Mash Tun Envy

I caved in at last and went for a mash tun.

There were a number of factors in this decision:

  1. Every home brewer / hobbyist in general has a deep seated desire for new and better equipment;
  2. I was a bit tired of constantly watching the mash temperature on my BIAB set up which was, I suspect, affecting my efficiency;
  3. I could get the mashing done earlier in the day to cut down on late night brewing;
  4. Points 2 and 3 seemed like sufficient reasons to justify point 1 – therefore a considered purchase was in order.

I decided on a 30 litre cooler box set up. I could have made one yes, but I was paranoid about getting just the right cooler box and cutting a hole in it, and went for a pre-made one.

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It is the BrewPaks Insulated 30 Litre Mash Tun and holds 10kg of grain. I did a few comparisons and this size worked well with the batches and recipes that I am likely to do for the foreseeable future. That is unless I go for a Barley Wine or Russian Imperial Stout or something – which I think is unlikely for the moment.

BIAB has been good so far, but it just didn’t quite seem to work right for me and my set up somehow. Don’t get me wrong, it works for some people and has been a great introduction (at least for me) to the whole process of All Grain brewing. But for my set up and trying to handle that amount of hot grain and draining it without making a right old mess – the mash tun option seemed the best place to go. What can I say, I got mash tun envy!

I’ll post about the first batch I brewed with this soon and there are a few tweaks that I could make to the design, but all in all, I’m really happy with the results so far.

Plus I got to brew with Munich Malt again.

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