Round Igloo Cooler False Bottom

Hey,

I'm getting ready to do my first all grain batch...pretty excited. I got a round 10 gallon Igloo cooler to mash in. I am considering fly sparging at some point so I wanted to get used to a false bottom off the bat. I was going to get the standard 12" stainless steel false bottom that most places have (http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51kl5RhQPDL.jpg), but then I saw this: http://www.homebrewing.org/12-Stainless-Steel-Domed-False-Bottom_p_1058.html. It has slits rather than a bunch of little holes. I'm wondering if anybody's tried this, and if they've had better results regarding stuck sparges with this design. It seems like the slits may be less prone to getting stuck than the holes. If nobody's tried it, I don't mind being the guinea pig, but I figured I'd ask.

Cheers,
A.J.

All I can say is that the one with the holes works fine for me. Last time I got a stuck sparge I really destroyed my grain in my grainmill. Other than that its gone smooth.

That's a sexy bottom!

I have the one with little holes. I've had a stuck sparge or two, but not usually and when I do it's pretty much my fault.

The bad thing is that it takes a long time to vorlauf. I vorlauf manually with 2 1liter wine carafes and I'll probably fill them 20 times or so. I still end up with grains in the boil kettle. I've also made the mistake of opening up the valve a little while it was draining. That sucked up a ton of grains and spit them into the boil kettle.

I didn't think it was abnormal but then I read a thread from someone asking if vorlaufing was even necessary because he gets almost no grain after one or two vorlaufs. Made me feel like I had a problem. Maybe that slited screen will be better. Plus it looks hot.

Do what I do, get the braided water supply line. I fly sparge and have no problems. It's cheaper too.

For batch sparging, I've been really pleased with a homemade copper manifold in my cooler mash tun. Never a stuck sparge, it drains fast, it has little to no dead-space, and it'll vorlauf clear in about two or three quarts. Plus, they're pretty cheap to make if you have torch and a dremel tool...just another idea.

Gameface said:

That's a sexy bottom!

I have the one with little holes. I've had a stuck sparge or two, but not usually and when I do it's pretty much my fault.

The bad thing is that it takes a long time to vorlauf. I vorlauf manually with 2 1liter wine carafes and I'll probably fill them 20 times or so. I still end up with grains in the boil kettle. I've also made the mistake of opening up the valve a little while it was draining. That sucked up a ton of grains and spit them into the boil kettle.

I didn't think it was abnormal but then I read a thread from someone asking if vorlaufing was even necessary because he gets almost no grain after one or two vorlaufs. Made me feel like I had a problem. Maybe that slited screen will be better. Plus it looks hot.

Click to expand...

I use a Big nylon grain bag inside mine. They work really well and you wont get all that grain in your vorlauf

I have the exact same adventures in homebrewing false bottom, and with a very small 'n' I can say that it worked great. I did my first AG batch last week, and with no help had a very successful brew day. Voluraff in about 2 quarts, no stuck sparge (even with nearly-dusty roasted barley, which my recipe called for), and ended with an efficiency of about 74% on a batch sparge. Worth the extra dough? Hard to say, but the whole system is solid and worked fantastic for me. Cheers!

Gameface said:

That's a sexy bottom!

I have the one with little holes. I've had a stuck sparge or two, but not usually and when I do it's pretty much my fault.

The bad thing is that it takes a long time to vorlauf. I vorlauf manually with 2 1liter wine carafes and I'll probably fill them 20 times or so..

Click to expand...

Agreed...it is a sexy bottom. I did some digging and found out the slits are 1.2mm wide, so they're half the width of the holes in the other false bottom. I wonder if that would help with the vorlauf.

planetscott said:

Do what I do, get the braided water supply line. I fly sparge and have no problems. It's cheaper too.

Click to expand...

Is your braid in a ring layout, or is it just a single straight piece connected to the valve?

Thanks for all the advice guys.

Locham said:

I have the exact same adventures in homebrewing false bottom, and with a very small 'n' I can say that it worked great. I did my first AG batch last week, and with no help had a very successful brew day. Voluraff in about 2 quarts, no stuck sparge (even with nearly-dusty roasted barley, which my recipe called for), and ended with an efficiency of about 74% on a batch sparge. Worth the extra dough? Hard to say, but the whole system is solid and worked fantastic for me. Cheers!

