Cheap/Easy All Grain Build

I want to start off by saying seasoned All Grain brewers will most likely lack interest in this thread. My goal is to document my All Grain build that focuses on providing a beginner All Grain brewer like myself with an efficient, inexpensive set up. Hopefully anyone who is currently building something similar and especially brewers new to the All Grain world can get ideas or options to consider with their build.

I also want to say that barely any of the ideas used in this thread are original; I am merely tracking my own build as well as providing a compiled list of what a brewer needs to break into All Grain.

I had a hard time finding out how to build and use your equiptment so at the end of my build I am going to show how to use my specific equipment with an annotated brew day.

So my goal is to make a one stop shop for anyone looking to go all grain, as well as get ideas on how to improve my system.

Now that I have made my disclaimers, stay tuned for future posts. (Pictures and finished posts coming by this weekend)

First I bought a 30 qt. turkey fryer (complete with burner) on craigslist for $35. This should be able to handle boil volumes required for 5 gallon batches.

The next step is to make a Mash Lauter Tun (MLT). I choose to modify an igloo cooler to do this. I considered 60 qt. to provide versatility, but many on this forum and even John Palmer in How to Brew cautioned against this. The problem is that the grain be would be too shallow to effectively filter.

So I chose to buy a new 28 qt. Igloo Island breeze cooler at CVS when they were on sale ($15). First I designed and build a manifold. I centered the design around Appendix F in How to Brew where John Palmer ran many different tests on different manifold designs. He found it to be most effective with the outer rails of the manifold an inch or so away from the cooler wall.


Now to manifold design. It is entirely CVPC. You can make this with parts you find at your hardware store. In order for it to properly drain I cut a bunch of random slits in the bottom of the pipes to allow water through. I left everything unglues in case I need to clean or modify the design in the future



To reach the bulkhead I ran a 45º CPVC joint to a small length of CPVC that fed into a female CVPC joint. That female piece threaded onto the brass fitting (#).

For the bulkhead itself, it was designed like this:

For the ball valve I elected to use CVPC again. Connecting to the bulkhead, I used a threaded male CPVC adapter and used a small length of pipe on the unthreaded side. On the other end of the pipe, I cemented the CPVC ball valve. After the ball valve another small length of CPVC pipe was used to attach it to a threaded female adapter. Lastly the female adapter is connected to a threaded nylon ½” to 3/8” hose barb. 3/8” hose can be slipped over the barb to carry the liquid from the MLT out to the boiling pot or pitcher (for recirculation).

Next, I modified a pasta/clay roller to grind my grain for me. Michaels always post online coupons for at least 40% a single item in the store. I used a 50% coupon for labor day weekend and got the Ameco roller for $13

The first step is to rough up the rollers surface since the smooth metal can’t grab the grain. To do this I grabbed a 3/8” drill bit and a cordless drill. I started at one side and ran the drill across the fixed roller about 40-50 times to get it nice and chewed up.

This is where you get to have some fun. I build a hopper out of an oxyclean tube and a 2 liter soda bottle, but you can build it out of anything you want.



Right not I am just grinding into a casserole dish, but in the future I am going to build a base to grin over a bucket.

At this point I donot have a Hot Liquor Tun (HLT) so I am just going to be heading the water on the stove top. I have electric heating elements ready to build one, but have not actually built anything yet.

So there you have it. A basic, cheap, easy to build All Grain set up!

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jbrookeiv said:

Click to expand...

haha I will post temporary picks from other threads to give you all something other than words to look at

Germelli1 said:

I had a hard time finding out how to build and use your equiptment so at the end of my build I am going to show how to use my specific equipment with an annotated brew day.

Click to expand...

How to build and use...

www.dennybrew.com

Ok, sorry for the lack of update...hops harvest took all my free time recently. I will get pics up ASAP and finish the posts!