Mash tun in the land of bad coolers

I'm in a different country for some time, trying to keep my all-grain brewing active. In the US, I had a converted cooler with a stainless steal braid and copper tubing where the water spigot was. I brought my braid because it was a pain to make, but I have found that none of the coolers here are equipped with spigots. I was thinking of using a cooler, nonetheless, and had an idea about how to proceed:

What I'd like to do is attach the steel braid as a filter to the end of some vinyl tubing, keep it at the bottom of the grain, then run the tubing out of the cooler during the run off period. I will have to suck on the tube to get the suction going, but to my knowledge there is nothing really wrong about this approach except for the fact that it isn't convenient and therefore probably a bad long-term solution. Anyone have experience with such an approach?

I'm not quite envisioning your idea - create a siphon that would pull the liquid through the grain?

Another idea would be to use a brew mesh bag to hold your grains in the cooler. When mash is down, lift out the bag. You would probably need to rig up something with a collander to let the water drip out of the grains without breakng your arms

One end of the tubing has the mesh attached, and sits at the bottom of the tun. Rather than run off through the spigot (as in the usual MT design), I pull the liquid at the bottom of the tun out through the suction.

They don't haven't be equipped with a spigot, Just a half inch drill bit(wood bit) and stick either a 1/2 inch threaded copper short nipple or 1/2" electrical grade plastic thru it. Took me 15 minutes to make mine this way.

hoppymonkey said:

They don't haven't be equipped with a spigot, Just a half inch drill bit(wood bit) and stick either a 1/2 inch threaded copper short nipple or 1/2" electrical grade plastic thru it. Took me 15 minutes to make mine this way.

Click to expand...

I can't drill either. I'm really trying to see if it's viable to do the suction with the tun.

Can't drill?? Might want to keep that to yourself on this forum

There is no reason that you cannot syphon out of the mash tun. It might be a bit of a hassle...but it can be done.

Her ya go...bottom of page. This shows a manifold, but a braid will work if you can keep it at the bottom of the tun/cooler.

http://www.howtobrew.com/appendices/appendixD.html