Mash Tun with Hot Water Element under False Bottom

[Murph69]

Considering making the move to an all in one brewing system.

But, I had a thought - has anyone tried to install a hot water element under their false bottom within an upright 10gal Orange Gott cooler and then recirculate entire mash duration for temp control and clearer beer?

In order to make this work, I would need raise the false bottom up using stn stl nuts and bolts

Cheers,
James

 

[WDC]

Not with a cooler, but a false bottom on SS nuts above an element is exactly what my brew kettle is. Old school brewers had no problems installing boil elements into brew buckets and you won't be boiling in the MLT

I think you'd have to carve out a bit of the cooler to get at that inner lining, but Bobby's hotpod ( with the 1" nut on the inside) would seem like the smallest enclosure possible and chew up the least real estate on your cooler.

 

[Murph69]

I have two Gott coolers, one is used for the HLT. This one is set up already with an element. This also has a coil built into it, as to circulate the mash to maintain and raise temps

 

[Bobby_M]

It's very common to put an element in a kettle and then keep the grain contained in a mesh bag. The fine mesh keeps a significant portion of the grain's fine particles away from the element. While you can do that in a cooler, you'd still be running off to a separate boil kettle for the boil. That will work fine, but you can also just cut out the middle man and build the same system in a single kettle so you can mash and boil in one place with the same element.

The two vessel method would work well in the case where you current boil kettle is not big enough to contain the full mash for your given batch size, assuming you're not looking to upgrade that.

 

[TenaCJed]

If you are sticking with a plastic cooler for mash and looking to use an electric element, why not do RIMS tube? That way you do not have to worry about loosing room in cooler or accidentally melting plastic! Bobby from BrewHardware sells some good RIMS tube setups, along with heating elements, that is where I got mine from.

 

[tracer bullet]

I've thought about this a few times. I have come up with 2 possibilities that make the most sense, to me at least:

1) Sous vide - let it heat the mash water to strike temp, and afterwards set it inside a hop spider shoved down into the middle of the mash itself. It serves more than one function, and I don't think it'll crank the heat so fast that it might accidentally scorch the wort.

2) Forget about it, let the mash temp fall 2 - 3 degrees over an hour, and RDWHAHB.

Right now I'm on #2. At least when I'm ion the garage w/ the cooler and propane burner. For a chunk of the year (winter in MN) I am in the basement with an Anvil which has it all built in.

 

[Murph69]

I have since found an old stn stl ultraviolet tube that was in my my house, that I’m converting to a RIMS tube

 

[RufusBrewer]

I cannot imagine that I would ever put a heating element in a plastic container. Too many ways for things to go wrong. By the time you figured something is wrong, it could be too late. But that might be just me.

How about a two vessel system? Heating element in a stainless steel boil kettle. Pump heated water/wort from the kettle into the mash tun. Drain (or pump) wort out of mash tun and into the boil kettle. Just have to monitor and balance wort in = wort out.

The worse case is an over flowing mash tun (and dry boil kettle) or a mash tun with wet grains and no wort.

 

[oakbarn]

RIMs with a quadzilla from BruControl super ultra ld element