Reddit mentions of The Weekend Brewer FBA_COMINHKG083814 Brew Bag, 26" x 22", White

I have a high end Brew In A Bag and it's really nice, but I just picked up one of these on sale at Amazon for about $6. Totally does the trick: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D53H3W6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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Looks like the price went up a bit ($11), but even for that it's totally worth it.

I AM NOT AN EXPERT MANY PEOPLE KNOW FAR MORE THEN I DO, MAYBE THEY WILL INTERJECT IF I AM WRONG

Alright, let me guide you away from the starter kit. It has helped me know what I'm doing, and develop my process, thinking about and acquiring the pieces I would need. Let's say to start off with you just are busting to brew! Can't contain it anymore!

Start off with these three things

This Pot

This Cooker

-and I know it's not prime shipping but one of these

Plastic Carboys for $25.53 CDN with airlock and stopper

alright so baring the cost of shipping from AiH, plus a propane tank, siphon/tubing, and sanitizer. your looking at a cool $149.25 CDN for a bare bones basic kit for extract brewing.

Now you get a little more fancy, and throw in

This Auto Siphon

this brew in a bag

and this thermometer

and you right around $210 CDN minus a big ass spoon and bottling bucket that would be all you need to do all grain brewing from a bare bones stand point (ok baring ingredients also) but I think you could get off cheaper.. or at least better gear for the same money. especially since the kit you picked out doesn't even have a propane burner or pot this is a hell of a steal. You could go all out, buying a mini fridge and temperature controller for fermentation, an immersion chiller so your not icing down your beer post boil in a bathtub, custom mash paddles, etc.

What I got mad about when I started brewing was how much people were charging for what amounted too a couple of buckets, airlocks, benchcappers, and some "literature". When if you pieced it out it was more like price gauging because I did't know what I was doing.

Either way you go about it, welcome to paradise! Just wait till everyone starts rolling their eyes, when you bring up beer so you seek out friends that brew and you all start your big group beer tastings, I ♥ my beer buddies.

TL;DR : Here's an arguably better (and more utilized) "starter kits" of sorts for a basic bare bones set up. From a newly all grain brewer in a college apt

I use something like this. It does everything I need it to. I have never had to replace one. Hope that helps

I hate the big plastic media separators. They work well but take up more space than I like. Lately, I have been using half a crawdad trap with a fine mesh bag (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D53H3W6/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
I have flattened and zip tied the bottom of the trap so it has a flat bottom that the pins go through but the brass does not. The bag goes around the trap and I shake the crap out of it to get all the pins out of of the trap and into the bag. I pull the trap out to rinse the brass and hang the pins in the bag wherever is convenient to dry. The brass goes into a dehydrator I got for $12 at Wal-Mart for 30-60 minutes

I've done 8 gallon batches with over 18lbs of grain in my 15 gallon kettle and one of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D53H3W6. The bag gets pretty heavy when it comes time to drain but the bag held with no issues.

Finalizing my shopping list to move from 1 gallon to 2.5-3 gallon batches, BIAB, all to be done on my condo glasstop stove. Can anyone tell me if I'm missing anything on my shopping list?

5 Gal Kettle w/ thermometer and valve

Hose Barb Fitting

Elbow Barb Fitting for bottling (assuming I use my kettle as a bottling bucket)

Fresh Grain Bag

Grain Mill to replace Corona Mill

3 Gal Carboy (or should I get a 5 gallon bucket? Or something else?)

Hose for clean transfer to fermenter

Wort Chiller (and all the necessary plumbing to add a t bar and valve to my kitchen sink)

I have a larger auto-siphon (although I'd rather find something else - I hate auto siphons) to rack to a bottling bucket.

What am I missing? Do I need a false bottom?

Thanks!

Sorry I'm late to respond, but if you want to reply to someone, you need to click the "reply" link under their comment. Then add your comment as a reply to them, it will notify them you replied, and they'll know the reply is for them.

This reply is probably a bit long, lol. But I'm bored, so I go into some detail, and give some suggestions on tools n' such you can use for various things. You don't have to use them, obviously.

