Homemade mash tun

bretski said:

+1 on the keggle.  Gives you plenty of room that way.  I bought mine from New Belgium for the paltry sum of $15.  YMMV. 

I won't open the obvious can-o-worms on how to obtain a keg.  Do the right thing, because karma's a bee-yotch. 

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not sure if this is how it is everywhere, but here, after you empty out a keg, if you return the empty one, you get money back, or if you're buying another one, you get a discount on that one....but its not too much you get back...so i would just look at it like you're buying it at a good discount!

jeff said:

Rob,
I use a 15 gal keggle, but I've heard of people squeezing a 5 gal batch into a 7.5 gal turkey fryer pot. Just watch for boilovers... When I went all grain I bought a 15 gal aluminum stock pot. Made great beers in that pot. It is now one of my hot liquor tanks.

Good luck,
Brew on,
jeff

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right on, i was looking at going slightly bigger than 7.5 gal, but probably not all the way up to 15....itd be nice, but, man, i had no idea stock pots could get so pricey until i started looking into AG brewing!

BBR, +1 on keggles.  I was lucky enough to borrow an 8gal turkey pot.  So what I did was boil 7gal for strike water-of which I used 4.25gal, I saved the spare hot water in a bucket. then in my partial boil pot I heated my 4 gal of sparge water. I got my startch coversion, drained, sparged and while that was in the mashtun, I reheated the leftover strike water for 2nd runnings for starters.

A couple big pots would have saved some steps, but good beer is fermenting from this.

Like every "proper" brewer, I've gone out and done stuff that I recommended AGAINST 

First, my 10G Gott mashtun is nowhere near the size I need for a 10G batch. I have another 5G Gott, but even splitting 1/3 and 2/3 of the grain bill isn't enough.

So I made a keggle mashtun.

And not only that, my angle grinder didn't have a cutter, so feeling too lazy to go to Home Depot, I decided to use my Dremel.  Yeah, it's taking a pen to a gunfight... 

After 10 discs and not getting very far, I decided to use the sawzall.  Difficult to get the correct circle.

So what it finally came down to is just abrading maybe 0.5mm with the dremel and then cut with the sawzall.  Went through 3 bi-metal blades and a total of 16 discs.  I also filled a White Labs yeast vial with 10W40 and would dip the blade into it after every 2cm or so to cool the blade.  The blade fits perfectly into the vial!!!

So after all that, I got the Lowes water heater insulation (which isn't wide enough for a keggle) and taped it on the the "proper" tape used for ducting.  After all that----15G STILL isn't enough for 10G batches.  Kind of a "DUHHHH!" moment, but when you need 17G of water and then 30+ pounds of grain, it AIN'T going to fit in a 15G keggle.

So I am going the 100 Quart Igloo route.  That SHOULD be big enough for any batch I'll ever make, even trying to make 14G batches of barleywine.  It has wheels on it, so I can take it off the stand and wheel it around the house to the compost patch.  Much easier than making several trips of grain alone before I could haul the remaining grain and the keggle out.  Should be much better!

I bit my tongue and closed my eyes and darkened the steps of Walmart to buy the Igloo.  They had some cool split-lid (2 lids) wheeled igloos there, too, but they were only 60Q.  80Q would have been perfect, but they don't exist.  And the 70G didn't have wheels.

So I'll go the stainless braid route and MAYBE drill a hold in the top for my fly sparge apparatus.  I might just batch sparge--I don't know yet.

I've got lots more advice I don't take myself!!! 

Henway, I used my 60QT Igloo Cube for a 5 gallon Batch for the 1st time Saturday.  I used batch sparging and 13lbs of grain and 4.25 gallons of water fit easily.  NOW... that was for a simple APA.  I know It would handle double that, what I have no clue on yet is building a really big beer like a BW...That might take too much grain and strike water to do it in mine.

But Before I get down the road, I'll tinker on Beersmith to see how much of that stuff I'll need.

There are always the gigantic "Salmon" coolers Those are 120-150QT I think.  (They are like a friggin park bench...)

I also saw a guy on brew board selling a 55GALLON Stainless drum.  His setup is AMAZING...I don't know if he is worried that he could blow up the legal limit in 5-6 batches or cares...But a thing of beauty.

You can't be the first guy to need this type of volume.  Preston might want to jump in here!

I can relate! 30+# of "Wet" grain weighs a TON! I don't always use my large MT but it is nice to have. Yes I have 2, but the smaller one doubles as an actual Cooler. Imagine that! SWMBO makes me wash it out with bleach first tho!

I use a Coleman 100qt with wheels, I don't have a compost pile (yet) to put the spent grains in. So it takes me longer to dispose of than it should (Weight limits on the Trash cans SUX!). Your next beer related purchase may be a boat ore believe it or not. Stirring that much grist is not an easy task!

I have outgrown my brew closet! SWMBO does not know it yet tho.

Cheers
Preston