On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 11:22:34AM +0100, Morten Friis Andersen wrote:
> Jeg går og lader op til min første brygning.
Welcome to the interesting world of home brewing!!
> jeg er opsat på at ingenting må galt...måske utopisk...men derfor
> læser jeg meget og forbereder mig meget. jeg vil gå med livrem og
> seler.
Fair enough - too much preparation and planning never hurt anyone too
bad...
> samtidig er jeg ufattelig fedtet,
> så jeg vil ikke betale den priser man giver for en Lauter-tun. jeg har
> brug for noglew gode råd til hvordan jeg bygger sådan en...til at starte
> med vil jeg ikke lave min gryde om...med en falsk bund og så videre.
> jeg vil lave det af en stor plastik beholder.
That is exactly the right way to go about it - or at least, that is the
way *I* do it, which must be good enoug for everyone :-)
So, find yourself two plastic buckets. You will sleep better if they are
of food grade plastic (you can see a picture of a knife and a fork in
the bottom). If not, they are still probably OK.
Now, having two buckets, you will have to break both of them. They will
never again serve as regular buckets, but for that price, even you
should not worry...
So, take one of those buckets, and attach a hose to it. This is the
technically demanding part of the operation. I managed it by buying a
simple ballofix valve, and a few other pieces. All together 50 kroner,
or thereabouts. It took some time to file all the pieces right, but in
the end I had a "ballofix" sticking out of the bucket, near the bottom
(but still from the side), and a transparent hose connected to it.
The easy part is with the other bucket. Get yourself a small drill
machine - I used a Proxxon - and a drill bit of 2-3 mm. It is practical
if the drill is of light weight and high speed, because you will have to
drill a few thousand holes in the bottom of that bucket. You can plan a
fine pattern of holes, but it is easier just to stick the drill where
ever you find a big enough piece of plastic. Even if a hole gets to
connect to another hole, that is no big problem. In the end you should
have a bucket with a bottom that consists of more holes than plastic!
The rest is trivial - put the bucket with many holes inside the bucket
with the hose. Fill in your grains, and enough hot water. When the mash
is ready, let it run out through the hose. The first runnings won't be
clear, so dump them back into the bucket...
I started with this sort of mash tun for my first beers, and they turned
out quite well (number 3 won a silver medal at DM). When my first
buckets got too small, I bought a new system that was exactly like the
first one, except that I used square buckets that could take 40 liters.
That is enough for 10-15 kg of malt, more than I ever brew at a time.
Even my "small" system built of 18 liter buckets could handle 4-6 kg of
malt - enough for a keg of decent beer, or at least half a keg of really
strong stuff...
The only problem with this system is that you can not heat it up while
mashing. So, you have to add hot enough water to hit around the right
mashing temperature. The engineers here can probably tell you how to
calculate it precisely, but I usually heat my mash water to 80 degrees
C, and dump it in. Then I measure the mash tempreature (at several
points!), and if it is too cold, I add boiling water. If too hot, I add
cold water. Usually I get it within 3 degrees of what I planned.
With this method, you are limited in how much you can adjust the mash
temperature during the process. You can add more hot water, but only as
much as can fit in. You can do some sort of decoction mash, where you
take a few liters from the mash (either liquid through the hose, or
grains from the top), and slowly boil them up, before returning them
into the main mash.
You may want to insulate the bucket with a cover built of an old
blanket, foamy plastic, old newspapers, or what ever you have at hand.
Add also a lid of some sort, that will reduce the heat loss
considerably.
Remember, no matter how you do the details of your mash tun,
It will be beer anyway
-H
--
Heikki Levanto "In Murphy We Turst" heikki (at) lsd (dot) dk
