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Insulated Mash Tuns

B

beernut

Other than using hot water or an immersion heater has anybody come up with a way of adjusting temps in an insulated mash tun.

Cheers
 
I have been toying with the idea of an Immersion heater, but have yet to make one. Using a 110v water heater element, and some PVC pipe as a holder, My thought is that I would use a thermometer that turned it on and off as I stirred the grist. I like the idea of keeping the grist at a constant temp. I loose about 5deg during the Saccrification rest with my Igloo Cooler. But I don't want it to go higher than the intended temp.

Cheers

Preston
 
Hi Preston

I have been told by good authority that you can get some burning and caramelisation from an immersion heater,  however I have been thinking of steam tapped off an old pressure cooker and introduced through a manifold behind the tap on the mash tun into the liquid area of the tun under the filter so it would rise up through the grain bed into the wort, thus raising the temp to the desired level.  Any thoughts on that.  That is a big temperture drop in your cooler as I only experience around a 1-2C drop over sixty minutes in mine which is a 37L rubbermaid cooler although you might be in the fahrenheit scale
 
I've seen some tricks at brew sessions, such as adding a foil bubble wrap cover on the cooler, b/c the top is usually the least insulated part, and heat rises.  I've seen people use a "mash cover" of that pink foam board to cover the mash and separate it from the colder, dead air space in the cooler.  During winter, I've seen people cover all that with a sawed-off sleeping bag, again, trying to add insulation on top. 

Do you preheat the cooler?  Although you may be hitting the strike temp at first, maybe if it is not preheated it loses some quickly while the temps stablize? 
 
Hi M/L

What I was looking for was a better way of lifting temps to requirement instead of adding hot water which I find a little tedious.  Heating on demand if you will
 
Mash inside a really big microwave.

Yeah, that's all I got right now :-\
 
beernut said:
Hi Preston
I have been told by good authority that you can get some burning and caramelisation from an immersion heater,  however I have been thinking of steam tapped off an old pressure cooker and introduced through a manifold behind the tap on the mash tun into the liquid area of the tun under the filter so it would rise up through the grain bed into the wort, thus raising the temp to the desired level.  Any thoughts on that.  That is a big temperture drop in your cooler as I only experience around a 1-2C drop over sixty minutes in mine which is a 37L rubbermaid cooler although you might be in the fahrenheit scale
What I have been cooking up in my head is a paddle that is filled with water and is heated with a water heater element. This is then controlled by a thermostat that regulates the power to the Element (See attached Picture). The issues are this:
1. Size of materials may be to bulky
2. Heated water expands creating a need to vent
3. Construction materials. PVC may not be the way to go for this project, May need to be made of aluminum. which would require equipment/tooling that I don't have.

BTW it is F. not C. and the MT is preheated with Boiling water with a rest of 10 min for the MT to come up to temp prior to adding the grains.

Cheers
Preston
 

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goose on fire said:
Mash inside a really big microwave.

Yeah, that's all I got right now :-\

Clever idea GOF but not practical I'm afraid.
 
Yeah Preston you are thinking along similar lines like me, There is the problem of a moving water connection or electrical connection.  A paddle would do away with having to stir the grist by hand although the temp probe on my setup extends 6 inches into MT and is approximatley the same distance above the dome filter.  Maybe boiling water out of the HLT through an immersion coil would be a better option for my setup.  I am going to try out the steam  approach and see if it affects the process in anyway.  Will keep you posted through this topic and would be interested to hear how you go with yours.

PS.   There are also small electric steam generators as used in commercial coffee machines like in Starbucks, but they only have a 300ml capacity whether this would be enough water to generate the required amount of steam for the above purpose could only be a guess at this stage.     


Cheers
Brian

 
beernut said:
Hi M/L

What I was looking for was a better way of lifting temps to requirement instead of adding hot water which I find a little tedious.  Heating on demand if you will

Ah, sorry.  I've got nothing.  As I've contemplated a bigger rig, that is definitely a fork in the road.  A stainless mash tun that could take direct heat for temperature steps, or an insulated one that cannot be heated.  A friend has started doing decoctions with good results, and he has a plastic Mini-Brew, so that is yet another option for no-direct-heat.  I've read the same concerns about immersing a direct heat source into the mash. 
 
