Grain bag with mashtun??? Cleaning the manifold

[nickrjsmith]

Hi Experts,

I've just bought a spanky new copper manifold and tap from eBay and am going to fit it into a cooler tonight. It has loads of straight slits in it.. not holes.

Quick question for those in the know.

How easy is it to clean the manifold after use? Am I more likely to get a stuck sparge? Is it worth still using my grain bag for ease? or does this defeat the object of a Mashtun?

thanks - Nick

 

[Zen_Brew]

I brewed in a 10 gallon cooler with a copper manifold with slits in it for over a year. Now I made my copper manifold and I made it to fit snug in my cooler so I did not solder any of the 3 rows that went across the bottom of the cooler. They just sliped into my corner pieces and a 3 way fitting in the middle and it fit snugly in the bottom of the mash tun held together by the walls of the cooler. So when I took it out I would just slip the longer pieces out of the end pieces and rinse it all clean.

Even if it does not disassemble it is not hard to clean. Tap water on high should blast any grains out of the slits. If it gets ugly from not being cleaned right away 5 minutes in a boiling pot of water with some vinegar and maybe a kitchen brush cleans it right back up.

You should not have any troubles with a stuck sparge unless you do a grain bill with a lot of wheat malt, in which case you should throw in 1/2 lb of rice hulls to keep things loose.

No real need for the grain bag. Clean it up and tuck it away for if you ever want to do a partial mash with extract in the future, or use it as a hop bag in the boil.

Cheers

 

[nickrjsmith]

Thanks - Sound like it's easy enough to clean!

I have hop bags but have stopped using them in either the boil or dry hopping as I don't reckon you get all the 'hoppiness' you get without them due to not being totoally boiled up / submerged / in contact with beer etc.... if you get what I mean..... even using marbels it just doesn't feel the same.