upgrade from papazap bucket sparge advice

[motosapiens]

I've been searching and reading threads for days on here, and it seems like the mash/sparge process is one of those things where there are 9137849182374 different perfectly fine ways to do it, so I need advice.

After decades of extract brewing, I started all-grain brewing 3 years ago, with a bucket-in-bucket lauter tun. Basically i mash in my old brew kettle (when full, it loses less than 1 degree in an hour with a towel or blanket wrapped around it.) and then ladle the mash into my 2-bucket system and batch sparge. This has been working great, and I have had zero problems, but 13-14 lbs of grain is about the practical limit before you overflow the lower bucket. If there existed a taller bucket that stacked a little closer together (to minimize the 'dead' space, even tho i think it's not really dead since i'm only lautering, not mashing in that vessel), I would probably just stick with that system because it's simple and cheap and reliable and I'm lazy.

My initial inclination, since I have a much better job than when I started brewing in the 90's, is to just buy a completely assembled turn-key mash tun cooler with false bottom from more-beer or somewhere similar and call it good. But then I read about bazooka or braided tubes vs false-bottoms and it makes my head start to spin.

So, if there's a reason not to, why shouldn't I just buy a turnkey mash tun and worry about other things? I mean, there must be a reason why round coolers and false bottoms are so popular, right?

 

[RM-MN]

How about I answer your questions with another question? Have you considered going BIAB with a larger kettle and get away from that ladle and Zapap? One vessel, one bag, one pulley to help lift the bag. You can gain some more efficiency if you do sparge but you can get pretty acceptable efficiency with a full volume mash.

 

[motosapiens]

I've been looking at some options involving mesh bags, but I really can't get locked in to doing the mash in only 1 location (or to putting pullies up in 3-4 different places around the house and yard. I use a 2qt pan as a ladle, so transferring the wort is pretty easy.

https://www.midwestsupplies.com/7-9-gallon-plastic-fermentor-no-lid

It looks like these 7.9 gallon buckets may stack a little closer together than the typical 6.5 gallon bucket. at $12.99 I might try them that seems like it would at least somewhat address both issues with my current setup (large dead-ish space and lack of volume). If I could get 2 more gallons of volume I would probably be set. I wonder if I can get the store to put a tape measure on the ridges on the side that determine the stack height.

 

[Legume]

I use a similar bucket style lauder tun and also run up against the 13 ish lb of grain volume limitation.
To deal with this I will fill the mash tun to capacity, then dump the small portion of the mash that didnt fit in the tun; into another container.
I then run off the liquid from the mash.
Once the mash has drained a good bit of liquid from the tun, I find that I have room in the tun for the rest of the mash(that I had set aside earlier).

This has allowed me to use 16 lbs of grain in a recipe, but I have never tried to push it furthur.

 

[Toga]

I too started with the charlie P zap zap bucket set up to sparge. I have also tried BIAB and mashing in a cooler tun. The cooler tun is my preferred method. Holds temp better than mashing in a pot for the bucket and BIAB methods and does not require lifting a heavy grain bag. I also get better efficiency than with BIAB. Don't buy a mashtun. Build one for half the price.

This works great.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=23008

 

[motosapiens]

brainstorming further, what if instead of using the upper bucket at all, I fashioned a bazooka tube to connect to the existing spigot. that may get me a little more capacity because I could fill the bucket all the way up. OTOH, it may be cancelled out by losing the dead-ish space where some of the wort drains off immediately. OTOOH, if it works, the concept could easily be transferred to a bigger bucket. I think I just need to find the right size tubing or pvc to fit into the spigot from the inside, and either drill holes in the pvc, or connect it to a steel braid (which I happen to have lying around the house). hmm. time for an experiment.

I think i'll swing by home depot and investigate the pvc, and also poke around the plumbing aisle and see if i can find all the parts listed in the thread toga linked to, and if so, maybe just build my own, even tho i'm lazy.

 

[motosapiens]

update: went to home depot, using the thread linked above found everything I need to build my own mashtun for $88, so that's what I'm doing when I get home from work. If (god forbid) i should ever get a stuck sparge, I can use my old buckets for emergency problem-solving.

 

[motosapiens]

Update #2, used my new cooler-based braided steel line mash tun for the first time, and it worked great. no leaks, and reduces by 2 or 3 the number of things i have to wash. efficiency seems pretty close to my 2 bucket system... maybe a smidge better. I dumbly damaged the end of the braided line when trying to scoop out some damp spent grains for the dogs, but i was able to just cut 1" off to get rid of the damaged section.

One modification I may make is to fit a short section of bent copper tube to the inside of the spigot, so it draws the wort from the very bottom instead of nearly an inch up from the bottom. It seemed like even after pressing down on the grains with a pan lid to draw extra wort out, there were still a couple cups of salvageable wort.