I was given the basic home brew kit as a present for Xmas and have been brewing kits. Feel its time to step up to the all-grain side of the art of brewing. Been looking at mash tuns online and they seem very expensive. Seems I could build one a lot more economically, however, I’m not the most mechanically inclined person. Looking for thoughts on building vs. buying and best coolers to use (ie: round vs. square)
Building one is very easy and you can find several sources online to show you how to build one. I found a 48qt rectangular cooler on Craigslist for $10. I made mine with a stainless braid and ball valve and found everything I needed at the local hardware store for about $20 and I’m sure you could probably do it cheaper.
Thanks for the link, appears cost-effective and simple – everything I was looking for!
that’s the Denny way.
I’ve used it for 425 batches and it still works great!
My only recommendation is to look at the cooler you are getting, and make sure that the drain port is very low on the side of the cooler. The cooler I am using currently (it was a cooler I wasn’t using) has a rather high drain port, and the dead space is currently reducing my efficiency.
i have both blue rectangular cooler and igloo. i switched to the igloo when switched to smaller batches. i have yet to move over the braid. i have just been using a grain sack to hold the grain during the mash and works pretty well.
The above is a good design for batch sparging. The manifold for fly sparging is a more complicated. The pros and cons of batch vs fly is the subject of many threads here.
As you are just beginning to get into all-grain, it is probably easier for you to start with batch sparging. I have a three tier system indoors that I fly sparge with. When I brew outside, I do batch sparge.
It’s a tiny bit more, but I’m very happy with the hardware sold by bargainfittings.com. I am rebuilding* my mash tun and just put a valve in my kettle, and I like the three-part stainless steel ball valves I can break down and clean as needed. Plus they sell the plumbing supply lines converted for use. But I started with the bare minimum (when we were a one-job household) and it still made beer!
- Going from 5 gallon to 9 gallon, cylindrical to rectangular
I built this one 4 years ago and it works great:
http://brewing.lustreking.com/gear/mashtun.html
The only modification I’ve made is adding a Bazooka screen instead of the SS mesh from a supply line for the manifold. Holds temperature very well ( 1-2 F drop over an hour )
Just to give you a confidence boost - I am mechanically inept and was able to build a mash tun like the ones in the links with ease!