Mash Tun, build or buy?

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will4009

will4009

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Hello

I am in the process of sorting out my kit before going in to AG brewing. I have been looking around at mash tuns and i am not too sure which way to go. My funds are a bit limited, so if at all possible i would like to find a cheaper option that shelling out £70 on a cool box style mash tun from an online home brew shop.

Having had a look around, there seems to be a couple of building a mash tun, but i am not too sure what is the most effective. I had thought about buying a cheap cool box such as this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Large-24L...314?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item540599863a

And then taking it apart and insulating it with builders foam, a copper manifold and a ball valve? would this be a good method or does anyone have any home creations which have worked well for them? I am not too sure about the size of cool box i would need, i have a 30l buffalo boiler, so i dont know if a 24l mash tun would be big enough?

Thanks
 
will4009 said:
Hello

I am in the process of sorting out my kit before going in to AG brewing. I have been looking around at mash tuns and i am not too sure which way to go. My funds are a bit limited, so if at all possible i would like to find a cheaper option that shelling out £70 on a cool box style mash tun from an online home brew shop.

Having had a look around, there seems to be a couple of building a mash tun, but i am not too sure what is the most effective. I had thought about buying a cheap cool box such as this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Large-24L...314?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item540599863a

And then taking it apart and insulating it with builders foam, a copper manifold and a ball valve? would this be a good method or does anyone have any home creations which have worked well for them? I am not too sure about the size of cool box i would need, i have a 30l buffalo boiler, so i dont know if a 24l mash tun would be big enough?

Thanks
Click to expand...


You will want to re careful with the insulation, especially at the top. Saw some cheap coolers in Woodies that barely had any. Went to a local camping place and compared them and saw that it was packed tight with insulation. This one probably has none so it will depend on how confident you are that you can do it yourself.

As for size, I would say that 24L would be okay for your boiler but that is a guess.

Also, one issue I had with a mash tun was the dead space under the false bottom. Be careful where you put your ball cock because the higher it is the more unusable waste there will be in your mashtun. I lost about 5L below the tap this way. Very hard to recirculate that stuff.
 
+1 builders foam can get out of hand, much easier to add to the insulation with simple sheet material like mylar(space blankets -£shop) and bubble wrap, and look at vermiculite or perlite for lid filling ;)

the plan above sounds fine, but i would look at a coldbox with a volume closer to or above 30l tho as the published volume will include the lid...

whan fixing a tap fix against the inner skin only trying to seal against the inner and outer skins is much more problomatic.

go for it ;)
 
hmm. yes i thought the top of a cheaper cool box would have pretty rubbish insulation. I have had a look around for other types of insulation, you are probably right, building foam isnt the easiest stuff to work with.

That double bucket system looks interesting, plus cost effective. I have some thinking to do!
 
will4009 said:
Hello

I am in the process of sorting out my kit before going in to AG brewing. I have been looking around at mash tuns and i am not too sure which way to go. My funds are a bit limited, so if at all possible i would like to find a cheaper option that shelling out £70 on a cool box style mash tun from an online home brew shop.

Having had a look around, there seems to be a couple of building a mash tun, but i am not too sure what is the most effective. I had thought about buying a cheap cool box such as this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Large-24L...314?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item540599863a


And then taking it apart and insulating it with builders foam, a copper manifold and a ball valve? would this be a good method or does anyone have any home creations which have worked well for them? I am not too sure about the size of cool box i would need, i have a 30l buffalo boiler, so i dont know if a 24l mash tun would be big enough?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I bought one of them from that link total rubbish no insulation at all around the sides or on the lid just AIR ! Ended up spending 65 on one already converted :oops:
Regards Steve
 
stevej said:
I bought one of them from that link total rubbish no insulation at all around the sides or on the lid just AIR ! Ended up spending 65 on one already converted :oops:
Regards Steve
Click to expand...

oh right, i will stay away from that one then!
 
I did a lot of thinking about this and in the end went for a Coleman Xtreme 36 quart. It cost £50 on eBay but fitting it out was easy as it has a drain hole. Very happy with it. I now get 80% + efficiency. So good beer can be made for 35p per 500ml bottle. It's that fact that allowed me to fork out the extra dosh.
 
Godfather50 said:
I did a lot of thinking about this and in the end went for a Coleman Xtreme 36 quart. It cost £50 on eBay but fitting it out was easy as it has a drain hole. Very happy with it. I now get 80% + efficiency. So good beer can be made for 35p per 500ml bottle. It's that fact that allowed me to fork out the extra dosh.
Click to expand...


Yeah i have just had a look at them, they seem to be of a far higher quality. If i am edging towards spending that sort of money i may look for a pre-made mash tun form an online shop. Will have a look tomorrow and see what my best option is.
 
When converting coolers to mash tuns, does anyone use a bazooka? Seems a lot easier than putting in the internal pipe work.
 
There's a lot of weight inside a mashtun - maybe 5kg of grain and 12 litres of water (ballpark figures, depends on the brew). A bazooka would most likely collapse under that weight, and you would probably end up with a stuck sparge. That's my thoughts on it anyway!
 
ManseMasher said:
There's a lot of weight inside a mashtun - maybe 5kg of grain and 12 litres of water (ballpark figures, depends on the brew). A bazooka would most likely collapse under that weight, and you would probably end up with a stuck sparge. That's my thoughts on it anyway!
Click to expand...

Not sure that's true, I built my own mash tun last week and they are fairly rigid, not a soft mesh and mine worked flawlessly for the two brews it's done so far...

Both brews contained 5kg of grain and at least 14L of liquor.





 
A lot of the premade cool box mash tuns sold by brew sites now feature the bazooka, so I imagine efficiency results can't be devastatingly bad.
But we shall see.
I can always swap out for the tubing or a false bottom system.
 

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