Tech: Mash tun design

There are as many variations on a mash tun as there are brewers (even when you look at commercial breweries they are quite a few different ways of mashing).  The mash tun is the real corner stone of the brew house.  We always here talk of how big a brew kettle a commercial brewery has, as if this was the be all end all of what a brewery can do.  But really it is the mash tun that is the work horse; this is where you design what the finished extract will be. 

We are going to start this journey by looking at the design I use and then move on to variations of not only manifolds but also a few false bottoms. At the start I use the picnic cooler style of mash tun with a manifold.

This faucet design is a great way for controlling wort flow into the brew kettle. 

 As you can see here I cut slits into the piping.  This is a simple way for allowing the wort to flow through the manifold.  Another option for this would be to drill holes instead of cutting slits. 

The design I use for my manifold allows for easy break down and cleaning. 

From here we will look at a few other options that can be used when designing a mash tun.  The first design here is probably the most simplistic.  A stainless steel mesh hose.  For the most part this one requires almost no work to set up.  Next we find a copper manifold design for an drink cooler.  The drink coolers are taller giving a bigger grain bed to act as a filter. 

These next two designs are variations on picnic cooler set ups.  Even though they are set up in copper they can just as easily be done with cpvc.  The distinction between cpvc and pvc is an important one.  Cpvc is designed to withstand higher temperatures than pvc, when dealing with mash temperatures this can be very important. 



 Here we find a few false bottoms designs.  These can also be fairly easy to build, but you can just as easily buy them premade. 

 Though most of the designs you can find for false bottoms revolve around drink coolers, they can just as easily be made for picnic coolers as well. 

 Here is the layout for an easily built faucet. 

Finally, here we find a variation on the faucet design.  The use of the valve is what gives you better control in lauter flow. 

Time for a pint...