Keg to Mash Tun Conversion

Comment by Jeff Louella on March 24, 2009 at 11:48am

Dude, this looks amazing. You now have me all excited for my summer project. I have 2 kegs now, I need one more.

Comment by Jeff Louella on March 24, 2009 at 11:59am

So if if the mash is recirculating, the grain bed has to be acting as a good filter. When you are ready to sparge, can you just throw that hose into kettle?

Comment by Steve "Brother Wheels" Wieland on March 24, 2009 at 1:00pm

Sam,

you appear to have your 1/2 pick up going through your stailess grid........ cool. How do you fid it trying to instert the copper/stainless/elbow etc etc
wheels

Comment by Sam Scott on March 24, 2009 at 6:03pm

@Jeff - I only have one pump, so I'm batch sparging right now. (I guess I could fly sparge if I put the kettle or bucket on the ground in front of the MLT. I'd need to pump the sparge water from the HLT.) Right now, when the mash is done, I'll take the hose off the MLT return and hook it up to the spigot at the bottom of the boil kettle. I'll pump the wort and fill the kettle from the bottom up. When that's done, I'll move the hoses around so I can pump my sparge water from the HLT back to the MLT (rinse, repeat...). This is the same batch-sparge process I was using with my Igloo cooler. It's just that now I can recirc and direct fire the mash.

@Wheels - I got that hinged false-bottom from Sabco. That 1/2" copper is what... 5/8" O.D.? The false-bottom came with a 9/16" hole so I just had to use my step-bit to drill it out about a 1/16th inch. Once I had the hole enlarged, I just dry fit all the pieces. The copper union came in real handy. I was going to use a compression fitting but I think this works much better. I drop the FB in and then the pickup-tube connects without a problem. Takes like 4 seconds. I just snug up the copper union with my hand. The pickup-tube ends up about a 1/4 - 3/8ths inch off the bottom. Sucks it almost dry (you can see in one of the pictures).

Comment by Sam Scott on March 24, 2009 at 6:05pm

Correction... above should read, "I just dry fit all the pieces to make sure everything fit and was easy install with the copper union. Once I knew it would work, I sweated the joints."

Comment by D Walter on April 4, 2009 at 6:40pm

Sam this thing is absolutely ridiculous and i love every bit of it nice work...

Comment by Sam Scott on April 6, 2009 at 9:44pm

Just posted a video update and some commentary here ---> Mash Recirc

Ran into some problems on the first try. I'll need to make some adjustments next time.

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