Slightly worried...

[floydmeddler]

Helping my mate to make a mash tun and am slightly worried about something. We're converting a 27L Young's fermenter and have decided to go for a raised false bottom. There will be 6L dead space beneath the raised false bottom which means there will only be around 21L above. Will this be enough room to mash in around 5kg of grain or is it now too small?

Cheers

[OldSpeckledBadger]

That's a lot of dead space. You're going to have to allow for that with your strike water volume and calculations. The Youngs FV I have will hold a fair bit more than 27 litres. It's probably near 33 litres filled to the brim.

[yashicamat]

I use one of these as a mash tun (with a false bottom):



I'm assuming it's the same? My false bottom is just a plastic plate though, so along with a drop pipe under the plate and a run off tube from the tap, I get a siphon effect and virtually no dead space. I have managed (just) to make 10 gallons of 3.6% mild in mine, but the 5 gallons of 5.0% stout (with the associated buckets of flaked barley that takes up a lot of space) did fill about 85% of my tun's capacity. That's with my brewhouse efficiency running at 84% . . . .

See how it goes, you can always transfer the false bottom, tap etc. to a bigger container if needs be.

[floydmeddler]

I use one of these as a mash tun (with a false bottom):



I'm assuming it's the same? My false bottom is just a plastic plate though, so along with a drop pipe under the plate and a run off tube from the tap, I get a siphon effect and virtually no dead space. I have managed (just) to make 10 gallons of 3.6% mild in mine, but the 5 gallons of 5.0% stout (with the associated buckets of flaked barley that takes up a lot of space) did fill about 85% of my tun's capacity. That's with my brewhouse efficiency running at 84% . . . .

See how it goes, you can always transfer the false bottom, tap etc. to a bigger container if needs be.

Cheers. It's the bigger version of this. Wider and with less height. Yes, 6L is quite a lot but I won't leave any wort behind as I'll have pvc tubing connected to the tap to suck out all the goodness. Tried the plastic plate and it didn't work well at all. I've been using a raised design and it has worked a treat so want to stick with that for my mate's design.

Is there any way I could work out how much 14L would increase if I added 5kg of grain to it?

Cheers.

[floydmeddler]

OK, did a little scaled experiment. Might have gotten this all wrong so please correct me if I have. I'm rubbish with numbers!

I filled a measuring jug up with 500ml of water and added 20g of grain. Volume raised to 530ml... so:

If 20g raises by 30 ml then 1kg will raise by 1.5L meaning 5kg will raise it by 7.5L

So 6L dead space + 14L mash water + 7.5 volume raise = 27.5L altogether.

That's manageable with this vessel I reckon... unless I've screwed something up?

Cheers

[yashicamat]

That's about right I reckon.