mashtun advice...

[Fierce Beard]

I'm making the leap to all grain, but I'm broke as a joke. I managed to find a 160,000 btu turkey fryer with a 7 gallon stainless steel kettle at a garage sale for 20 bucks. Now I'm looking for a mashtun. I've read a lot of literature that heralds the 10 gallon Igloo cooler, but they cost about 80 bucks. I have several 50 quart chest coolers, but I don't want to waste my time building a manifold for one if it's just going to disappoint me. Should I just buck up & buy the Igloo, or will a chest cooler yield just as good of results?

[Henning1966]

Use what you have alot of us prefer the square and rectangle coolers. Check out http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/ for some good info and ideas.

[gwk453]

Get the IGLOO, perforated SS is expensive $55 plus for a rectangular 70 Qt. plus the expense of SS tubing and fitting. It is a real ball buster to cut with a hacksaw and fit to the cooler so you don't have large gaps. An Igloo w/ ss false bottom will be cheaper in the long run! Keep it simple without busting a nut!

[Jbug]

I use chest style cooler with a SS braid as a false bottom... Works great but I get efficiency around 65% on bigger beers, not real sure why though....


Josh

[Bugeater]

Don't fool around with false bottoms or manifolds. Go with a rectangular cooler and SS braid. Denny Conn talked me into that 8 or 9 years ago. I spent a whopping $4.00 for a 52 quart cooler at a Salvation Army store. Brand new but had broken hinges. Put in a bulkhead and piece of braid. From there I progressed to the fantastic system I use now.




As you see, I haven't seen the need to change much of anything. I get around 80% efficiency on most beers (only about 65% on brews over 1.100 OG ) Managed to pick up a few dozen medals in comps all over the country with this setup. Save your money to spend on temperature control, kegging equipment, and good ingredients.

Wayne

[PSUHomebrewer]

I got a rubbermaid cooler from the home depot and it was 40ish I believe. Though depending on what your planing to brew, and want to be cheap screw the cooler and invest early in a keg or ss pot, though the keg is probably cheaper than the cooler. For the total tun set up with a keg it will cost more upfront but you'll save in the long run, especially if you don't go with a 10gal cooler/false bottom that interchangeable.

[snowcapt]

I run the same setup as Wayne. Works pretty well for me.

[Fierce Beard]

Wow, lots of cool (and conflicting) advice. However, aside from a couple valves and hoses I've got what looks a lot like Bugeater's setup. I'll figure out how to post pics here and show what I've got pretty quick here...

Looks like the least amount of $ and work (in the short term at least) to go Bug's route. I'm really jazzed to do my first mash as quick as I can!