===

• Yes, break down all the starches before fermenting. Yeast can't use starches, they will release some enzymes, but none that will break down starches. The enzymes that break down starches come from the grain itself, or you add them. This is why you do the iodine test after mashing, but before fermenting, it is testing for the presence of starches, if it's blue, than all the starches haven't been converted and the yeast won't turn those starches into alcohol. So you need to continuing mashing, maybe add enzymes if you haven't already.
  
  
• 2lbs of sugar should be enough for the batch.
  
  
• The barley does need to be milled. The distiller shop should be able to crush/mill it for you, or if there is a feed supply store nearby, they might be able to do it for you. But whole grains aren't going to work because the starches will be trapped inside. Grain seeds are essentially made up of 3 parts: bran, endosperm, and germ. The bran is the outer shell that protects everything but it also contains some vitamins, the endosperm is where the starches and enzymes are contained, and the germ is where the actual plant embryo is, as well as vitamins and fats are contained. Milling/crushing/grinding is what breaks that bran off, and will make the endosperm (starches and enzymes) available to be dissolved into the water. If that bran is still there, everything will be trapped inside.
  
  
• The enzymes I mentioned, you would add them before pitching (adding) the yeast, to help break down the starches in the grains. I would specifically add them at the 150F (65C) mark, that is within the safe temperatures for both of them. Glucoamylase will start to denature at 158F (70C), and alpha-amylase will start to denature at around 161F (72C), and if you didn't know, denatured enzymes (proteins) don't work anymore.
  
  ====
  
  I do my mashing in a 5gal stainless steel pot, and I do my fermenting in these 5gal buckets (foodsafe from Home Depot). I use these lids, as it has an extendable spout which is the perfect diameter for a No. 7 size drilled rubber stopper, which I stick the airlock in.
  
  For the actual mashing process. I do the following. So, not far off from what you do, except the starting temperature, since going above 161F can damage some of your enzymes and slow things down. These steps haven't failed me yet.
  
  
• Heat the water up to 158F (70C)
  
• Add grains when it's at that temp or slightly below it.
  
• Let it cool down to 150F (65C), and hold it there for an 1h to 1.5h. But it has to stay at ~150F the entire time.
  
• Pull out the grains (which are in a brew bag, mentioned below).
  
• I personally do an iodine test at this point, before moving on to cooling. To see if there are any starches left over. If there is still starch, and I haven't added enzymes already, I will add enzymes, 1/2tsp each (alpha and gluco), and I'll hold it at 150F for another 30min.
  
• I let mine cool down to between 70F (20C) and 75F (24C), depending on the room temp. You can use an immersion chiller if you have one (I made mine, explanation below), or an ice bath, if you want to speed up cooling it down from 150F to 75F.
  
• Then pitch the yeast.
  
  I mix up the yeast culture as soon as I hit the 150F temp of the mash, by pouring the yeast (1tbsp) into 2cups of warm water with a pinch of sugar, a pinch of DAP (aka diammonium phosphate), and a pinch of Magnesium sulfate (aka epsom salt, I bought at walmart in a large jug). Then I just let it sit while the yeast rehydrates and starts doing it's thing. When the mash is down to around 80F, I pour that mash into a sanitized 5gal bucket, then when it hits between 75F to 70F, I pour the yeast mix into the mash in the bucket, close the lid, put in the stopper+airlock, and leave it alone for about 3 days, before I check on it.
  
  When I check on it, if it has slowed down significantly, or is stuck. I do the following:
  
  

1. I will check the temp, and warm/cool it if needed to get it back to between 70F (20C) and 75F (24C).
   
2. If the temp isn't off, I will check pH, if it's between 5 and 5.5, everything is good, if not I use citric acid (pull it down) or calcium carbonate (pull it up) to fix pH. Closer to 5 is better than closer to 5.5, ideally 5.2 to 5.5 is the best. Some people will use oyster shells and add them before pitching yeast, to act as a pH buffer. It does work, since they are essentially made up of calcium carbonate. I'd recommend soaking in water+bleach (10% solution, 10mL bleach, 90mL water) for 30min then rinsing under tap water, then letting them dry out, if you go this route, to make sure any bacteria are dead. Then you can put them in the ferment bucket in their own small brew bag, under the big brew bag, or in one of those stainless steel tea strainers, so you don't need to fish them out of the grains/trub afterwards which is a pain in the ass. Ideally, by the end of the ferment, if you don't want to distill it right away (within a few days), you can let the pH drop as low as 4, to stave off any bacterial infection.
   
