mash tuns

[Graham@pendaisy]

Hello - I am a new to this forum and I am thinking of making a move from malt extract brewing to full mash and I need some advice please. I have been trying to work out what extra equipment I need for mashing and sparging.

On Jim's mashing video he uses an old boiler as a mash tun and it is fitted with false bottom to allow wort extraction. this false bottom is made in line with his equipment suggestions section. Later, in the sparging video, he does not sparge in this mash vessel but empties the whole goods into another vessel with a net strainer and sparges in this second vessel (with a sparging arm). In effect he is using one vessel to mash and another to sparge. Am I right in thinking that if the whole goods is poured into a net strainer in another sparging vessel, then the false bottom in the mash tun is unnecessary ? is there some alchemy that I am overlooking?

I'm thinking of buying a good quality cool box (without tap or strainer) a net strainer and a second bin to hold it together with a sparging arm.
Does this seem adequate?

Thannks for your thoughts
Graham

[gti1x]

I would suggest trying BIAB (brewing in a bag) - see the forum for details. Essentially you mash in a voile bag in the boiler, then remove bag with grains. No need to sparge unless you're doing a concentrated brew in a small bag (like my last). This lets you try all grain at very little extra expense (couple of quid for a large piece of voile).

Just my thoughts

GTI

[Graham@pendaisy]

Thanks for this, I will look at Brewing in the bag. maybe this is an intermediate step towards the full mash? Graham

[Kev888]

Hi,

I think Jim is away at the mo, but IIRC the videos are just of a slightly different setup to the technique pages (he says "You'll notice a few changes to my brewing set up since I took these still photos"). In the videos he uses a mash tun with a purpose fitted false bottom and it looks like in the technique pages he uses a grain bag hung in a fermenting bucket. But both the false bottom and the grain bag are performing the same task - stopping the grain escaping whilst letting the wort trickle through/out - so you are quite correct that you needn't use both.

If you were to mash in a cool box then you could fit it with a tap and a filter/manifold/net-bag/false-bottom and sparge in it directly after the mash. Your boiler (or equivalent) could serve as the HLT and you could temporarily collect your runnings in a fermenting bucket and then transfer to the boiler once it has finished being the HLT. This is more like his videos, except he uses another vessel as a dedicated HLT.

To be honest I don't know for certain why Jim uses separate vessels for mashing and sparging in the techniques pages, but i suspect its because he mashes in the boiler and either wants to use that for wort collection or doesn't trust the net bag with the boiler's element. But if you go for a cool box I can't immediately see a reason for mashing in that and then transferring to something else to sparge unless you really want to avoid needing a tap on the cool box.

Please Jim/others - feel free to correct me if I misunderstood your approach.

(The Brew-in-a-bag approach uses a net bag to do everything in the one boiler, taking the grain in and out of the liquor rather than visa versa, so if you've a big enough boiler it can let you brew all-grain with minimal extra equipment)

Cheers
Kev

[Graham@pendaisy]

Thanks very much for this, and for the detail in it -it has helped me feel that I have understood the process correctly and that I'm not missing something. I have since been looking at you tube videos on Brewing in a bag and this does seem to be very staightforward - if slightly less efficient than the traditional method. Since it does involve much less expenditure, I think I might get a voile bag, make a wire protector forthe boiler element and try BIAB -before I invest in more gear, but not til after Xmas now.

Thanks for your help

Graham

[fisherman]

I use a coolbox without a tap, I made a copper manifold and connected a tube and syphon out. ( i'm not very good at DIY ) I would never move grain from one bucket to another to messy. best of luck