recirculating mash?

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walker111

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Hi all. Brewing over 3 years now and have a cooler conversion for my mash. I do double batches and fly sparge. Thinking maybe it is time to recirculating my mash. Currently I pump over my strike water with riptide pump and I have a copper 4 pipe manifold I made in the bottom of cooler. As water fills I doughe in. Works fine. I run a temp probe in middle of cooler and moniter the 60 minutes.

Thinking I can put a hole in top of cooler lid and rig a small displacement piece and run mash out of cooler bottom into pump and back in through the new hole in lid in high temp tubing keeping the cooler closed to maintain the 150-155 range aiming for.

Would this be better than what I have been doing with stirring the mash 4 times over a hour and running a vorloff to clear beer and transferring?
Thanks
 
I have a similar setup as you. I only stir (thoroughly) at doughing in and again right before the vorlauf, and for each sparge. I double batch sparge, which makes life easy IMO, with good mash efficiency around 85%. I like the wort I'm getting.

I now underlet the grist in LoDO fashion, strike water feeds from the (boil) kettle by gravity, but don't cap the mash (yet). I lay a doubled up layer of heavy Aluminum foil on top, which helps keeping mash temps.

Unless you want to do step mashes in your cooler, why complicate things?
 
You need to heat it while recirculating, or the temperature will drop significantly.

What are you hoping to achieve? Recirculation helps with wort clarity and allows step mashing.
 
I was worried about heat loss but would have the 4 feet on tubing insulated. Probably not worth it . The beers usually clear well over time.

I could run it for last 15 minutes as conversion should be done but maybe not even worth it!!!!
 
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