BeerBorg

New piece of brewing equipment.

I bought a stainless steel strainer that has an expandable frame on it designed to span across the sink when washing veggies. I use it to span the top of my brew kettle and put the brew bag in it to drain into the kettle while I get the boil under way. It saves time and my back from having to stand over the kettle holding the bag up over it. Also, I do three gallon batches so I don't have to worry about over-loading the strainer. But I think if you're doing five gallon batches and not making too big of a brew it should still hold up well.

I looked at one of those just the other day. Wasn't sure how much grain it would hold. Sounds like you've had good experience, so maybe I'll grab it next time I'm out.

Thanks for the review. Looks good.

swenocha wrote:I looked at one of those just the other day. Wasn't sure how much grain it would hold. Sounds like you've had good experience, so maybe I'll grab it next time I'm out.

To be honest with ya' the strainer itself - on it's wider dimension - perfect matches the diameter of my brew pot so I don't have to extend the frame much to use it. The brew I just used it on - a three gallon batch of pale ale - had a <6lb grain bill and it held that up without a problem. In a few months I'm going to do a repeat of the imperial stout that I'm working up. That has a >11lb grain bill. I'll see how well the strainer holds up then.

Chuck N wrote:New piece of brewing equipment.

I bought a stainless steel strainer that has an expandable frame on it designed to span across the sink when washing veggies. I use it to span the top of my brew kettle and put the brew bag in it to drain into the kettle while I get the boil under way. It saves time and my back from having to stand over the kettle holding the bag up over it. Also, I do three gallon batches so I don't have to worry about over-loading the strainer. But I think if you're doing five gallon batches and not making too big of a brew it should still hold up well.

colander.jpg

fwiw I got 1 of those and it has held up to 12 lbs of grain + the water absorbed by the grain + me using a bowl to squeeze the water out. the weight is what I am mentioning, the weight it'll hold. the grain is in a bag so... no way the strainer would hold 12 lbs of grain.

Chuck, where did you find this? I've been doing more and more BIABs lately, and I want to streamline my process as much as possible. Right now I'm using a cooling rack to drain, but I prefer dedicated brewing equipment.

FedoraDave wrote:Chuck, where did you find this? I've been doing more and more BIABs lately, and I want to streamline my process as much as possible. Right now I'm using a cooling rack to drain, but I prefer dedicated brewing equipment.

I believe the store was called Kitchen Concepts or Kitchen Collection. Something like that.

I've recently seen them at Target and Wally as well...

Kitchen Collections, it is a kitchen gadget store, plus as seen on tv stuff. Got my second MB kit there it was on sale.

got mine at wally world FedoraDave

Wow, nothing like being hit in the head with a brick by Captain Obvious! I've been putting off buying a large strainer for dumping the wort into the ferrmenter since they are fairly expensive. This looks perfect! My question is if the strainer is fine enough to filter the goop left in the boil pot?

DaYooper wrote:Wow, nothing like being hit in the head with a brick by Captain Obvious! I've been putting off buying a large strainer for dumping the wort into the ferrmenter since they are fairly expensive. This looks perfect! My question is if the strainer is fine enough to filter the goop left in the boil pot?

The screen is just as fine as a normal basket strainer. But I have found that when I was using a basket strainer to do what you want the mesh was so fine that the strainer plugged up. What I do now is siphon from the brewing pot to the fermenting bucket taking the wort from the top so as to avoid as much of the gunk as I can.