£30 BIAB Homebrew System

Brew in a Bag (BIAB) using an Aldi Mulled Wine Warmer

The £30 Aldi Mulled Wine Warmer

The Aldi Mulled Wine Warmer Experiment

It started as a discussion on the UK Homebrew Facebook group, Aldi was selling a 16 Litre “Mulled Wine Warmer” for £30 and it seemed to be everything you needed for a Brew-in-a-Bag system.

£30 later, and a frustrating delay due to a house move and I finally got around to testing it all out.

Brew in a Bag (BIAB)

BIAB is an approach to homebrewing that uses a large mesh bag to contain the grains during the mashing process. This simplifies the whole process as a single brewing kettle can be used for both Mash and Boil. The bag acts as a filter, allowing the water to flow through during the Mash and can easily be removed allowing the wort to drain ready for the Boil.

Using a brew system there is no sparge stage as this would require a second kettle to heat up the additional water.

An English IPA (sort of)

My kitchen brewing is typically in 5L batches, testing out this equipment also meant that I was doubling the size of my usual all-grain batch. It was also the first time I’d ever strictly followed the BIAB approach. It was all worth it, the end result was my favourite homebrew ever made.

Ingredients for the “English” IPA with lots of East/West Coast influences it turned out

Before you begin, make sure all your equipment is cleaned and sanitised.

The Mash

1. Heat 14.3 Litres of Distilled Water to 70°C
2. Mash-In the grain and set the temperature to 67°C
3. Mash for 60 minutes
4. 15 minutes into Mash take a sample and check the pH
5. Add 3ml Lactic Acid to Reduce pH by 0.2 (if above the range 5.2–5.5)
6. Check mash temperature remains at 67°C for 60 minutes
7. Once Mash is complete, raise the temperature and drain the grain bag

Removing the grains at the end of the Mash

The Boil

1. Boil for 30 minutes. Longer boil times increase the bittering of the final beer, a shorter boil time reflects the lower bitterness in this recipe.
2. 30-minute Hop Addition: 6g Citra
3. 15-minute Hop Addition: 10g Citra
4. 10-minute Addition: 5g Irish moss
5. Hopstand at 75°C for 30 minutes: 15g Citra
6. Cool to 20°C

The boil was fairly vigorous

Transfer to fermenter

1. Add 5G Yeast Verdant IPA
2. Add 5G Fermaid-O (Yeast Nutrient)

Transfer to the fermenter via the serving tap was easy

Dry Hopping

Adding hops into the fermenter after primary fermentation has largely completed increases the hop flavour and aroma in the finished beer.

Day 3 Dry Hopping was an opportunity to mix things up, with 2 batches:

1. Batch 1 — Citra Hops 10g; for a tropical, fruity result
2. Batch 2 — Mosaic Hops 10g; for an earthy, spicy or piny aroma alongside the tropical flavours already introduced during the Boil.

Carbonation

My lack of preparedness for a double-sized batch meant that I stored one fermenter while carbonating the other. If I was in the same position again I think I would be more inclined to put half in the mini-keg for carbonation and the other half bottle carbonate using the 9g sugar/litre calculation for a good level of final carbonation.

The mini-keg system is a wonderful method, basically 1 week at 10PSI in the fridge (8–10°C) and you have a carbonated beer on tap, it will also keep for several weeks (not that I’ve ever really managed to put that duration to the test).

Mini-Keg with CO2 and party tap attached

This one certainly didn’t last very long at all!

Citra Dry-Hopped IPA

The Citra Dry-hopped IPA introduced the tropic fruit flavours and creamy mouthfeel that you would expect from a New England IPA. I absolutely loved the result and would brew this one again, deliberately next time rather than arriving here by surprise.

The final ABV was 5.1%

Mosaic Dry-Hopped IPA (with finings)

The gelatin used to improve clarity worked perfectly, creating a very clear drink.

The Mosaic Dry-Hopped batch was closer to my original expectations when setting out on this homebrew. The combination of mosaic hops and finings resulted in a lighter mouthfeel, slightly greater bitterness and an earthiness alongside the tropical flavours. While I alternated which of the two was my favourite, in truth I liked them both as very different drinks.

The dry-hop regime completely changed the end result from the same starting wort.

The Experiment Results

So, what was the result of the great Aldi Mulled Wine Warmer experiment, did it work? and Would I use it again?

Yes it Did! and Yes I Would!

I was pleasantly surprised by how well it all worked. Temperature control wasn’t perfect but it was simple to just attach my existing thermometer to verify the Mash temperature. The boil seemed overly vigorous, and this wasn’t possible to reduce but this just needed a little adaptation to the boil-off volume (or fermenter top-up) to compensate.

The grains were hot and heavy, and I’ve since purchased some BBQ gloves, this would have made extracting the hot bag of grains a little easier at the end of the mash.

My only real failure was the lack of an adequate cooling solution at the end of the boil. Plan B was to cool the wort in the fermenters before pitching the yeast so it wasn’t insurmountable, it just took considerably longer than I’d expected.

Result: Successful

Step By Step

Check out the full step-by-step video to see the great experiment, my first BIAB recipe, and probably not an English IPA, but a tasty IPA nonetheless.

Thank You for Reading, please drop me a line and let me know what you think. Happy Homebrewing
Cheers Everyone
Rob