Stainless tun vs. igloo

My next beer will be an all grain and I am looking into tuns. I realize that this may be a matter of personal preference but my LHBS has stainless tuns with false bottoms and the entire package would be around $300.

Have any of you converted from Igloo's to the stainless tuns? Was it worth the money?

I am headed to switching from a 12gal cooler to a converted keg, but I am not there yet. From what i have read, you will need to either insulate the MLT to hold the temp or recirculate the mash water/wort through a RIMS type setup to maintain temps...

I once had this to say about Mash Tuns:

BigKahuna said:

If I had a bogillion dollars, I'd make the coolest polished and chrome full tilt boogy, gas powered a$$ kicker of a 44 magnum Big Block Tunnel Ram, Dual Dominator, scareing children, wild women sedusing, good woman make'n into wild women, brew sculpture known to man...The type that that Turns atheists into Christians and Christians into Brewers, but I'd still have both a 5 and a 10 gallon round cooler with copper manifold for the mash tun.

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Seems like it would be some extra inconvenience in addition to extra $ for stainless having to re-heat and all that.

there's gotta be some added to benefit or you would think nobody would bother with Stainless MLT's right?

ideally you would have a burner under it and use if for a step up mash and do a protien rest. i personally would like to do all of those things and have bitchin' single tier three burner setup but not at the price. cooler mash tuns are the ****. it also is way more DIY if your into that.

The benefit to going with the stainless is that you can set it on a burner and have significantly better control over the temp. Personally if I had the means, I would get the stainless over a converted cooler any day of the week.

$300 for a (what I'm thinking is a converted keg) MLT? HOLY CRAP....
You could get into a 100qt cooler MLT for a 1/3 of that price. It would be larger and would hold the heat for a good two hours. If you then wanted to do step mashes without having to add water then build a RIMS or Herms and you could still be under the $300.

Yup $300 is a pretty steep investment you can do a converted picnic cooler for a fraction of the cost especially if your handy and convert yourself. I brewed for years in a round 5 gal coleman. I built a SS out of a Sanke and it is nice for larger batches but temp loss is a concern if you don't insulate it. I still use both depending on batch size. as for direct heating you must be very careful not to scorch the grains. I like the cooler because once you get familiar with what your strike water needs to be it is a very easy to make quality single mash temp beers, step mash beers are posible but more difficult in a cooler without a Rims or Herms.

I have used a cooler mash-tun for years and love the easy mashing it provides. I do single infusion mashes most of the time. I you are willing to spend money the stainless will last more than a couple of lifetimes but to use it easily it must be insulated well. A false bottom is the way to go in either the cooler/mash-tun or the stainless mash-tun. Round mash-tuns work better for fly sparging.

BigKahuna said:

I once had this to say about Mash Tuns:

Quote:
Originally Posted by BigKahuna
If I had a bogillion dollars, I'd make the coolest polished and chrome full tilt boogy, gas powered a$$ kicker of a 44 magnum Big Block Tunnel Ram, Dual Dominator, scareing children, wild women sedusing, good woman make'n into wild women, brew sculpture known to man...The type that that Turns atheists into Christians and Christians into Brewers, but I'd still have both a 5 and a 10 gallon round cooler with copper manifold for the mash tun.

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And this is how you already have over 3,000 posts... heh

monty3777 said:

My next beer will be an all grain and I am looking into tuns. I realize that this may be a matter of personal preference but my LHBS has stainless tuns with false bottoms and the entire package would be around $300.

Have any of you converted from Igloo's to the stainless tuns? Was it worth the money?

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I have a 9gal Igloo I converted which works OK. Some day I will upgrade to the Coleman Xtreme 70 which is the cat's *** for a tun. I built a heatstick, so I can do limited temp steps in the cooler, and pull decoctions for anything else. I may add a direct fired HLT and coil to do HERMS with the cooler some day, but never plan to move away from the cooler tun; since most beers are easily done with single infusion the cooler makes life easy -- dough in and forget about it!

WBC said:

I have used a cooler mash-tun for years and love the easy mashing it provides. I do single infusion mashes most of the time. I you are willing to spend money the stainless will last more than a couple of lifetimes but to use it easily it must be insulated well. A false bottom is the way to go in either the cooler/mash-tun or the stainless mash-tun. Round mash-tuns work better for fly sparging.

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Not true. No one is better then the other if setup right.

I still have my coolers, but heat my HLT with electric and use it as a HERMS exchanger so that I can ramp up my mash temps in my MLT by the use of a pump and recirculation. Id prefer to do this, as opposed to a direct heat setup with a keggle, only because the heating is less intense... there is less chance of scorching sugars, overheating the wort in the bottom of the keggle etc. I think HERMS is great for holding and adjusting mash temps.

I use a converted Sanke for my mas tun because I like the flexibility it gives me. I heat my strike water in the MLT (no pre-heating the tun), I can do as many steps as I like, heat loss really isn't an issue (with one reheat an hour I maintain a 1 degree total temperature difference with no insulation), it looks nice, super easy to clean, endlessly upgradable, and will last forever. The cost is more upfront, but other than that I have a really hard time finding anything bad.

FSR402 said:

Not true. No one is better then the other if setup right.

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If you get down to the uber ity gritty, a round tun with a full false bottom is the best for fly sparging as you will have the least dead space and best flow patterns. However, on the homebrew scale, the extra +/-1% efficiency and $0.02 in grains really doesn't matter.

Boerderij Kabouter said:

If you get down to the uber ity gritty, a round tun with a full false bottom is the best for fly sparging as you will have the least dead space and best flow patterns. However, on the homebrew scale, the extra +/-1% efficiency and $0.02 in grains really doesn't matter.

