Salvagebeer Homebrew Beer Blog

I posted some time ago about my desire to put together and attractive brewing setup. Today, at long last, I finished the first part of this setup, which I’ve been hinting about for quite some time. I’ve finished my mash tun. Intermediate and advanced homebrewers tend to use old or stolen half-barrel kegs (capacity – 62 quarts) for their mash/lauter tuns for a couple of reasons. One is convention. These vessels have been shown to be effective. Another reason is capacity, as a “keggle” as they are sometimes known can allow a brewer to make 10 or even 20 gallons of beer in about the same amount of time needed to brew the standard five gallon batch. Yet another reason to use these kegs is availability, either through nefarious means or through one of the many suppliers out there, kegs are everywhere, and cheaper than stainless steel pots of similar size. The last reason that these kegs see such popular use is temperature control – one can apply direct heat to their metal bottoms and keep their brew within the desired mash temperature range. These keg tuns aren’t very good at maintaining temperature on their own, though. I’ve already stated that I don’t believe that the temperature lost in an un-insulated vessel such as a zapap or keg tun really has a negative effect on the final beer, for those folks looking for repeatability and absolute control, this is a worry.

A quick look around online will show you TONS of creative solutions to the problem, many involving various means of insulating the keg – this sometimes reduces the advisability of applying direct heat to the keg, which in addition to scorching the wort might now set the whole damn apparatus on fire, bringing into question the choice of this vessel as a mash tun to begin with. Indeed, often the worry of scorching a mash via direct heat will give rise to complex or elegantly simple recirculating systems, again making the choice of a keg as a vessel into question. If you don’t intend to apply any heat to the keg tun directly, why not get one of those GIANT beach coolers of the kind used by SERIOUS beachgoers and tailgaters? These are available locally just about EVERYWHERE in capacities of 80 quarts or even more, and for a relatively reasonable price, and could be set up exactly like my cooler system, only bigger.

The reason for the keg systems, I think, is purely aesthetic in most cases. A serious homebrewer, willing to put in the time and effort of building a large-capacity system, gravity fed, pumped, recirculating, or single infusion, wants to be able to look at serious HARDWARE. A great big picnic cooler looks just like a smaller picnic cooler, and that does not scream “serious” or “enviable” to anyone. I’d like to be able to belittle this outlook, but with all of my noise about attractive systems, I haven’t a leg to stand on. I know why brewers want impressive things – I agree – it’s just that I want mine to be pretty, too. I was tossing all of this around in my mind as I wandered the local Home Depot, hunting for some fittings I needed for my existing system.

I love The Home Depot. I just love it. My wife can be as annoyed watching me wander the plumbing or electrical aisle for an hour as I might become after sixty minutes at Banana Republic. I love to look at all of the cool stuff we’ve invented to do various jobs, and I’m constantly thinking about what OTHER jobs they might be able to perform, as well. I’m like a kid in a candy store. Up here in Vermont, this behemoth hardware store is perhaps more seasonal than it is in may places. As winter comes on, snowblowers, plastic wrap for windows, and space heaters replace grills and mowers and mulch. Every season change, rather than pay for storage or shipping, the store will put outgoing stock on sale, allowing the shopper to save fifty percent or more on things that they won’t be able to use for six months. Buy a snowblower in April rather than in November, and you’ll pay less than half what you would otherwise. Several weeks ago, I was wandering the graveyard of summer sales when I stopped dead in my tracks, my mind racing wildly at the implications of what I saw:

Normally retailing at over two hundred bucks, this stainless cooler is intended, I think, to keep folks on the deck and in the yard at barbeque and pool parties. To keep folks looking for a cold beer of soft-drink from wandering in and out of your kitchen looking for the fridge while allowing you to appear slightly more high-class than you might with a lineup of igloo coolers sitting on the lawn. I have nothing against the igloo coolers, understand, and that is my typical approach, but as an attractive mash tun, already at a perfect height for gravity feed, with a built in drain, and painstakingly insulated – this was love at first sight. Check it out:

Marked down from $250 to $100, I knew immediately that I’d found my mash tun. I decided to approach the project as though it would be my last mash tun ever, and that I could use it with single infusion, batch sparge, recirculating systems, and completely stand-alone. I wanted the beast to be sturdy, attractive, and effective, so I brought it home, and thought about it for some time before proceeding.

Cooler

20 gallon capacity, stainless steel on the outside, plastic on the inside, with a threaded drain in place, rugged, with a bottle opener and cap-collector on the side, and on very strong casters, this thing is beauty itself. As it will only be used in the pre-boil part of the brewing process, there’s no reason to worry about the inevitable scratching of the plastic. I initially thought I’d be able to attach my manifold and valves right to the waterproof threaded chromed drain in place. In the end, this approach wasn’t tenable, as there was no threading on the inside, so I had to do away with this drain and make my own.

