Hey Goober.
Its great to hear that the beers have turned out well.
No better and no worse than your three tier system is just the sort of general feedback I like to hear... the beer is roughly the same, so people can feel free to choose the method based on its other features, not its ability or lack of, to make good beer.
If you change to a less tight weave on your fabric, it will probably be a bit of give and take. I and others (but not all) have noticed that you do get a more cloudy wort with BIAB. One pass through the bag just cant quite live up to the complex path filtering of a mash bed. It seems that the only effect that people have noticed from this so far is an increase in the amount of break/trub in the kettle at the end of the boil. I'm not sure if there is actually more, or if some of the fine particles that gt through, simply make the trub settle out less effectively. But I seem to lose a bit more wort to the kettle losses than when I so a batch sparge brew.
Then again, in your case, you will be getting back a few liters that you have been leaving behind in your bag. Lately I have recalculated my wort lost to grain ratio, and its now set for only 0.5 liters per kilogram of grain (thats 7.7ounces per pound in prehistoric measurements. I think) which seems to be about what other BIABers in Oz are getting.
I suppose it will also depend on how people are separating trub and if they are using hop socks, leaf hops vs pellets etc. But its
possible you will notice a distinct increase in crud levels in the bottom of your kettle. As I said though, no one has noticed a decrease in quality or clarity of Beer as a result.
Also for you and anyone else thinking about sewing up a new bag. A newer design has been tested and found to be a bit better. If the bags are sewed up like a sleeping bag cover, they drain better and there is less chance of spillage over the side when pulling out of the pot. Another BIABer solved this problem by sewing across the corners of his "pillow slip" style bag to give it a bit of a streamlined shape at the bottom.
Heres a pic of the "Sleeping Bag Cover" style bag in operation. Just so you can see the general shape it takes when its hanging with grain in. As you can see, its a nice teardrop shape and all the wort runs down and goes in the pot, instead of running in a stream off corners and onto the ground etc
Also, since I first posted this article, I have discovered that many of the people who are brewing BIAB are also using the
No-Chill method thus cutting another hour or so off their brewday, them not requiring a chiller, not wasting water;
and freeing them up to ferment their wort at a later date of their choosing, rather than being confined to pitching yeast on the same day as you brew. I pitched yeast onto a Barley wine two weeks ago that I brewed on Apr 22.
I have tasted a number of beers that were both BIABed and No-Chilled. They were fine. So if its time you are looking to save...
