How To Make A Mash Tun

DIY: Making Your Ain Cooler Mash Tun

Making your own mash tun out of a cooler is an piece of cake procedure and ensures that your mash process is insulated and evenly heated. Here's how to do it.

Making the leap to all-grain brewing gives you finer control of your recipes and tin also save you some coin on ingredients, but it does require special equipment. You need a container to concord all the grain while the starches convert, and you need a way to rinse the sugars from the malt. It's a simple problem with a multitude of solutions. Some people use a brew-in-a-bag setup, which is fairly simple, simply it does require some musculus. The more traditional path is to use a mash tun with either a faux lesser or some kind of manifold. Here, I'll testify you how to build a mash tun from a 10 gal (38 50) beverage cooler (pictured above).

Parts List

• 10 gal (38 l) cylindrical drink libation (Igloo or RubberMaid, for example)
• Tapping hardware
  
  • Adapter: ½ in (13 mm) copper pipe to ¾ in (19 mm) FPT
  • Bottling spigot
• Manifold parts
  
  • Three ½ in (13 mm) copper tees
  • Four ½ in (13 mm) copper cease caps
  • Almost 6 in (15 cm) of straight ½ in (13 mm) copper pipe
  • About 6 ft (ane.8 grand) of ½ in (13 mm) copper tubing

Like any good DIY projection, in that location are many paths to get to the completed project. This project in particular makes several design merchandise-offs. You could just utilise a stainless steel kettle as the vessel, but a cooler has built-in insulation, which will assist to ameliorate maintain the mash temperature. As well notable is that a cylindrical drink cooler works better than a rectangular one because the geometry provides a skillful grain bed and efficient draining.

I've chosen to make the manifold from copper tubing. Other alternatives would be to brand or buy a screened false bottom that fits the cooler (12 in/30 cm round for a ten gal/38 50 libation) or to use a stainless steel braid as a filter.

Tools

• Pliers
• Plumbing torch
• Lead-gratis plumbing solder
• Flux
• Dremel tool with a cutting blade
• Pipe/tubing cutter

Build Steps

Three elementary steps and you're washed—ii easy steps and one that'south slightly more hard.

Remove the Original Spigot

The original spigot on the cooler should be easy to remove: but loosen the nut that holds it in place. There should as well be a prophylactic grommet on the spigot shaft. Exist certain to fix that aside, because we'll reuse information technology.

Install the Tap

Screw the bottling spigot onto the copper adapter. Then, slide the copper adapter through the spigot hole from the exterior. This should exist a reasonably tight fit. Slip the condom grommet onto the shaft of the adapter and push it through the wall of the cooler. I've seen other designs that bolt the tap hardware in place, but in my feel, the grommet lone forms a sufficient seal. The images below show the interior and exterior views of the tap.

Build the Manifold

Building the manifold is the well-nigh difficult function of the build. In this blueprint, the manifold is fabricated from three concentric rings of copper tubing that mount onto a drain shaft, pictured below.

The first pace is to form the three rings. Shape the largest ring first, sizing it to be simply smaller than the inside diameter of the cooler. Make the second ring a fiddling bit smaller, about viii in (20 cm) in bore, and the center ring about 4 in (10 cm) in diameter. Be careful while bending the tubing—information technology's easy to kink it if you go likewise fast. One time yous have your rings, solder an end cap onto one side of each ring.

Next, we'll construct the drain shaft from three copper tee segments joined by short sections of copper pipe:

1. Commencement with a 3 in (7.6 cm) section of pipe as the base of the shaft.
2. Solder on one of the tees, with the tee facing to the side, using pb-gratis plumbing solder.
3. Solder a curt i–2 in (25–51 mm) slice of pipe as a connector for the next tee. This should be just long enough to connect the two tees.
4. Solder another tee, with the tee facing in the opposite management from the first tee.
5. Solder some other short slice of pipe and then the third tee, facing in the same direction as the get-go i.
6. Finally, solder some other short piece of piping and and so an cease cap onto the shaft.

Notice that the tees are kickoff from ane another so the rings will alternate directions while the drain shaft lays flat.

Cheque the fit before proceeding:

1. Slip the base of the shaft into the copper adapter.
2. Slip the rings onto the copper tees and make sure that everything can lie flat on the lesser of the cooler.
3. You may need to shorten the base of the drain shaft and/or reshape your rings.

Once everything fits, you're ready to cut the drain slots into the copper rings. A hacksaw will work, just a Dremel with a cutting bract is much quicker and easier. Before you offset, remember that the rings branch off in alternate directions. Make certain y'all're cutting the bottom side of the ring. Cutting the slots virtually one-third to ane-one-half of the mode through the band tubing, as pictured below.

Annotation that drain shaft components and the end caps are soldered but the rings are not. Similarly, the manifold slides hands into place likewise. This makes information technology easier to dismantle for cleaning and storage.

CBB's Hot Rod Your Kettles and Mash Tun online class is the perfect introduction to building out your bad-donkey homebrew arrangement.

Source: https://beerandbrewing.com/diy-making-your-own-cooler-mash-tun/

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