Thursday, April 7, 2011

The obligatory 'Welcome' post

Hi, and welcome to my new blog.
My name's Mareth, I live in Ireland and I've been creating various crafty bits and bobs for a long time now, but I've recently, rather grudgingly at first, become involved with my husband's homebrew hobby.
He got into Brew In A Bag (BIAB) after starting to homebrew with the usual kits etc that everyone starts with, and then wanting to step it up to all-grain brewery, but preferring to avoid the massive outlay that is normally involved with buying the necessary equipment.  Once he started BIAB we found that the actual bags were very hard to come by, and were normally made of muslin which, being a natural material, doesn't stand up at all well to being boiled for long periods and is really only suitable for a single brew.  To overcome this he asked me to make him a bag that would be longer lasting, and stronger.  Since making that first bag, I've made another 15 or so for other people, it appears it's something a lot of people are interested in.  So I thought I'd start up this blog.

My BIAB bags are made from 100% synthetic voile, and are overlocked (serged) and topstitched with 100% acrylic thread, have double-stitched seams, and have a drawstring made from 100% nylon.  All of this means that, unlike muslin and cotton, there's nothing in my bags that can rot, and nothing that will degrade due to the continued exposure to high temperatures.
The bags are custom made, so can be made to any size you require.  We also have a few standard sizes for common brewing vessels, a standard Youngs 5 gallon fermenting bucket, a 60 litre fermentation bucket (as sold by the likes of Hop & Grape and homebrew.ie, which some people have converted to a boiler), and a standard 50 litre 'keggle' conversion.

I'll be uploading some pictures soon, of the bags I've made.  In the mean time if you have any queries, please feel free to contact me.

Mareth