New Mash Set Up Idea

[Jazzafish]

Good morning all,

I have been thinking about this for a while, and would like some input towards a possible new mash set up. All possible pros and cons h34r:

At the moment I have a standard gravity fed set up. Your standard HLT (fermenter filled with water, heated by temp controller and element), flowing to a mash tun (25 litre esky with a braid manifold), flowing to a kettle (modified keg sitting on a wok burner). The system makes good beer, but I am planning on increasing my volume and also looking at making step mashes and target temperatures a bit easier.

My proposed mash set up looks a bit like this crappy drawing, HLT and Kettle to remain the same:



Basically I plan to convert a keg or large stock pot into mash tun with a false bottom, then putting the mash tun into a temperature controlled water bath. The water surrounding the mash tun will be controlled by a thermostat and element. The thermostats probe will be in the grain bed. The bath will likely be an old drum... whatever holds the weight and temperature. Could be a bath tub for all I care!

So, Do you recon it is worth the hassel?

 

[Ash in Perth]

If you do, put the thermostat in the water bath not the mash tun, otherwise it would probbaly over-shoot the step temperatures.

 

[Justin]

I have done this on a small scale before (9L mash in stock pot) because I had a water bath temp controller handy with a thermostat built in. It works on a small scale mash if you have no insulation but isn't necessary at all on a bigger one and IMO really only lends itself to very small scale mashes (less than 10L).

The problem I see is trying to heat a large volume of water around your mash and then transferring that heat to the mash, it's going to be slow and inefficient and ideally you would want stirring in both the mash and the water bath.

The reality is that with a bigger mash volume the temp loss is actually less that that experienced with a smaller mash volume. If your vessel is even half well insulated you don't really need to worry about temp loss.
If you really want to step mash then my recommendation is to get a hand held immersion element and use that. It will be easier to construct, cheaper and has infinite control and you can use it in all aspects of your brewery from speeding up HLT heating time to boosting the speed to boil in the kettle. Dunking an element directly into the mash adn stirring is probably the most efficient way of heating your mash but you're going to have to stir.

Hitting mash temps shouldn't really be a problem ever, especially with a program like promash that works it all out for you. Measure your grain in kilos, measure it's temp, accurately measure your strike water temp and volume and transfer it into your mash tun. Now adjust the strike water with your hand held element until it is exactly the temp you want and then mash in. You should hit your temp spot on.

I don't mean to be a downer on your idea, but I just think you might be making things far more complicated than they need to be. But best of luck with whatever you decide.

Cheers, Justin

 

[Jazzafish]

Thanks for the reply guys. Everything you mentioned makes sense.

I have decided to leave my set up as is instead of going with that water bath idea. I will eventually upgrade my mash volume though.

I'm already doing the old timer on my kettle to have the water ready for my wake up. I was just thinking of a set and forget way of stepping temps via geeky control methods. I'll just stick to doing it manually as I haven't had a problem yet... thankyou pro mash.

If it ain't broke... no need to look into a turn key system... ohh look a turn key system, I can make one of thems!!!