With a metal mash tun you could use a LP burner with self ignition and that would allow you to raise your step temps no problems.  Unfortunately you can't use this approach with an insulated MT.  Also Preston raises the question regarding even heat distribution in the mash tun.  Something else to think about.

Cheers
 
I wrap my five gallon cooler in an old army down sleeping  bag. At the end of mash time I uncover the mash cooler and the inside of the sleeping  bag has some heat in there. The out side of the sleeping back was room temperature. The mash doesn't lose that  much heat so this meathod of insulating works for me.
 
beernut said:
I am going to try out the steam  approach and see if it affects the process in anyway.
Were you thinking of Steam through tubing or directly injected into the Grist? I would be careful of the direct injection because of hot spots. Unless you were constantly stirring the grist while you were injecting the Steam.

My thoughts are this, What ever is being inserted into the Grist should not be hotter than what the projected mash temp should be. This way it is fool proof and you would have constant temp control.

Cheers
Preston
 
I was thinking along the lines of directly injecting the steam into the liquid under the dome filter or in the case of a rectangular mash tun into the liquid under the triangular filter which is sold here in Australia.  This would percolate through the water and heat up the grist above.  That's the theory anyway.  As you say you would probably have to stir the grist to even out the temps throughout but I do this if I am adding water anyhow.  This obviously wouldn't work with a braid filter.  A valve at the manifold connected to the upper side of the the exit tap would be needed to control the steam and shut it off when the desired temperature was reached.  A bonus with this would be to clear any stuck sparges if need be.  It might not need stirring if hot water is percolating through the grist.  Who knows this might be a breakthrough in the art of homebrewing.  When I get my hands on a secondhand pressure cooker I have to try it.

Cheers
 
I watched my friend do a decoction for the first time last Saturday and it was not a ton of extra work but it lengthened the day about an hour.  He's just started decocting alts and pils and we could tell a noticeable difference in taste and mouthfeel from the exact recipe, with the only diff being the decoction.  (He brews every weekend and has a very reliable system.) 

Seems like a win-win if you get both temperature steps and better tasting beer with the same process change. 
 
Correct me if I am wrong but isn't decoction about taking part of the grist and liquid wort,  boiling it for a period of time then adding it back to the tun.  Boiling the wort in this instance was not my intention.    :-\
 
Decoction involves removing a portion of the wort, raising the temperature, and adding it back into what remained.
What I do is I remove a portion of my mash, a third to a half, put it into the pot I used from my extract days, bring it to a boil (or as close as my patience allows), add it back into my insulated mash tun, mix well, and start my sparge fifteen minutes or so later.
The result is that when I start my sparge the sticky sugars are more easily washed off the grain because the temperature is higher than had I not heated the mash.

There are plenty of more complicated, time consuming, and intimidating ways to use the decoction method, but the general idea is the same.
If you can't easily heat the whole thing, remove a portion, heat it, and add it back in.

The rest comes to basic algebra. 
If your mash is 150, and you desire to sparge at 170, pull out half and heat it to 190.  (150 + 190 = 2* 170)
If you want to heat a smaller portion, do the math and figure out the necessary temp.
 
beernut said:
Other than using hot water or an immersion heater has anybody come up with a way of adjusting temps in an insulated mash tun.

Cheers
I'm about to start brewing AG myself and thought about an immersion heater also. ( If you want some good ideas on how to make one check out http://www.cedarcreeknetworks.com/heatstick.htm) I wonder if you could eliminate or reduce the problems if you used a 220 volt element but plugged it into 115 volts? That would lower the temperature of the element considerably. Of course it would it would increase the time it would take to heat the mash but it might work.  As you've probably guessed I'm kinda a gadget freak. I haven't even started brewing AG but I built a 10 gallon hot liquor tank using a hot water heater element. This way I can mash in the basement or garage and then boil outside.
Now to find a digital controller or a way to use a laptop to control the temps or some other way to make it unnecessarily complicated.  :)

Mark
 
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