2nd AG success, but newbie has Q?

Why do you need to have a lauter tun? Why not go from the mash tun directly to brew pot? I am missing something here??/ I heat water for my mash in the same pot I heat wort in. I place grain in the pot and maintain the 153. I then place the mash grain into mash tun and pour the 170 water over and begin draining to lauter tun. "Sparging" Why not go directly to brew pot. Why do I need a lauter tun? I do it this way but not certain why I need to "momentarially rest the wort there??"

Is the lauter tun for steeping hops and or fruit? If I don't do than now, do I need to have this second holding vessel?

The two sessions and AG beer I have made have been very good. just like everyone here, I don't buy comercially built beer anymore. It's a beautiful thing.

gregg

I don't have a separate lauter tun, either, and I batch sparge. This is then the MLT- the mash/lauter tun. Both in the same vessel. If you fly sparge, you need a liquor holding tank to hold the water while it trickles into the mash tun.

I'm guessing most people just use a MLT and not a separate lauter tun.

I just take hot water and pour it into the grain bed, with a sauce pot. i don't have the sprinkler thingy. As the water level drops i just add more to the grain. Second time only for me but has not been a big deal, to just pour in the water. Yes the grain kind of swirls around when I do this but I have not had a problem yet. I am not aggressive with the pour either i just gently get it to the grain surface and let it roll into the mixture. Maybe i am too much of a cave man. The sprinkler arm thing seems kind of silly. Just one more thying to but and clean. Mind you I am not alergic to cleaning, but why add another thing if it really is not an absolute need to have. Does it really make your beer that much better?

gregg

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but it seems that you are mashing in the kettle, and when the mash is finished, you transfer the mash to another vessel, then sparge into a third vessel, then transfer the wort back into the kettle for boiling. If my understanding is correct, you don't need that last transfer.
I do what many people do. I have a kettle that is used for heating the mash/sparge water, and for boiling the wort; a mash/lauter tun - MLT (a cooler with a false bottom, manifold, or braid, and a spigot) and a hot liquor tank - HLT(another cooler with a spigot).
I heat the mash water in the kettle, then add the mash water and grains in the MLT, and leave it for an hour at the required temperature. While waiting for the mash, I heat the sparge water in the kettle, and when that is up to the required temperature, I add it to the HLT.
When the mash is complete, I recirculate by draining about 1/2g runnings from the MLT into a small pot, and adding the runnings carefully back to the top of the mash. When the runnings are clear, I sparge by draining from the HLT into the MLT, and collect the runnings in the kettle which then gets boiled. I fly sparge, which really requires a HLT.
As Lorena said, if you batch sparge, you don't really need a HLT, but you do need something to hold the sparge water. You could use the kettle to hold the first batch of sparge water, but you would need something else to hold subsequent batches, as you will collect the output from the sparge in the kettle.

Hope this makes sense.

-a.

The lauter tun is only for the sparge. Most people, myself included, mash and lauter in the same tun. I go from my mash/lauter tun directly into my keggle.

And I think your efficiency will suffer if you fly sparge using the pour- the -sparge -water -on -top- of- a- pan- on -top- of- the- wort method. It will cause more chanelling.

I used to use the double-bucket method with a grain bag. It worked great, but lifting the mash and pouring it was dicey at best.... -p

I'm a batch sparger. You can see by my set up that I don't have the gravity to run from my hot liquor tank (smaller pot on the right) to the mash tun (cooler). In batch sparge world, the wort only gets into two vessels, the mash tun where it is "born" by mixing the hot water with the grains and then sits for an hour +/- and the boil kettle.

You can see the ladder I use to get my sparge water up to the cooler. I think that slowly pouring your sparge water in and mimicking a fly would work if you shut down your spigot on the cooler a bit to force a slower sparge and avoid channeling.

I've done that in the past, but only when recirculating my wort to extract more sugars because my water volume is already maxed out.

Dude, I am so suing your ass for patent infringement on my redneck brew stand design.

AZ Backyard style...

I think I have it now. i have heated water to 171-174 and added the grain in the same pot I boil the wort in later. I watch the temp. and it does stay at 153-4 for about 1 hour. i then transfer the mash to a plastic pail with a phales bottom and add more water to begin sparging. I could just drain this right to my brew pot instead of going to a second plastic 5 gal bucket. I was confused. I was told today that I could rig up a burner to heat the water at the top of a brew stand and drain the 171 into my grain to begin the mash and maintain the temps in a 5 gal cooler with the phalse bottom with a spigot like you all have. Then just drain the sparge water that becomes the wort right into my brew pot ready for hops.

I get it now, I think.

gregg

Bobby? Is that my step ladder?

olllllo, I need to get me some of those fancy brew tiki statues. That's the final piece of the puzzle.