Drain

The drain wasn’t so hard to sort out. The drain that came on the cooler comes right out simply by loosening a single lock-nut and sliding it out.

For my bulkhead, I took a 1 ½ inch long ½ inch brass close nipple, which I covered liberally in kitchen-grade clear silicone sealant. On the inside, I used the original rubber washer and a simple copper pipe fitting into which I could slide my manifold. On the outside, I had to improvise a little more. I started with a big rubber washer from the big drawers in the “fasteners” aisle of Home Depot. As it was on the outside, I didn’t worry about the materials that the washer was made from. I had to cut out the center of the washer carefully with scissors, as they all had interior diameters that were way too small. This was easy to do. I needed a lock-nut to hold the whole works in place, before threading my valve onto the outside. This was a greater challenge than I’d anticipated, as my local Home Depot simply doesn’t carry washers that thread onto standard threaded pipe. The guy in eh store looked at me like I was a moron when I held up my brass nipple and asked about washers, stating, “That’s not really what these are for. These are for plumbing.” Thanks, buddy. I know that these washers exist, and that I could order one online in five seconds, but I’m impatient. I hunted through the plumbing section for thirty minutes or so, looking at all of the toilet repair kits and other packaged “plumbing solutions” for any sort of appropriate washer, before I retreated the derisive eyes of the plumbing associate and took a moment to regroup.I used to work summers and Christmas breaks with my Dad, who’s an electrician in Maine. I mostly wired bathroom fans and ran the “hole hog,” an enormous and incredibly cool drill for drilling through… well, the damn thing could pretty much drill through anything at all, I think. Electrical conduit attaches to metal boxes through the use of threaded fittings and pre-punched holes in the boxes. The conduit is secured using funky thin washers. I run to the electrical department, my nipple clasped tightly in my hands (yeah, I said that on purpose). It turns out that the threading on pipes and the threading on conduit is indeed compatible, and for thirty cents, I had myself a little package of steel lock washers.

The valve was a whole other consideration for me. Most of my gear to date has been constructed with standard brass ball valves. They’re what most brewers use, and are simplicity itself in terms of installation and use. The problem is, the brass really wouldn’t look all that attractive sticking off the front of my shiny steel cooler. I was adamant that I wanted shiny and silver for my valve. They do make stainless ball valves, but they have a bit of a matt, industrial look to them, and they’re a special order item around here. I had to take a day or two doing my research online and in local hardware stores before I decided on something. The valve I picked is relatively low-profile, chrome-finished brass, with a compression fitting on it, which should, with the addition of some tubing and a hose clamp, make a great outlet. This is a quarter-turn valve, just like the usual ball-valves, and unlike the one in your bathroom, which requires a bunch of turns to open all the way. As the tun will never be directly heated, I saw no need for the insulated handle evident on most ball valves. I think it looks quite smart, personally.

 Manifold

As is pretty standard with rectangular coolers, I eschewed the use of a false-bottom and build a manifold system. I could have built the manifold out of PVC, and it would have been much cheaper, every bit as effective, and taken much less labor to construct. There is absolutely no benefit that I know of to doing this in copper, other than aesthetics. The plastic might get scratched up or stained over time, but would be easily replaceable, and at little cost. Despite all of this, I went with copper, and am thrilled with the decision. Something about it just feels RIGHT. It’s bomb-proof, and once I sweat the pipes together into just a couple of removable chunks, the whole thing will hold together no matter how vigorously I stir the mash.

I cut the pipe using a little $5 cutter that I bought when I made my initial PVC manifold. If I were a plumber, doing this stuff all day, I’d want a better cutter, but this worked fine for my purposes. I was going to cut my slots in the pipe using this method, too, as it’s easy and quiet work to do while watching TV. Ultimately, though, I wasn’t happy with the throughput of these little slots.

They would have worked fine, I think, in a gravity-fed system, but if I ever hook up my pump to the system, I fear that the little slots wouldn’t allow enough flow, and I’d end up running the pump dry. I decided to use my ancient jig-saw, and went through two metal-cutting blades in the process, dulling them pretty badly. The saw woulda cut through PVC like butter, but in the end, it only took me a couple hours, and I’m very happy with the results.

Overall

I approached this project to be attractive, sturdy, and modular, and I think it is all three of those. I intend to pick up some stainless steel wipes and shine it up nice, removing all of the fingerprints and making it gleam. I’ll be sure to post pics when I do. I may also construct a trickler for fly-sparging, but there’s no need to rush that – the system is ready to go as a batch-sparge tun today, and I prefer that, anyway. Soon, this mash tun will be moving over to my friend Rich and Leslie’s basement, where it will play a prominent role in brewing large batches of beer for their upcoming wedding. We’re looking at low-gravity, and I think we can probably fly-sparge 20 gallon batches in this sucker. I’ll let you know.