The Brew Bag - 400 Micron Bag First Use Review

Brewing in a bag is a great way to get into all grain brewing cheaply and easily. You can use a brew bag for almost any mash tun you can find and it works by filtering the wort from your grain bed and allows you to remove the spent grain from the wort instead of the other way around. But brewing in a bag can also save you time, money and expensive gear by enabling you to use any suitable pot or hot water kettle or urn, so you can brew your beer from start to finish in a single vessel. And in fact with the right bag this method can be just as efficient as an off the shelf all-in-one electric brewing system for a lot less money, and you don’t have to worry about regular pump blockages which seem to plague a lot of the all-in-one brewing systems out there. 

But I must place the emphasis here on getting the right bag, and unfortunately not all brewing bags are equal. For my first year of brewing in a bag I used the only bags I could find in shops here in Australia. They were cheap, gave me terrible efficiency and my second bag started falling apart after only 3 brews! When I would ask experienced brewers about my poor brew in the bag efficiency, the answers I always seemed to get revolved around either adding a lot more grain to start with, adding dextrose or light dry malt to your wort afterwards or milling your grain finer or twice to extract more from it. All good ideas but I didn’t want to get into milling and storing my own grain just yet, and the idea of throwing more grain or light dry malt at the problem seemed to me to be a bit wasteful and lazy brewing. 

It was when I was researching my options that I came across "the Brew Bag" by brewinabag.com and I immediately knew that I had found the solution to my brewing bag issues. Their desire to create a bag that would give great efficiency and last a virtual lifetime was all I needed to hear. They make bags to fit most common brewing kettles as well as to any custom size you need with either 200 or 400 micron mesh depending on the brewing system and whether or not you recirculate. So after a short deliberation I chose the 400 micron bag for my 30L Digiboil kettle and placed my order. The only issue I had was the price which at around $70 Australia including shipping was a lot more expensive than the $10 I paid for my last bag, but I reasoned I was getting a much better bag than the old 60 micron bag I was using that already had holes in it! 

Now began the wait, and thanks to a worldwide shutdown and a hopelessly slow shipping service it took a month to arrive! But as it would turn out, the wait was more than worth it. Using the bag for the first time was pretty straight forward and the only issue I had was trying to fold the bag over the sides of my kettle. The bag itself is made from quality nylon and is very stiff and fits the kettle perfectly, but it is a little too deep for the kettle with the false bottom installed so the top of the bag overhangs by a few inches. The solution would be to fold the top of the bag over the kettle rim but the bag doesn’t have enough "give" in it to allow it to fold over the clips that secure the lid, so instead I had to fold the top of the bag over itself first and then fold the now double thick section over the top rim and secure it with a couple of clamps, and this worked out just fine in the end. And being nice and rigid the bag held itself up without having to be clamped over the rim of my kettle like all of my previous bags. 

When the mash was done the sparging or rinsing process was dead easy and the built in loops in the top of the bag allowed me to easily secure it to my pulley and lift it out of the kettle. The 400 micron mesh allows the wort to pass through much easier than most other bags out there and I found that I hardly had to squeeze the bag at all, as the liquid drained out that easily. This was a nice change from all the other bags I own that always seemed to need a really heavy squeeze to get the same result and it will be interesting to see if my wort improves as well now that I don’t have to squeeze the life out of my grain every time.

And lastly the all-important clean-up process. Now if I thought that the brew-in-a-bag experience with this bag wasn't going to get any better at the end of the mash then I was dead wrong! Honestly I hate cleaning my bags as I usually have to soak them in water and then hose them for at least 10 minutes to try and release all the grain and husks from the material and it’s a messy pain-in-the-rear-end. So you can imagine my surprise when I turned this bag upside down in my spare 20L bucket and all the grain basically slid out like the bag was made of Teflon! I'm not exaggerating when I say that the clean-up with this bag was almost a non-event it was that easy! After the grain slid out I gave it a quick hose and almost all of the grist material was washed out into my bucket in less than a minute! After emptying the spent grains in my compost heap I hung my bag on my clothes line and gave it another quick rinse just to get the last couple of grain pieces out and let it dry, but I will say with no hesitation that it was the easiest grain bag cleaning I've ever experienced!

So all up my first experience using the Brew Bag has been really positive and what really stood out for me was how easy it was to rinse my grains and extract the most wort from them, and then how easy it was to clean and rinse out the spent grains after the mash was done. This bag is just designed to make brew-in-a-bag the easiest possible process it can be from the start of your mash to the finish, and that ease of use, along with the rigid super strong manufacturing makes this bag more than worth the cost. I can literally see this bag lasting me for years and I will probably only stop using it if I get another system one day that doesn’t require it. So If you're looking for a brew bag that will enhance your mash efficiency, make your brew day mash and clean-up easier and potentially last you forever, this is the bag for you. It may be expensive but sometimes in life you just have to pay for quality so you can also get ease of use and less frustration!

Note* I purchased the brew bag I used in this review myself, and I purchased it for my own ongoing use and not just for this review. I have no relationship with brewinabag.com and I have not received anything from them. This review is my own unbiased opinion based on my own use of the Brew Bag, and my previous brew-in-a-bag experience.