All grain setup I bought a long time ago (and never used).

About 15 years ago I bought an all grain setup (or so I was told). Life got complicated and I never did anything with it except let it keep dust off of the attic floor.

The parts I have include:

A 1/2 barrel keg with top cut off. I see them used as keggles here, but I think when I bought it I was supposed to use it as part of the sparging setup. Maybe I was supposed to boil in it too, but the place I lived it at the time had no place try to boil in a keg.

I have a copper tube with holes in it to sprinkle water on the grain as it spun around. The tube has a fitting on the top to let warm water in. I assume I was supposed to have the grain in some sort of giant colander or bag or something.

And I have a orange 5 gallon cylindrical cooler I was supposed to add a fitting to so I could connect a hose to the copper tube. The cooler has been used many times to dispense liquids, but never to sparge grain.

I also have some large enameled pots that look like the ones used to boil crabs. I think I bought these to boil in, but they are too thin and the wort burns to the bottom (I figured this out while doing a partial grain full boil).

Keeping in mind that I bought this stuff 15 years ago and I've spend a lot of those years killing brain cells, does this equipment list make sense for an all grain setup?

Here is a link to get your cooler going. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-easy-10-gallon-rubbermaid-mlt-conversion-23008/

It works for both five and ten gallon coolers and is what I use succesfully for my MLT. Your keggle is ideal for a boil pot and your enameled pot can work as your lauter tun. As far as sparging goes you can fly sparge with the copper tube or skip it and batch sparge which is what I do. Search this website for the differences. Sounds like you need a couple burners and you are ready to rumble!

uhlee1 said:

Here is a link to get your cooler going. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-easy-10-gallon-rubbermaid-mlt-conversion-23008/

It works for both five and ten gallon coolers and is what I use succesfully for my MLT. Your keggle is ideal for a boil pot and your enameled pot can work as your lauter tun. As far as sparging goes you can fly sparge with the copper tube or skip it and batch sparge which is what I do. Search this website for the differences. Sounds like you need a couple burners and you are ready to rumble!

Click to expand...

Thanks. Most of what I see here is what I'll assume is batch sparging (in a cooler with a drain assembly). Seems a lot easier to me.

I need to be careful with the burners. SWMBO is very tolerant. The entire house smells of Rhino Farts from the 32 gallons of Apfelwein I have fermenting in the basement, but if I melt the Trex deck I suspect I'll push her over the edge.

I may need to leave the keggle in the attic for now. I've been looking at the stovetop sparging method I saw here and I may start there. She's already used to cleaning up what I miss after my partial mash over boils.

my las 2 brews were full boil AG 5g batches done on my kitchen stove. it's been colder than a witches tit in a brass bra here since nye. i noticed a diff in boils from a wide bottom pot (14") as compared to my 12" TF pot. frankly the TF pot boiled a lot easier and was a rolling boil while the wider pot required you straddle 2 burners to get the rolling boil.

eriktlupus said:

my las 2 brews were full boil AG 5g batches done on my kitchen stove. it's been colder than a witches tit in a brass bra here since nye. i noticed a diff in boils from a wide bottom pot (14") as compared to my 12" TF pot. frankly the TF pot boiled a lot easier and was a rolling boil while the wider pot required you straddle 2 burners to get the rolling boil.

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What's a TF pot?

I tried to do a full boil for a partial grain a while back and I had to split into two pots to get it t boil and once I had a boil I had to straddle to two burners. Stove top is what's realistic for now so I'm interested in that.

I rally the apartment brewing so I do everything on the stove top. To get a full 6.5 gal boil I had to construct a heat-stick to augment my range. Honestly you shouldn't do that, I think. Learn about all the components of brewing and fit your equipment to that. You can turn the cooler into a mash and a laughter tun, witch is what most people do AFAIK. At least that''s what I do.

Bender said:

What's a TF pot?

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TF = Turkey Fryer