Simple mash tun.

[brewskiez]

I'm pretty new too brewing made 3 extract batches and want to try all grain. Preferably I'd like to try it before I get fancy equipment. Any issues with just making a false bottom with pvc and holes drilled on the bottom in a cooler. I would plum it to the drain hole and then just unscrew the cap with my hand in a latex glove sanitized plug the hole with thumb and quickly stick a piece of tygon to drain and sparge. Kind of crewd I know but I want to make a couple simple batches and see if I'm still interested in it in 2 months.

 

[Staylow]

 

[rlmiller10]

I recommend you just try a modified brew in a bag. When I first started I used a a paint strainer bag ( about $4 at home depot) and an old cooler I had. Put the grain the bag and water in the cooler and dunked and stirred. Then put the top on the cooler to keep the temp. To sparge I pulled the bag, let it drain a bit, put it in a second cooler and dumped the wort from my cooler to the kettle. Added sparge water to the cooler and put the bag back in. Swished it around a for a while then drained and squeezed. One again dump wort from cooler to kettle. This method gives you all the steps of using a mash tun, except vorlauf, but no cost. Assuming you like it you can then go with the easy mash tun build in post #2.

 

[estricklin]

Your idea sounds fine. Even simpler, get a 5 gallon bucket, drill a bunch of holes in it, shove it in your bottling bucket. Bam, you have a mash tun, false bottom, and valve.