Click to expand...

Awesome...thanks for the feedback. And congrats on the first AG batch. I'm looking forward to mine.

AJBrew710 said:

Agreed...it is a sexy bottom. I did some digging and found out the slits are 1.2mm wide, so they're half the width of the holes in the other false bottom. I wonder if that would help with the vorlauf.



Is your braid in a ring layout, or is it just a single straight piece connected to the valve?

Thanks for all the advice guys.

Click to expand...

It's a straight piece, but I have a rectangular cooler. With the round, you can coil it and get better sparging without the worry of channeling. Just remember to drain slowly. Thats the best way to prevent stuck sparges.

ok..this newbie is a bit confused...shouldent the false bottom be above the drain?..maybe standing on a few legs?...that way , the whole mash will be filtered..it seems you would wast a bit of wort the way i see it...unless it is siphoned...or it filters thru the connect..as in the ss braid.....yup thats right i need an education..lol....thankx....tom

tnsen said:

ok..this newbie is a bit confused...shouldent the false bottom be above the drain?..maybe standing on a few legs?...that way , the whole mash will be filtered..it seems you would wast a bit of wort the way i see it...unless it is siphoned...or it filters thru the connect..as in the ss braid.....yup thats right i need an education..lol....thankx....tom

Click to expand...

If you put the false bottom above the drain you would have a lot of dead space below the bottom where water would not get to mix with the grains. With the domed false bottom being on the bottom of the cooler, there is only about a half inch of dead space at the peak of the dome, so most of the liquid will be siphoned out of the cooler with minimum amounts of water left behind. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong...I want to make sure I'm getting it right.

I have the false bottom with the slits in it, along with the 10 gallon igloo. One out of every ten times (usually in a recipe with adjuncts) I have a ridiculously stuck sparge. Rice hulls would never fix it. The other nines times out of ten, works just fine.

I'm lost as to why this happens to me. All I can imagine is the grain stuck to the top of the false bottom, presumably because there are too few holes. I was planning on removing the bottom and drilling small holes in it.

The bottom with slits has such a small percentage of surface area as holes, and so much metal. The design with holes should allow much more liquid to pass through without ever getting stuck, as it has much more available space to flow.

I'm curious to know which you find better, as I may just buy one with holes. Has anyone else ever had such a problem with the slits?

So I bought the false bottom from Adventures in Home Brewing. It's a very nice piece but the picture does not show the false bottom I got. It is similar, but instead of slits all going one direction they have another set of slits at 90* that fit into all the spaces you can see on the pictured piece. I'm going to assume what I got is an update to the one shown and I can't imagine that it would be less effective as it seems there are 2x as many slits as the one shown.

Something else I want to add is that the new slotted false bottom sits about half as tall as the perforated screen I'm replacing. Seems like that will get more of the wort off the bottom of the cooler. Not that it matters too much to me as I fly sparge and use more water than I need. I just close the valve on the MT once I have the volume I want in the kettle. But for batch sparging this should be a plus.

I too have that mash tun from adventures. The false bottom works great. Never a single issue. Plus it's made in USA. And cleans easily.

LouBrew13 said:

I too have that mash tun from adventures. The false bottom works great. Never a single issue. Plus it's made in USA. And cleans easily.

Click to expand...

I'm actually have tons of issues with mine. Not sure what the heck the problem is. I took the hardware off my old false bottom and added it to this one. Now it drains VERY slowly. I've mashed with it twice and both times it worked, but even at full open I'm only getting a trickle out of it. Then on my last mash it was completely stuck. I tried blowing back through the line with no luck. I ended up dumping the 6g of water and 21lbs of grain into two homer buckets and cleaning it out. I put it all back in the cooler and tried to drain it again, stuck immediately. I was still trying to rescue my wort when I ended up spilling a bunch of it all over my shirt, got pissed and dumped the whole thing and aborted the brew day. Only time I've started a brew day and not finished it.

Since then I went the the hardware store and bought larger fittings for the false bottom, so now it's using 1/2" fittings instead of 3/8" fittings. Much larger and consistent path now, but using just water I was only getting a trickle out of the valve. If I lifted the false bottom off the bottom of the cooler the flow really picked up...

Ok, I can be dim. I think writing this out gave me an idea about what's wrong. I'll report back shortly.