Well I am sure this has been done, but here I go. So I got a 3 gallon Rubbermaid cooler for my 1-2 gallon batch’s. I am just not the best DIY sometimes, anyone have any ideas for a valve setup with this. Don’t wanna spend $30 on a valve and bulkhead set up
Are you opposed to using it as a BIAB vessel? That is what I did with my two gallon cooler. I also did not want to spend $30 to shove a ball valve on a $15 cooler.
You can either no-sparge and use your full volume of water; or you just pull the bag, dump the wort in your kettle, then return the bag and sparge. Or you can jam some tubing through the spigot, depending on the size of he spigot opening.
I just jammed the tubing through the spigot on my big cooler. If I had a small one with a spigot I’d do the same thing. but when I do small batches I use one of those little igloo lunch buddies or whatever they are called. the ones construction workers use to carry an enormous lunch. no spigot so I just do what erock suggests and pull the bag, empty the work, replace the bag and sparge.
My biggest reason for the cooler is temp control, I don’t know about you guys but I had a hard time with temps on the stove last weekend. They we jumping around alot
+1. I remember after starting AG I thought about using the oven I had at the time. Except at its coolest it wouldn’t go cooler than ~ 200F. A little over mash temp.
For sure. I’ve had a few ovens since then that go (accurately) lower than that. It was around the time I went with my first round Igloo and started fly sparging, which eventually led to batch sparging. I have no doubt there’d be little, probably no temp rise with that oven method.
EDIT - I misunderstood preheating the oven to mean leaving the heat on at a constant temp, not shutting off, Jeff. My bad.
Caught one hell of a cold right after posting this. My oven only gets down to 170. Won’t a oven set at 170 raise a 150 degree mash? It must only raise the temp slightly over an hour?
Preheat to 170F. Turn it off before you start the mash, it takes some time to mix and adjust the temp if you are a little off. It takes some time to measure and adjust pH if you are one of those pH guys like me. Then when you are done, put it in the oven, which will be less than 170F. You could have an oven thermometer in there to tell you when the temp is 150F or a 150F +.