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Home made mash tun rumors to rest
Ok guys. I am soon making the jumb to all grain and plan on building my own mash tun from a cooler. If you look on youtube you can find countless videos showing you how to make your own, but they seem to have no similarities. In fact while reading comments I have read that just about every material you could use, in some way is poisonous and should never be used, so I'm here to ask you guys for your know-how and settle this once and for all. So here are the questions I think other beginers including myself may face.
Are all of these materials acceptable to make your manifold? Copper, SS, and CPVC. It seems like anywhere you look there is someone telling you not to use one of these materials. SS is the only one that everyone agrees on.
I like the idea of using a copper manifold for its durability and I'm sure its easy to clean, but I like CPVC because of its cost and ease of use.
As for manifold design what do you prefer? The hard manifold as mentioned above or a stainless water line with the hose in the middle removed. Again I'm partial to the hard manifold because of its permanence.
Final question. Do you prefer a round 'gatorade' style cooler or a rectangular igloo style cooler? It seems like the rectangular would be easier if building your own guts.
Any opinions or insight is very very welcome. Also if you have built one and want to share your tested and proven design please do. Or if you have just seen plans for one that seem interesting, please share.
I have seen all the stuff about things being poisonous, and the way I look at is, people have been using these materials and haven't been dying, so the poison can't be that bad. Cpvc is what you want, not regular pvc if you go that route, due to cpvc being able to handle high temps. All of those materials have been used to hold or transport water, so they should not be too dangerous.
my own mash tun is a 48 qt rectangular Coleman cooler. I bought a valve fitting kit from bargainfittings, and at first I used the stainless hose from a faucet line, but decided I wanted a more rigid draining device. I went with a bazooka tube.http://www.midwestsupplies.com/the-bazooka-screen.html This set up has been working fine for me.
[http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-e … ion-23008/
This is the 10 gallon mash tun i've been using for the past 3 years. I like the grain bed the round coolers give, and if the Tun is full for a 10 gallon batch, it looses very little heat, I mash overnight, and that helps alot. Also, there is very little to be done to it, you don't have to dril, or mess around with it, takes like 5 minutes to put together, cost about 50 bucks, and its just a great tun.
As always Hogarthe, and bruguru, your help is appreciated.
Another question that has come to mind is what about total size of the cooler? The 70 qt Colman Extreme is only $40. That is plenty of room for probably 30lbs of grain or more if I expand to larger batches or crazy strong brews (more likely the second of the two) but will a cooler with that large of a floor area leave behind too much wort after its all drained out?
yea, that sounds good too, but the 10 gallon round is going to give you a deep enough grain bed regardless if your doing 5 or 10 gallon batches. If your mashing 12lbs of grain for a 5 gallon batch, it's going to be tough to extract that using a manifold system, because there is not sufficent weight from the grain to make a bed. your wort will drain with bits and pieces in it.
Up to you, don't stress over it to much, whatever you choose your going to have to learn how to use it, it's new equipment.
I actually didn't know the weight of the grain came into play, I thought the grain just had to settle to for a good grain bed. Interesting. I'm going to do a little more research on the round 10 gallon. How much grain can you mash at once in one? I'm really interesting in doing really big beers, like some 12% barley wines, and such.
I disagree with brugurus comment about the weight.
I use a 60qt coleman cube and frequently brew low gravity beers.
I use a SS braid for my setup and the grain bed compacts just fine. Its a function of flow not really weight.
That said, if your tun is wide like the cube, efficiency does tend to suffer in a batch sparging setup when running with small batches. Mainly because you tend to pull the volume out of the tun faster than you can really suck it from the far corners. I hope that makes sense. But the amount of efficiency loss in that case is small. Maybe 5%. It still works for me.
If you are going to run in a fly sparge setup with a rigid manifold that efficiently reaches the perimeter of the tun, then those issues go away for the most part.
F U Brewchez, Ha ha. As you can see we all have our favorites, and I myself can only speak of the 10 gallon gott cooler. Acutally Brewchez talked me out of a false bottom, and I have had no complaints with the braid. Some people have alot of problems with the braid, it's just a preference I think.
Here's all you need to know. Get a Mash tun bigger than you think you'll need, and you'll be fine. It will take some time to dial in effiency but you'll get the hang of it.
Haha. Thanks guys. I may go with the 10 cylindrical style based on looks alone. I'd like to get around to building a stand of sorts for the HLT, Mash tun, Kettle and Burner to be placed on while I'm brewing, and the cylindrical mash tun would lend to a uniform look. I swear they'd diagnose me OCD if went to the doc asking about it.
Anyways either way I go I'm more intrigued by fly sparging. When I was more set on a rectangular cooler I wanted to also build a copper manifold for the top side to drip sparge water from. Gosh I don't know, I am a couple weeks away from building anything still so once I do I'll let you guys know.
fly sparging takes longer to do, so your brew day will be longer. just keep that in mind when you go to brew, so you don't end up leaving the kids at soccer practice or something, lol.
I like the cylidicral cooler too. I only wish I could get one in 15 gallons.
Thirsty uses the Minibrew mash tun, which I think is great too if you want to spend the extra money.
I went the cheap and easy route, using what I had on hand, with intentions to upgrade when I got it all figured out. Oddly enough, once in operation, I have never done the "upgrade." All my batches had always been 5-6 gal batches, and I had a "free" old rectangular non-extreme 36 qt cooler, so that's where I started, and stayed. I started out batch sparging and have never tried fly sparging. I used a 1/2" copper manifold as I had all the parts except for a few of the tee's. The bulkhead, for me turned out to be the easiest. The rubber washer originally in the cooler, turned out to create a fine seal on a copper tee, so that's all I use. Here is a picture of my manifold.
I don't even have a valve. I just use a hose on the end of the copper pipe sticking out the cooler, with the end above the mash level in the cooler (typically wrapped through the cooler handle). 
Ok. the hose is a bit insecure, so I do now use a spring clamp to hold it in place. The cooler will hold a mash within two degrees over 60 minutes or more, and I am used to using it. It works. What more do I need?
The only other thing you need is a couple of us looking over your shoulder and drinking your beer while you brew the next batch.
Looks good man.
Crabnut definitely taught me not to over complicate. I mean that as a compliment, I'll build what I've been planning to all along. Square cooler and cpvc manifold.
e_mott09 wrote:
Crabnut definitely taught me not to over complicate. I mean that as a compliment, I'll build what I've been planning to all along. Square cooler and cpvc manifold.
I like your self advice. Makes sense.
In my 15 gallon, I max out at 35#s with a thick mash. If you want to start brewing big beers, I suggest the 70 qt.
There is one caveat, and that is deadspace. So while brewing smaller batches you will have a lot of room with no thermal mass to retain heat, and the deadspace cools quickly. If your cooler has a nice even shape to it, I would suggest putting a block of styrofoam in a trash bag that you can replace the deadspace with during the mash rest. Who knows after a trial run, this may not be necessary, however you may have a tough time holding temp. That is what I have noticed doing smaller batches with mine.
But really, how often do I do small batches??!!
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