Building a Mash/Lauter Tun

Buying, building and using brewing equipment and apparatus. Product reviews and questions.

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Mountain Jack
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Nov 19, 2002 12:04 pm

Building a Mash/Lauter Tun

Post by Mountain Jack »

Recently I've been researching building all grain equipment so that I can make the big move and I have noticed that there are a lot of ways to mash and sparge. I am leaning towards converting a 10 gal. Gott cooler to use as both the mash and lauter tun. I have discovered that you can make a false bottom with a spigot, create a manifold drain with some tubing or use some kind of screen to filter the runnings. All of those sound reasonable to me. Does anyone have an opinion on which one is more effecient, easier to use/build? Yeah like anyone here has an opinion :).

Jack
BillyBock
Imperial Stout
Imperial Stout
Posts: 561
Joined: Sun Dec 31, 2000 11:37 am
Location: Ohio

Gott Vs. Igloo

Post by BillyBock »

Jack: I've converted coolers before. The first time I did I converted a Gott. The second time (which was for a friend) I converted an Igloo. If I had to do it again, I'd choose an Igloo for the simple reason that the conversion was a lot simpler. At the spigot hole, the Gott was double-walled with insulation sandwiched in between. Conversely, the Igloo was single-walled. Additionally, the outside surface of the Gott's spigot hole was obstructed which made it difficult for me to find the right hardware and washers to fit. The Igloo was way less obstructed and easier to find pieces to fit. The Gott has a screw on top, the Igloo has a push-in-place top. Their relative insulation performance seems to be the same.

As far as the screen, I used Phil's False bottom in each one. Get the largest diameter to ensure a tight fit. I followed that up with stiff braided hose to connect it to the valve for added insurance to keep it from moving. I've also seen folks make copper manifolds with either drilled holes or hacksaw slots as the filtering mechanism. I can't comment on the performance of a manifold since I haven't used one (can someone out there speak to this one?). However, if you take the steps to make sure the Phil's false bottom doesn't move, and that you don't whack it while stirring the mash, it gives great performance. I had very few pieces of grain come through and never had a stuck mash due to the equipment (due to my operation of it, yes). Additionally the foundation loss (the amount of fluid left behind) was about 6 to 8 oz.

Let me know if there's anything else you want to know.

v/r
Bill
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