Cornie, cheap stainless MLT ?

Thinking of improving my M-L-T system. Tall, skinny, ought to be better? Wouldn't all the sugars be flushed more linearly, each of the grains would get rinsed with the full dilution? In a Cornie, after adding the final rinse water, you could get good draining with a CO2 blast, without adding anymore water. Or hot side oxygenation (if it exists?)

It would be a PITA getting a braid onto the end of the pick-up tube. But a partial disassembly would let my fat arms reach the end...

Clean up would be facilitated by back flushing with water to liquify the grist, then dump it.

I know that some mega brewers use a flatter grain bed, but they make watered down beer.

I've been mashing in a rectangular cooler, then transferring to a bucket to sparge. Maybe next time, I'll transfer to a cornie? If good, build a foam jacket for the cornie? Cheap Stainless MLT, anyone?

casebrew said:

I know that some mega brewers use a flatter grain bed, but they make watered down beer.

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The grain bed is not flat because the beer is watered down, but because the lauter will run more efficiently that way. German brewers do that too and their beer is not known to be watered down.

Aside from beeing difficult to reach in for cleaning I would be afraid of the deeper grain bed, as this will cause the sparge to get stuck more easily.

Kai

Casebrew, I've read somewhere that there is a happy medium for the depth/surface area ratio, but I don't know what it is... (helpful, ain't I?) I'm thinking this ratio might be different for fly sparging and what everbody calls batch sparging...

My humble opinion is that, for the homebrewer, the important thing as the grain bed deepens is the design of the manifold... the broader the surface area of the manifold at the bottom, the less chance for channeling and thereby greater efficiency...

I've always been curious about the efficacy of a cornie keg mlt... the only drawback I can see is the size, and maybe the difficulty of stirring...

cheers, -p

Shallower grain bed will be much better for conversion as well as lautering.