Ok folks, I need your help. I am about to build a mash tun from a keg. I am a new-to-all grain brewer and would like this to be something that I can use now and add onto later as my needs and budget allow. Right now I don’t have a pump so I will be using gravity and direct fire. I have separate kegs for a keggle and a 13 gallon one for a HLT. What I need help with is the false bottom and dip tube combo. I’m thinking that because I don’t have a pump yet to recirculate that a larger false bottom with supports would be better to keep the grain away from the heat some more. This is the false bottom I’m thinking of using for that reason -
The next part of the question is how can I use a dip tube with it? Will a standard tube work, and I just drill a hole in the bottom, or will I need to adapt something/drill a hole through the supports.
Feel free to weigh in. Like I said - I’m new to this so any and all advice is welcome.
I use a keggle for a mash tun, and direct fired it until recently. I had a simple (yet pretty strong) false bottom with a drilled hole for the dip tube…worked like a charm. The false bottom you indicate looks kinda flimsy until you see the supports…the supports look like they give you a few extra inches of height and would stand up to about 50 pounds of grist, which is good, but for $75 you could probably go with a thicker material one and not need the supports.
That’s basically the setup I have and it works for me. I have very little room under the FB and little if any wasted wort. One modification I made that help was to cut slits in the end of the diptube so that it wouldn’t seal against the bottom of the keg under all the weight.
I have put 43 pounds of grain into my keg mash tun with 11 gallons of water. It worked but sparging took forever so I don’t recommend it, but 35 pound grain bills are nothing to worry about.
I have a Sabco system, which is designed with keggles. Here’s a link to their site showing the false bottom. http://www.brew-magic.com/ketl_acc_falsebtm.html
I don’t think that you need to worry so much about the weight of the grain, because it will be floating in water. You do, however, want to worry about pumping too much suction from under the false bottom, which is the reason that a false bottom will bend or collapse.