Mash tun manifold help

Im a little confused on where I should drill the holes in the pipes, am I supposed to drill holes in all of the pipes or only the ones which run left to right?
Maybe only the five center ones which run from left to right?

 

Well, I'm confused how you are going to get the wort out of that thing!

Make a deal: you tell us where the outlet is, we'll tell you where to cut slots (and I would recommend slots over holes)...

Cheers!

 

I took a sawall and tiger striped everything, but others say only the bottom.

 

You need a tee SOMEWHERE! Cut slots in the bottom.

 

Agreed. Where does the water enter the manifold?

From what You've shown,, I'd make slits on the six parallel bars. At least that's what I did! My water enters the center of the manifold from above (water comes into a tee, which acts as the middle of an 'H' cause by two parallel channels). However it may not offer the best uniform drainage. What do I care? I batch sparge anyways

I guess what am I'm saying is, are you continuous or batch sparking?

 

Or build on of these!

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/upgraded-mlt-braid-water-heater-supply-223403/

 

The use of this is to drain the mash tun over to the boil keggle.
Its just mocked up right now becuase I forgot to buy the tee's.

I dont think I will make a sparge arm to fly sparge with because it requries another pump.
So I will be batch spraging for now.

 

In that case, it isn't necessary to have even fluid draining. With batch sparging, there is a negligible amount of path favoring for the liquid. With that being said, it's always good to plan for the future, as you may always upgrade to a continuous sparge set up.

Note: you do NOT need a sparge arm to fly sparge. In fact, it is not necessary to have the water sprinkle evenly across the MT liquid surface; as long as there is an inch above the grain bed, the water can trickle is anywhere- it'll even itself out.

In John Palmer's how to brew, he talks about where to cut slits to promote even draining. Check it out

 

Mash tun manifold with a way for the wort to get out.

 

To me, it looks like some locations have a long ways to travel to reach the far corners. It'll definitely work, and if you're batch sparging you won't have a problem either.

I thin ideally, you would want a piece of pipe perpendicular to your parallel pipes. The tee would feed into this pipe, and the parallels would beach off of this central pipe. This makes it easier for the water to access every location, as its symmetrical.