Mash/Lauter
Tun
After hearing of the successes of other brewers using a rectangular
cooler and stainless steel mesh, I decided to make my own. One
day while shopping for something else at a hardware store, I
spotted a 48 quart Rubbermaid rectangular cooler.
Looking at the existing drain for the cooler, I realized that
a length of 3/8" tubing might just fit. After a stop to the
bulk tubing section, I grabbed about 4' of 3/8" OD x 1/4" ID
vinyl tubing. It fits into the hole with a slight force fit,
so it's watertight. I left about 3" worth of tubing in the inside
of the cooler, then attached some stainless steel braid to that
with the aid of a small stainless
steel hose clamp. The braided hose was obtained by purchasing
a length of stainless braided dishwasher hose. I simply cut
off both ends & slipped the stainless braid off of the interior
rubber hose. The small diameter openings in the stainless braid
make for ideal wort separation from the malt. The flow from
the lauter tun is controlled via a plastic hose
clamp. I should add that this system is really only suitable
for batch sparging, because the location of the tubing should
theoretically create channelling in the grain bed which causes
greatly reduced efficiency. There have been studies performed
on various false bottom and manifold setups & this information
is available in other forums. Total cost of this mash/lauter
tun was approximately $32.
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Old Lauter Tun
I used to simply mash
in one of my 20 liter brewpots, then transfer the mash into
a double-bucket lauter
tun. It consists of two used 23L buckets that used to contain
grape juice for winemaking, a plastic spigot and a length of vinyl
tubing sized to fit the exterior of the spigot. One of the buckets
has a hole in the bottom of the side wall sized for the spigot;
the other bucket has about a zillion
holes drilled in the bottom, using the smallest drill bit
I had - maybe 1/16" (about 1.5mm). This system served me well
for about nine years. It worked very well & I have never experienced
a stuck mash. I retired it more because of limitations of the
mash tun. I could mash enough grain for a six gallon (23L) batch
of beer in my 20L brewpot by adding about 1L of 170°F water per
pound of malt, then keeping the pot inside my oven. While step
mashes could be performed by heating the pot on the oven, I experienced
inconsistent results, and when making higher gravity beers had
trouble mashing out. The double bucket system
works very well, is cheap to build, and helped me brew some great
beer over the years. I could achieve greater than 80% efficiency
with this lauter tun, mashing in my brewpot and milling my malt
in the corona mill. Since I was given the buckets for free, I
was able to construct this lauter tun for less than $4. |
