Questions for those who use a kettle as their mash tun

[heywolfie1015]

Hi all. I was thinking of getting this kettle as a holiday present for myself (SWMBO-approved, of course), and making it my new mash tun. Currently, I'm using a cooler with a homemade manifold for mashing, but I'm getting a little tired of risking serious burns by pouring scalding hot pots of water into the cooler while standing on a little stool. (I brew in the kitchen and don't have a gravity system, unfortunately.)

Since I haven't used this type of mash tun before, I was curious about a few things:

1. Do you lose much heat using a kettle instead of a cooler? Right now, I lose very few degrees as I mash.

2. If you do lose heat, how do you get the temp back up? In my cooler, I would just add more hot water, but this seems to allow for direct fire?

3. Another question about losing heat: how do you minimize heat loss?

4. If you use a kettle mash tun on a stove, like I plan to do, how do you sparge? I'm thinking I might just get a march pump and feed the sparge water directly from a kettle on another burner over to the mash tun. Still thinking this through, though.

Thanks so much for any insight!

 

[stat]

I mash in a 10.5 gal kettle and to reduce heat loss I wrap it in some blankets. I don't usually lose more than a degree over 60 mins but then again I am in houston and if I leave the kettle/mlt in the sun I'm pretty sure it would actually raise a few degrees.

Using the kettle I can do direct fire step mashes and if I were to lose some heat during a regular mash I'd just fire up the burner for a couple minutes. Make sure you stir like crazy while the burner is on though or you'll get some scorching. Also turn the fire off a few degrees below where you want to be or you'll go over, at least I will using a little digital thermometer in between stirring.

 

[1MadScientist]

Are you sure that 15 gallon sized pot will work for your kitchen stove?

For kitchen brewing, have you considered BIAB, it's a single vessel brewing, mashing, sparging and boiling all-in-one...