Straining the grain without the pain

[Steve Broady]

I don’t suppose this is anything incredibly new, but it worked well for me so I thought I’d share.

I’ve tried squeezing grain in a screw press. It works, but it’s a bit of a mess and a hassle, and my press isn’t big enough to handle all the grain now that I’ve moved to a larger fermenter. I’ve tried squeezing, but it’s hard work, and messy. I tried just not bothering at all, but I felt like I lost a lot of good beer.

I have a few BIAB bags, but I don’t like the idea of putting dry grain in one and then trying to mix it with a paint mixer. I can see the bag snagging, tearing, and generally making more problems than solutions. So I’ve just been putting the grain loose in a 15 gallon cooler, mashing and fermenting in there, and then skimming off the beer after it’s fermented dry.

This time, I decided to try a different approach. First, I skimmed off all the liquid I could get easily, filtering it through a BIAB bag.

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Then I took the bag and put it into a 5 gallon bucket, which has several holes drilled in the bottom. This was stacked inside a 6 gallon bucket, leaving roughly 2 gallons of space at the bottom.

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I then scooped all the wet grain into the bag, laid the lid on top loosely just to keep dust and debris out, and let it sit overnight. This is how it looked in the morning.

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I had almost 2 gallons of beer in the bottom bucket. Considering that the starting liquid volume was about 9 gallons, that’s a pretty significant improvement over just tossing the wet grain.

And the best part is, I made almost zero mess and didn’t have to squeeze anything. I know some people just hang the bag up and let it drip for hours, but I don’t have a space than makes that a practical option. This kept the mess contained, reasonably protected, and didn’t involve lifting or hanging anything. And I already had a bucket with a split in the bottom, so I didn’t even lose a good bucket in the process!