Stiring the Mash options

We've been working on out MT a little lately. We added a sparge arm (I'll try and get some pics up) for simplicity and convenience. We batch sparge so its not truly needed at this time.

What is needed is a way to stir the mash without opening the cooler (coleman xtreame 70qt) and letting all the heat out every so often. I was thinking about putting probably 2 of these through the lid of the cooler and added a hand crank to them so we could stir without opening the lid.

What do you think? I am worried about the material being in contact with the mash during the whole process. I was thinking I might be able to find something similar in stainless.

Here is the link to the one i found.
http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10051&productId=100177456&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&ci_sku=100177456&ci_src=14110944&cm_mmc=shopping-_-googlebase-_-D23X-_-100177456&locStoreNum=3631&marketID=282

Why do you think you need to stir during the mash?

Efficiency has been a little low. Also when taking temp reading I am noticing pretty dramatic differences across the mash. Always thought mixing the mash was a good thing.

I don't think those are going to give you the kind of mixing that would solve temp variations. Even a thin mash is pretty resistive to localized mixing, so you would get really good mixing in the small volume that those beaters will reach, but probably just continuous recirculation of that volume. Pro setups have mash rakes that run through a greater amount of the mash volume. Something like that would be hard to implement in a rectangular cooler.

But I think I'm with Denny, you shouldn't need to mix the mash that much except at the beginning. And with that cooler your temp loss should be minimal over the course of the mash, so losing a bit of heat at the beginning while you manually stir a few times should be ok, no?

I have a 54 qt normal Coleman as my MLT and I stir as adding the grains, once 5-10 min later, and sometimes once more a few minutes after that. Very consistent temps at the end of ths mash.

Good luck.

alexnphillips said:

Efficiency has been a little low. Also when taking temp reading I am noticing pretty dramatic differences across the mash. Always thought mixing the mash was a good thing.

Click to expand...

Mix the mash well at the beginning and there shouldn't be temp variations. And I really don't know if stirring during the mash will do anything to increase your efficiency that couldn't be done easier ways.