Continuous Mash Stirring?

[Kopesetik]

I’ve always used a cylindrical 10 gallon water cooler for my mash tun. Temp stays consistent during rest and I don’t stir often in order to keep the heat in.
Like many brewers, I’m very creative with my engineering. As a mechanic (not auto-mechanic), I have access to various moving parts, hydraulics, motors and actuators.
Would it be beneficial to to have a high torque motor with a stainless steel rod (with branched out arms) attached to through the lid to continuously stir the mash at a very low RPM as to not release tannins? I’ve never really seen home brewers do this...
Tell me to do this and I’ll create and post it!

 

[day_trippr]

Tannins come from sparging with too alkaline liquor, not from thrashing the mash

Anyway, I've seen lots of motorized mash rakes and paddles here on hbt over the years, some on coolers (typically replacing the lid with a plywood motor base), and frankly I doubt it's worth the hassle to achieve some small increase in extract efficiency that couldn't be matched by just using an extra half pound of base malt...

Cheers!

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

HERMS or eHERMS will also "move the mash". However, during "moving the mash" you also want it to settle, create a nice bed for sparging.

 

[mongoose33]

I'm on the same page as @day_trippr.

When I was doing mash in a standard mash tun, I'd stir twice--once at 15 minutes and once at 30 minutes. That was enough. My efficiency was high, the beer was great, and it's difficult for me to see how you'd get much of an improvement over just a couple of manual stirs.

And FWIW, I found that if I did stir, gently, gently, my efficiency went up. So stirring, in my experience, has value, but continuously stirring, not worth the hassle.

BTW, I was looking into this myself but for other reasons. I do variations on the low-oxygen approach which among other things includes using a "mash cap" on top of the mash to protect the mash against oxidation from exposure to air.

That's a problem if you're going to stir, because.....well, you're actively exposing the mash to air. So I went so far as to create a picture of a device that would allow me to stir without removing the mash cap (shown in pink). It wouldn't have been motorized, just done by hand.

For good or bad, events overtook this idea as I went to a RIMS system recirculating with a mash cap, where the mash cap wouldn't be disturbed at all. But the idea above, I thought, was reasonably sound. I just never got around to fabricating one.

 

[day_trippr]

That's a good point about oxidizing the mash that I was about to go back and add
Unless one has a tight tun and can purge it (gas or steam, take your pick) like the big kids do (and they do use rakes) I only see problems...

Cheers!