Zapap Lauter Tun

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Azorean Brewer
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Zapap Lauter Tun

Post by Azorean Brewer »

Has anyone successfully made and used a "Zapap" lauter tun as outlined in Papazian's Joy of homebrewing? I am looking into making and using this to sparge and want some input as to the do's and dont's.
dartedplus
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Yeah, I made one

Post by dartedplus »

Yeah, I made one and used it a couple of times, but I found that Keeping the temp up was a little hard, so I bought a 5 gallon igloo water cooler and got a false bottom for it. I also relaced the spigot with a valve similar to the ones that come on the bottling buckets you get at the HB stores. This works great for me, but you can only sparge about 13 or 14 pounds of grains with it. Any more than that and I will have to make one out of a big coolers. And I will need to do that when I want to make a big ole barley wine. Or else I will just have to cut back the amount I want to make. But I digress....yes I have made one and they work perfectly fine. Have a good one. Ed
andytv
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Yeah Cooler!!

Post by andytv »

My club uses a 12gal cooler with a length of stainless steel braid on the inside attached to a spigot. This serves as mash & lauter tun. The temperature holds very well and I havent has any problems with normal 10gallon batched (approx 20lb of grain). I could probably mash 30 lb, but it would have to be a single temp infusion. Herein lies the disadnavtage to "coolers"; you need to add hot water to elevate temps. Usualy not a problem, but I have had step-mashed batches come up to the edge of the cooler (you need to add soooooo much H2O).
I'm not sure what a Zapap lauter tun is, but I imagine it's made from a bucket??

I recommend either a cooler setup, or stovetop setup. The cooler type is all you will ever need for single step infusions. Also, nice thing about the cooler setup is that you mash in, then you don't have to mess with it for 1.5hr. It gives you time to prepare the next step, sanitize equipment, drink beer,take a little nap, etc.

Good luck.
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Mesa Maltworks
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All-Grain, 5 Gallon Batches With No Sparging !

Post by Mesa Maltworks »

An oft neglected use for the 12 gallon coolers discussed in this thread is to produce 5~7 gallon batches without sparging. This is a good idea for a number of reasons, most important is that the resulting beer quality is exceptional due to no possibility of leaching tannins (assuming a correct crush) since the temperature used never exceeds 160 degrees F. Simply add the desired malts to a false bottom equipped cooler and introduce the full volume of water at a dough in temperature that is adequate to strike the desired mash temperature for a single infusion.

A limitation here is that you can't do this with high gravity batches due to the limit on grain capacity, but this technique can be used to produce the most commonly brewed styles. The other advantages are reduced equipment, brew time and the lack of mash aeration. (HSA) All of these advantages can lead to consistently high quality beers.

Additional hints on using these: 1) Since the temperature used to mash should not exceed 160 deg. F, wort viscosity (thickness) can be a problem leading to a stuck mash. To aid in runoff, place rice, oat or barley hulls on top of the false bottom after adding the foundation water. Then introduce your grains for the mash. These hulls will offer a greater surface area to lauter from and will allow for a quicker runoff that will most likely not get stuck. There will not be any flavor, color or extract effects from using these in the correct proportions. And if you are the puritanical type of brewer who lives and dies by the former Renheitsgebot trade laws, the latter, barley hulls, is Reinheits. compliant.

2) Since you are not rinsing the grains completely of extract, you will have to use slightly more grain, which is not a big cost considering the time, complexity and quality savings. I can't tell you an exact ratio to increase by due to the variety of mash temperatures that are used to properly produce the many styles of beer, so just brew a recipy you already have, measure the results and adjust for the next batch. Try it... I think you'll like the results !!!
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