AG Simply?

So if I had two 5 gallon pots and a good strainer. Could I mash the grains and water in container "A", put the strainer in container B, pour the wort and grains through the strainer into "B", place the strainer on "A", pour it back in through the strainer and grains several times, would this have the desired outcome? Why or why not? (then proceeding on to boiling, etc. of course)

I guess you could... but personally, for about $30 (if you find a cooler for about $15) you can make your own MLT. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=23008

you could, your efficiency would suck, but add a few extra pounds of grain and you'd be ok. But AG is not that complicated, and the way you are suggesting would be messy and heavy.

Not to mention a total pain in the A$$. I did a PM that way and quickly built a MLT.

That's the thing. Your subject says simply but after you go through that process, it's really gonna feel unsimple. If it's stuff you already have, it's more like the cheapest way out. The problem with a strainer is that you'll never quite set a nice grain bed to get clear runnings. Build a cooler based MLT.

Thanks! The cooler and spout thing just sounded like a pain to clean, but I guess it doesn't have to be that clean since you boil the wort afterwards.

Another thought I have had, probably even less practical, would be for a giant french press. If you have ever seen those, you put hot water and loose coffe (or grains hee hee) in the pitcher to steep. After a time, you push down this giant strainer/plunger from the lid that catches all of the "bits" and pushes them to the bottom, allowing you to pour off filtered coffee. Not practical on a large scale.
Thanks for listening!

In fact, you don't want to press your grist. It's a good way to pull tannins out of the husks. All I do to my cooler MLT to clean is to dump the grain and hose it out. That's it. No scrubbing or sanitizing.

Bobby_M said:

In fact, you don't want to press your grist. It's a good way to pull tannins out of the husks. All I do to my cooler MLT to clean is to dump the grain and hose it out. That's it. No scrubbing or sanitizing.

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I think that I had heard that, about pressing the grains. So you want all of the goodness that will "rinse" out, but squashing the grain will release the evil tannins?

I checked out the site referenced on the "cheap Mash Tun" thread. It frankly scared me. I have 2 small kids, so maybe my time is less available than some guys, but I am not too sure about full boils, immersion chillers etc.!

I am sure that there are other threads, but if someone wants to help:Why not do a smaller batch on a stove top? If the temp won't hold and you turn the burner on for a minute, is that so bad?(as opposed to a cooler which retains the temp better). I am thinking that doing 2 batches on the stove top, doing batch 2 while batch 1 cools, would be easier. Maybe not. I guess I just need to try it.

Your overall time efficiency per gallon goes up as you increase your batch size. A 10 gallon batch takes me about 6 hours from setup to cleanup. If I did two 5 gallon batches, it would probably be 8 hours. Four 2.5 gallon batches would take 12 hours, etc.

Yes, it takes a bit more commitment and investment but it's fun. I've got two kids etc, but brewing is what I do for me time.

Bobby_M said:

but brewing is what I do for me time.

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And Loving It.

When I first moved to all-grain, I found Denny Conn's website to be very useful: http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/ He really lays out all the whole process and makes your first AG brew really easy. I went with a slightly improved mash tun design that can be found here: http://yellowdogbrewery.com/BAMT.aspx I know these sites really helped me out when I moved to AG about 4 months ago.

great commonsense sites damntheman, Thanks.