3. If pH is fine, it usually means there isn't enough nutrients, so I will put in 1/2tsp of DAP, and 1/2tsp of Magnesium sulfate, for 5gal that is. Might have to adjust pH after adding those.
   
   That usually accounts for all the stuck fermentation issues.
   
   ===
   
   

• For my immersion chiller. I use a 72" length of uncoated corrugated stainless steel tubing I bought from Houzz, and then I bought a faucet to garden hose adapter, and 2 of these 3/4" NPT to garden hose adapters. So it goes Sink faucet > faucet adapter > garden hose > hose to NPT adapter > CSST > hose to NPT adapter > garden hose > tub drain. There are other ways to do it, but I had the CSST already just laying around unused. You could probably just buy a piece of copper pipe, bend it into a coil, stretch rubber tubing over each end, and then stretch one end over the faucet, and let the other end hang over the sink/tub drain. I prefer the immersion chiller to the ice bath, or just waiting around.
  
  
• I also don't know if you have what's called a brew bag, but it makes handling the grains easier. You put the bag in the bucket, then fill the bucket with your water, then pour the grains into the bag/bucket. Then when you are done, and want to take the grains out, you just lift out the bag, let it drain, you can squeeze the bag, or do whats call lautering where you pour water through it (you can put the bag in a large colander if you want to lauter), and voila. A lot easier than without the bag, and having to scoop all the grains out. This is the one I have, you can see what I was describing in the photos.
  
  
• Some people like to do what is called distilling "on grain", where they will pour the entire mash, with some grains or all the grains, into the distillation boiler. But if you aren't using a jacketed boiler, you run the risk of burning the grains, which adds an acrid taste and can ruin things. I don't do this, I use an immersion heater in my boiler, so I distill "off grain", as I use the brew bag and pull the grains out before doing into the boiler.
  
  
• For controlling the mashing temperatures, I use a Sous Vide cooker that I own for cooking, it can go between 32F and 210F. Tons of them on Amazon these days, and with a bit of aluminum door screen around the openings to keep the big grains out, benefit of the sous vide is it will heat and stir for you. If it's too expensive for you now, Amazon always has deals on them for Black Friday/Cyber Monday, or for Xmas. But you can just keep adding hot water and stirring periodically as the temp drops, I've done that before too. Or you can use a hot plate, which I have also done. I've never used the stove top (electric), or a gas burner, but I imagine it's possible to do with that as well, but probably a bit more difficult. Whatever floats your boat, and works for you.
  
  ===
  
  Hope this helps!

No but I bought a giant one on amazon. Link below. Fit well to this 15G kettle, but 20G may be bigger diameter wise?

Extra Large (26" x 22") Reusable Drawstring Straining Brew in a Bag https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D53H3W6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_00f4BbQEDWGR5

For small batch brewing - this setup can reliably make 3 gallon all-grain batches. Some of the following products are not available or are sold at a different price, but I'm posting from my amazon history, similar deals can be found.

6 gallon triclad pot - $50

gas burner with stand - $55

brew in a bag mesh bag - $10

Hyrometer and graduated cylinder - $17

3 gallon plastic carboy - $26

Bung and airlocks - approx. $10

Racking Cane and tube - approx $20

You can do the same thing a bunch of brew in the bag folks do. Get one of these or the equivalent: https://www.amazon.com/Extra-Large-Reusable-Drawstring-Straining/dp/B01D53H3W6 and use it in a big ole pot with a boiler insert like https://www.amazon.com/Bayou-Classic-4042-42-Quart-All-Purpose/dp/B0000BXHL3 if you wanna make very large weights of solids a bit more managable.