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The reason the kegs work so well is not because they are round it's because the bottom is tappered thus giving a smaller point to pickup from. Round coolers do not have this thus they are no better then the nonround cooler.
My 80qt leaves 2qt's behind not bad for a 20 gallon tun.
So just stating that round is better is not true.

I think a lot of people like the round beverage coolers for fly sparging because of their shape. A tall cylinder creates a thick grainbed and there are no corners that may be difficult to lauter.

Rectangular coolers are often long, but not tall. So by comparison, their grainbed surface-area to grainbed height ratio is large relative to a tall, cylindrical cooler. However, some of the Igloo coolers are cube shaped or a tall rectangle, and they are probably just as good as a round cooler for fly sparging.

FSR402 said:

Not true. No one is better then the other if setup right.

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Good grief man, i'm talking building or buying with ease. You are taking this out of context. Yes you can build a proper manifold in a huge rectangular cooler and then keep the water 1 to 2 inches above the grain at all times and get no channeling but if you were to fly sparge it gets more complicated so yes the round tun makes the best choice for the least amount of work. Notice that I refrained from using bold red letters.

WBC said:

Good grief man, i'm talking building or buying with ease. You are taking this out of context. Yes you can build a proper manifold in a huge rectangular cooler and then keep the water 1 to 2 inches above the grain at all times and get no channeling but if you were to fly sparge it gets more complicated so yes the round tun makes the best choice for the least amount of work. Notice that I refrained from using bold red letters.

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I only used bold red to show that is what I was responding to. That is all.
Do they make a 20 gallon or larger round cooler? That would be cool.

FSR402 said:

I only used bold red to show that is what I was responding to. That is all.
Do they make a 20 gallon or larger round cooler? That would be cool.

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I guess it was the

Not true. No one is better then the other if setup right.

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that prompted my reply then.
I have looked for a round 20 gallon cooler but I have found none. It's too bad because there are a lot of us who would go for that.

Boerderij Kabouter said:

I use a converted Sanke for my mas tun because I like the flexibility it gives me. I heat my strike water in the MLT (no pre-heating the tun), I can do as many steps as I like, heat loss really isn't an issue (with one reheat an hour I maintain a 1 degree total temperature difference with no insulation), it looks nice, super easy to clean, endlessly upgradable, and will last forever. The cost is more upfront, but other than that I have a really hard time finding anything bad.

If you get down to the uber ity gritty, a round tun with a full false bottom is the best for fly sparging as you will have the least dead space and best flow patterns. However, on the homebrew scale, the extra +/-1% efficiency and $0.02 in grains really doesn't matter.

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A little clarification please..... Do you batch sparge or fly sparge? The reason I ask is I already have a keg in process of conversion to an MLT and I am wondering if I can batch sparge in it until I get my RIMS system online and still be able to maintain mash temps without heating.

bull8042 said:

A little clarification please..... Do you batch sparge or fly sparge? The reason I ask is I already have a keg in process of conversion to an MLT and I am wondering if I can batch sparge in it until I get my RIMS system online and still be able to maintain mash temps without heating.

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Yes you can.

bull8042 said:

A little clarification please..... Do you batch sparge or fly sparge? The reason I ask is I already have a keg in process of conversion to an MLT and I am wondering if I can batch sparge in it until I get my RIMS system online and still be able to maintain mash temps without heating.

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Plenty of folks on here batch sparge with just such a setup. Unless I'm doing a big beer (over 1.060) I batch sparge because fly sparging might save me a half a pound of base grain ($0.55 since I buy my base grain in 55# bags) but will cost me at least 20 extra minutes. If you are doing a small beer (under 1.040) efficiency is usually better with a batch sparge since shallow grain beds are more prone to channeling effects and have a higher rate of temp loss.

I mash in an un-modified rectangular cooler, then scoop/poor it into my bottling bucket with a mesh bag and ss braid. No special equipment need be purchased to go AG. The five gallon bottling bucket barely holds 15#, enough for a 7 1/2g batch.

My mashing got better once I put some of the hot water into the cooler first, then added the grains and the rest of the water after the corners get warmed up after a couple minutes.

But I do keep my eye out for a 10g round at garage sales.

I use a stainless steel mashtun and i dont like it. Im planning on switching to a cooler. I lose at least 6 degrees in an hour in my stainless.

bull8042 said:

A little clarification please..... Do you batch sparge or fly sparge? The reason I ask is I already have a keg in process of conversion to an MLT and I am wondering if I can batch sparge in it until I get my RIMS system online and still be able to maintain mash temps without heating.

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I fly sparge, but i do not currently recirculate to maintain temps.

I always wonder how people lose so much heat out of their Keggles?.... Do you use a lid. I have a lid that doesn't really fit my opening very well, and don't recirc or have any insulation and if I let it sit, would only lose maybe 3 degrees over an hour. I usually hit the mash with 1 minute of heat twice intermittent through the mash, give a good stir and maintain a rock solid mash temp throughout brewday. I have brewed inside, outside, red side, blue side and have never had the bad temp issues of others.

tdavisii said:

I use a stainless steel mashtun and i dont like it. Im planning on switching to a cooler. I lose at least 6 degrees in an hour in my stainless.

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I'll be posting my Coleman Xtreme 70 conversion... if I ever finish it. By the time this thing is done it'll be a few trips to Home Depot and about $140, but man it will make a helluva mash tun.

I like stainless. I'm switching to a stainless tun as soon as I find some extra cash. You can direct heat it, it's nearly indestructible, you can weld fittings onto it, and the advantages (minus cost) of a cooler are nullified if you wrap the stainless tun with some insulation.

Excellent! Now if I can just get the top cut out of this thing.... Had a friend with a plasma torch for the first keggle conversion but haven't been able to coordinate our schedules here lately for this one.