Mash tun insulated "jacket" idea for gravity system

[hurley195]

Hello HBT. I have an idea for making an insulated stainless mash tun (single infusion/batch sparge) and would like to see if anyone has done similar? My goal is to have a simple 3 tier "let gravity do the work" system, no pumps, expensive jazz, RIMS or HERMS. I am going to purchase a 10 gallon stainless kettle with thermometer, ball valve and false bottom. Some folks claim you can mash direct fire while constantly stirring but I wonder about scorching and heat dispersment without recirculating.

Right now I use a 10 gallon Igloo cooler as my mash tun and it has a nice copper manifold I made for running off my wort. Story short, I have an inefficient process with one burner and only one 8 gallon boil kettle so lots of moving, lifting, transferring and collecting wort in a couple of kitchen pots, etc. Right now I have to dump to MLT and to carboy, so ball valves and gravity tier are my thoughts. I am building a 3 tier stand with HLT/burner at top, single infusion/batch sparge in middle and boil kettle at bottom. I would like to move on from my plastic cooler mash tun and go to stainless. Cooler works OK but I am not a fan of mashing in plastic and can see the cooler will not last forever.. They say plastic does not leach chemicals at mash temps or put off flavors in your beer, but I am still going to move away from plastic anything all together. Only stainless kettles and glass carboys for this guy.

I figure If I buy a 10 gallon kettle I can use it for direct fire if it comes to that later or anything else later on. Since I work at a fab shop I have an idea to make an insulated "jacket" cylinder for my kettle so it will be pretty much be the same philoshpy as the cooler mash tun. I will fabricate a stainless cylinder with bottom a few inches larger than my kettle diameter and line that cylinder with some sort of high temp foam sheet material. I will have a slot run down the lenth of the jacket cylinder so my ball valve and thermometer slide down. Does anyone have a suggestion on insulating material?? My hope is the metal shell will further aid whatever insulating material I use. I know I could just wrap a bunch of blankets, but think I want to avoid that. By the way, I will be in a cold wisconsin garage..

Has anyone else had luck mashing single infusion/batch sparge in an insulated stainless kettle? I figure if temp drops a couple degrees I can run off a small amount of boiling water from my HLT above stirring in or slide kettle out of insulated "jacket" and hit it with direct fire for a minute or two while stirring well.

I have seen large stainless 10 gallon "thermos" containers for sale, but it seems they are only popular in Europe. Shipping and cost is prohibitive I think..

Any ideas or opinions please chime in.

Thanks!

 

[BrotherBock]

I've brewed at Portland U Brew and they have a jacket-like system around their keggles. It seems like a thinner wrestling mat with velcro. And a plastic lid with some kind of reflective insulated material on the bottom. It seemed to work fine. You could ask them where they got their jackets or what they used to make them.

 

[Brettomomyces]

I have seen someone use a plastic sanke keg for their mash tun, it's pretty insulated afaik. You can do bottom draining with that as well. It would be larger at 15.5 gals, but thats not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[mrclean]

Seems like a whole lot of work for something a cooler does a great job at. Why not build a gravity system and still use the cooler mashtun. Longevity won't be an issue, entry users of that system that have no issues.

 

[humblehops500]

I will be using a 1/4 BBL sanke with a copper manifold, bottom drained. I plan on just using a jacket made of a roll of reflectix foil. You can find this at HD or Lowes for $20 or so. A 25 foot roll should wrap around the MLT about 5-6 times for about an 1"- 1 1/2" of thickness. I think this should be sufficient but of course I'm not positive. Maybe I'll cover the whole thing with an old comforter as well just for good measure. Your idea sounds great as well and since you have access to fabrication equipment, it will certainly look better than mine. My main motivation is toward cost containment and, at least in this case, simplicity of design. BTW- I also subscribe to the "use stainless wherever I can" philosophy. Nothing wrong with coolers, it's just the purist in me. Good luck, post pics of the jacket when it's done.

 

[Brettomomyces]

I will be using a 1/4 BBL sanke with a copper manifold, bottom drained. I plan on just using a jacket made of a roll of reflectix foil. You can find this at HD or Lowes for $20 or so. A 25 foot roll should wrap around the MLT about 5-6 times for about an 1"- 1 1/2" of thickness. I think this should be sufficient but of course I'm not positive. Maybe I'll cover the whole thing with an old comforter as well just for good measure. Your idea sounds great as well and since you have access to fabrication equipment, it will certainly look better than mine. My main motivation is toward cost containment and, at least in this case, simplicity of design. BTW- I also subscribe to the "use stainless wherever I can" philosophy. Nothing wrong with coolers, it's just the purist in me. Good luck, post pics of the jacket when it's done.

After going through a couple rolls of reflectix...you might even get more than 6 layers with a whole roll on a 1/4bbl sanke, but it's going to be pretty thick. 4 layers on my MT is at least 1.5"

 

[humblehops500]

After going through a couple rolls of reflectix...you might even get more than 6 layers with a whole roll on a 1/4bbl sanke, but it's going to be pretty thick. 4 layers on my MT is at least 1.5"

Do you find that this is sufficient to maintain temps throughout the mash without adding heat by the end?

 

[Brettomomyces]

I have a HERMS system so it's constantly being recirculated and can't really answer that question perfectly...but it is a very good insulator for the time and money involved to set up. And their silver tape (reflectix brand) is pretty moisture resistant as well.

 

[MaltedBayerl]

If you build it so it is split in half vertically and give it hinges, it could wrap around the kettle and you won't have to lift the kettle to insulate/uninsulate it. You could leave the bottom open for light heating and have a stir port on top. Or a custom crank operated stir thing coming out of the top like large brewery mash tuns have.

 

[hurley195]

UPDATE: I have built the 3 tier gravity system, HLT burner/kettle on top, Stainless MLT with my custom insulated "Jacket" in middle and my boil kettle with floor burner on bottom. The custom jacket works awsome! So far I like it better than my old mash tun (10 gallon cooler). Brewed about 5 batches in the gargage in zero degree wisconsin weather and held 2 degrees in my hour long mash. Hitting it with a little hot water mid mash does the trick. Last weekend I brewed in negative temps and lost a few more degrees, so that is the beauty of the "jacket" as I pulled kettle out, hit direct fire for 4-5 minutes with some stirrring and back in the jacket to hold my temp! Getting about 70-74% efficiency batch pending.

Here are a couple pics to give you an idea of how the jacket looks:

 

[hurley195]

More Update: A few more adjustments to go. Right now just keeping the jacket tight with some rope as I didnt have a big enough bungee cord. Next update is to add some nice latches where the jacket opens so I can just latch it open/closed if I need to pull out for direct fire during my 60 minute mash. I do not expect to have to use direct fire once the weather warms up but it did help open my options up when I have a free brew day but its zero degrees in the gargage! The system is just like a cooler as MLT, but with the option of being able to direct fire when I want and its stainless not plastic.

Here is one more pic of the jacket being made and a pic of system. Used high temp "volara" foam, which they claim is good to 180*F and some 3M spray on adhesive to attached foam to my .024 thick stainless shell.