so. Even though that wasn't cheap, it is easy. Now I'm thinking of ten gallon batches, which would mean a bigger pot with a valve, and cooler mashing with a voile curtain. Still trying to keep it simple and easy.

[HerbMeowing]

- Process decision
Natural evolution from MrB to Coopers to BIAB to MLT
LBK every step of the way
All stove-top

- What led to decision
Quality ... scale ... and home-brewnomincs considerations

- Why not explore other options
Willing to explore shorter brew-day options short of a Picobrew

[The_Professor]

Started with Mr. Beer. Not a gift. I chose Mr. Beer as an entry level extract brewing solution and have never regretted that decision.

Before a year was up I had purchased equipment to brew 5 gallon extract "kits" and really enjoyed brewing some "kits" from different online sources. Extract with steeping grains and hop boil stuff.

Never took "gravity" (or Brix) readings until I started all grain.

And then to why do I do what I do. It took me a while to wrap my head around all grain brewing. All that "brewing terminology" made it sound complicated and confusing and then there is all that build a tun stuff. And I was really very happy with the extract batches I was making. But I investigated the next step, mini-mash. I made one without really knowing what I was doing. But after reading about a mini-mash using a bottling bucket it finally sunk in. And, hey, if I can mini-mash a 5 gallon brew with a bottling bucket I can also make a small batch all grain brew with a bottling bucket. And that is what I have done for quite a while now. For 2.5 to 3.0 gallon batches, I started doing a stove top step mash (as that would cover up any issues with maintaining an exact temp) then sparging in a mesh lined bottling bucket. Now that I have a propane burner I am tending towards a single step mash but still using a mesh lined bottling bucket for sparging. Works perfectly fine and makes beer.

I do it because I can.

[Pudge]

Got a MrBeer kit for Christmas. Just a couple weeks later, Chug launched the MrBeerFans forum. The original lot over there went through the whole learning curve together. We learned through trial and error yet we all didn't have to make each of those errors ourselves.

Somebody over there turned me on to the Basic Brewing podcast and I stumbled across the Brewing Network. Both taught/explained more traditional brewing methods. Brewing process to me can be compared to making spaghetti. Everybody can make a big old pot of spaghetti. We will all do it a bit different and all taste a bit different and we all think our home recipe is the best

[alb]

We will all do it a bit different and all taste a bit different and we all think our home recipe is the best

True dat!