SS BrewTech Mash Tun

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CBelli

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First let me make it clear, I am not affiliated with this company in any way.

Normally I don't get excited about equipment, probably because I pretty much DIY everything in my brewery. But I recently went out on a limb and pre-ordered the SS BrewTech new stainless mash tun. It was a large leap of faith for me considering the cost was $400 (easily the most expensive single piece of equipment in my brewing arsenal with my BrewPi coming in second).

I received the MLT a couple days ago and I must say, I am very , very happy with it...this thing is built like a tank!! fit & finish is outstanding... the false bottom is heavy duty and comes with a silicone gasket that makes the fit into the vessel perfectly! While I have yet to brew with it I suspect that it will be awesome... I spent a couple hours at Bobby from NJ "BrewHardware.com" last night tricking out a fly sparge lid for it (although SS Brewtech does offer a fly sparge option that really doesn't look like a good fit for my personal setup.)

While I may be jumping the gun with this post, since I haven't brewed yet I do not suspect being disappointed in any way....

Great Job to SSBrewTech
 
I've brewed twice with mine now. The thing is a tank, but with that comes a price. I have to move my stuff around and that mashtun is 35lbs, so with water and grain, it's a beast to move. Other than that, which I know is a trade off, it's awesome. Kept my temps for an hour with maybe 1 degree loss, which is what you want. Thermometer that came with mine was defective, but Ss brewtech sent me a new one a day later, so service has been great! And the pluses: conical bottom, gasket for false bottom, and foam insulation. A great product as long as you can lift it. Time to invest in a sculpture.
 
I brewed today and had good results... obviously there is a new piece of equipment in my brew day, so the process will need to be tweaked a bit.

The one unknown task I was faced with was how to fly sparge.. I did not but the attachment because the design wasn't a good for for my system...
so I used my old 10 gallon cooler lid/sparge assembly for the fly sparge and it worked very well, so well in fact, I decided that I will keep using the old sparge setup from my old cooler MLT. (I was toying with the idea of drilling a cam lock port in the lid and attaching my SS sparge ring to it, but I hate to drill into a shiny new lid.)

The thermometer, while working, was slow in reading and ended up to be 1 degree off. Again no big deal as long as I know. They are sending new thermometers but I suspect it will not be much better as far as accuracy... Bobby M suggested to inject thermal paste into the well to try to get better contact to the wall of the thermowell... I'm definitely going to give that a try.

Luckily unlike GundyGang1 I do not need to move my MLT except to empty the grain so the weight isn't too much a factor.

All in all I am very pleased with how the brew day turned out.
 
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