5 GAL Mash tuns at Canadian Tire?

[JohnQ]

i hate to be redundant, and would really love to get stuff up here, but here's mine...

http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=11757919&kw=igloo&origkw=igloo&searchId=57861767743

[Dave Savoie]

http://www.walmart.ca/Sports/Camping/Co ... Lid-Cooler

[JohnQ]

And other suppliers for the round one down south...

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=10+gallon+round+cooler&gs_upl=66636l74751l0l75094l30l28l4l8l9l0l405l3394l0.10.4.0.2l16l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1366&bih=677&safe=active&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=4245470637809727158&sa=X&ei=vXRTToz2IuaIsgKc--yDBw&ved=0CBwQ8wIwAA

JQ

[Dean]

Home depot sometimes has the round ones but it's not a regular stocked item ...they get them in for "contractor appreciation specials" and they don't last long

[Dave Savoie]

They are callled water coolers or beverage coolers you can buy them on www.amazon.com not sure what shipping would be though on a large item like that

[Dean]

starting to see that a sanke keg is much cheaper ...

[Dave Savoie]

the $20 48 QT from walmart is what I used the whole time I brewed worked great only lost 0.5-1c in a 60 min mash

[fakr]

For the price, I'm leaning towards the walmart special.  It works.  I'll just have to figure out a good way to evenly distribute sparge water over the grain bed.

[Dave Savoie]

Fly Sparging ? If so research the benifits for home brewers almost nil

[Kyle]

yeah, I generally batch sparge, but even if you recirc or want to fly sparge, you can just get some of that silicone hose, let it rest on the grain bed and let 'er go. That is the system used by the electric brewery guy, and he is an engineer, so apparently it works. I tried it with my most recent brewing adventure (mash, 60 min, then add sparge water at same time and rate as draining runnings) beer was as clear as ever, and it was very easy.

[fakr]

so just zig zag rubber hosing with holes in it on top of the grain bed and let it run?  
Richard, how long is your filter?  12 inches or more?  I'm just concerned that one end of the cooler will saturate with clean water before the other end is stripped of sugar.

[Richard]

Yeah it's more like 4 feet long. I curl the thing into a figure 8.

The mash is stirred like mad at the start to evenly distribute the mash water, so whatever's getting drained will already be saturated with sugar. The first runnings should therefore be around the same SG at both the beginning and end (I may check this some time).

When I add the batch sparge I stir again and leave it to settle for 10 minutes before draining. Between the stirring and the settling I'm not worried about the water having different SG's because most of the sugar will go into solution during stirring.

Note that I get quite a lot of cold break doing this, but so long as you use irish moss most of that ends up in the boil tun.

[Kyle]

so just zig zag rubber hosing with holes in it on top of the grain bed and let it run?

I'd avoid rubber, as it aparently gives off flavors and is not food grade at mash temps. Basically, in the last brew I did, I just let a food grade hose which is super flexible rest on the top of the grain bed and gently drained the sparge water into it

here is an ideal example of the hose you could use:
http://www.hopdawgs.ca/index.php/equipm ... g-hi-temp/

I actually have intentionally used a stainless steel braid which is about 6" shorter than my cooler floor (so about 14" for the braid) so that when I vourlauf or do decoction mashing, adding stuff back in can be done without disturbing the bed of grain right near the hose.

[fakr]

Nice, thanks for the ideas.

[fakr]

10 Gallon Igloo coolers cheap on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Igloo-42021-Bev ... 3f0a34cf95