Brewed 8 liters of porter last Sunday, using BIAB, on my kitchen stove. Small batch - 8 liters into fermenter. One thing that bothers me related to keeping the kitchen clean is when I pull out the bag and move it to another receptacle. I had to scrape wort off the floor, the closets, the inside of drawers, and the ceiling.
OK, a slight exaggeration, but I want to keep the kitchen as clean as possible, especially since the cleaning person comes on Fridays, and I usually brew on Sundays. I have come a long way: my shoes no longer stick to the floor at the end of the brewing session. But transferring the bag is a pain.
So how do you BIAB folks keep your kitchen clean? And at the same time optimize the draining process (without going into the discussion whether you still want/need to sparge). I already know one thing: don’t transfer the bag to a pot that is little bit too small
After my last biab session in the kitchen, the wife kicked me outside (garage) because I got some wort on her new stove and that stuff doesn’t come off, got baked on and has become one with the cooktop now.
Afterwards I did find one of these on Amazon…
That fit the bottom of my kettle to prevent burning the bag, and I also found this strainer…
That was just big enough to set on top of my brew kettle. Got them both on Amazon.
I use a colander in a stainless steel bowl to catch the wort of squeeze out of the bag. I can hold the bowl up to the kettle to transfer the bag, once it has drained somewhat, into the colander and then allow it to continue to drain. I can then take a plate and push down on the bag to squeeze out the extra wort from the grains and transfer the drained wort to the kettle as the bowl fills. Takes about 5 minutes while the kettle is starting to heat up to boil.
The right-sized colander on top of the kettle seems like a simple but excellent solution! Now I just need three hands, two to pull the bag out of the kettle, and one to insert the colander.
I do the colander trick as well. I twist my bag up tight, then press down on it wearing a silicone oven mitt to squeeze as much wort out as I can.
I also have a 3-gallon bucket that I use to dump my grains into so I can clean my bag while I’m boiling. Then I’m free to dump my grains outside later on.
You can put the bag in a large bowl while placing the strainer on the kettle. If your colander doesn’t fit in a way it cant fall you can use two pieces of wood with strategic notches to keep them from moving across the top of the kettle.
I did my first BIAB this past weekend. I used something like this because we had it around the house. worked great. It is now part of my brewing equipment.
I’ve had the colander and bag fall into the kettle. Big ol’ mess.
I haven’t really had a sticky floor from brewing since the late 90s. I used to brew with a guy who made a huge mess and always had to leave before clean-up. At that time, my solution was to cover the kitchen floor with newspaper.
I have a “brewery towel” that goes on the floor in front of wherever I’m working (stove, sink, under my bottles when bottling, etc). That is definitely a big help for me. I tend to be a bit of a klutz.
My cleanliness problem is with bottling the beer in the kitchen. I can’t get my bottling bucket with bottling wand high enough to bottle over the sink because of kitchen cabinet overhang so essentially I have the bucket overhanging the kitchen floor.
I have an large, old ratty blanket that is spread on the floor to absorb drips and spills. As soon as my general cleanup is finished, the blanket goes into the washer and and then the dryer.
I bottle off the dining room table, with a large serving plate or platter tray under the spigot on the floor. This catches almost everything, unless I leave the spigot open as I fill my bottling bucket (ask me how I know this makes a mess). I bottle sitting down, a little hunched over, but it’s better than standing next to the counter for an hour
When I was brewing in the garage, I once began draining my first runnings into my boil kettle and realized I needed something from the basement. I got a little sidetracked downstairs and when I returned to the garage I discovered that the valve on my BK had been left open… [emoji85]
My cleanliness problems were not so much related to the floor, but to the stove, the counter, and wort dripping off the counter. But some kind of towel, cloth, paper may not be a bad idea…
