Igloo insulated mash tun

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Easy Peasie

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Hi all
Hopefully looking forward to not only doing my first ever beer but also going AG from the start, so I've just done my first temperature test on my insulated mash tun this evening and lost 5 degrees in 90 minutes. I believe this will be better when the grain is in the tun, but is this good enough? The coolbox is an igloo 44 litre box. The lid is not insulated but is one piece so I cannot get any insulation inside, unless I use a foam. Will this be any better?. I have also made a box to fit over it from 60mm foil backed solid foam insulation, which was also used.
Any comments are welcome.
 
44l is a good size for big beers, but if you are brewing 20l batches with average strength you'll have a lot of dead space above the mash. I've found using a sheet of foil on top of the mash (inside the tun) helps. The lid on mine (40 l) is hollow too but I've not bothered filling it. I think there are a couple on here who have used expanding foam and I'll probably get round to it at some point.

The box sounds like a good idea as long as it sits tight. You can always throw a sleeping back or some towels over the top too which will help. Best advice is to get a brew on and don't worry too much about it :D and definitely don't fuss about the temp and take the lid off every 5 mins to check :lol:
 
You can always top up the temperature half way through with more hot water, if the lids not insulated thats easily solved with an old quilted jacket / duvet or similar over the top, works for me :thumb:
 
Cheers
Bought the coolbox before I found the forum, then realised it was too big, probably gonna aim to do between 25 and 30 litre batches to fill up the box more .
Thanks :thumb:
 
Squirting foam in an igloo lid is a pain in the a*se I tried it not reccomended. and to be honest they are pretty good at holding the heat in.

Lay tin foil over the top of the mash and make sure you preheat the tun with plenty of hot water and you will loose hardly any heat.

UP
 
After faffing about with a twin-bucket mash tun and then a small 32L Coleman-type picnic cooler I bought a 66L Igloo MaxCold as a mash tun.

Lots of head space when considering "normal" length brews. Not so much for 50 litre ones. I haven't adapted it in any way - no foam or filler anywhere. I don't know if that stuff is food-safe.

First time out I lost nearly 10C on the mash. What have I bought here, I thought. After a few experiments I discovered that the best way to have a stress-free mash is to pre-heat the Igloo with 90C water and then either let that cool to become the strike water or drain completely (and rapidly) and underlet with new liquor for the strike.

Did the first of those for the last two brews...dropped 0.5C over 90 minutes.

Interestingly, I am suffering on efficiency now as I my larger potential batch size whilst sparging is diluting the wort too much. I am missing my target too often. I probably need to move away from a two equal sized batch sparges to a smaller size and perhaps do three or four sparges to be able to keep a tighter control over the SG of the collected wort...or move to fly sparging.

Jon
 
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