I am not a new all grain brewer, I have been doing it for 8 years, but I never had a good setup.
I would heat strike water in an aluminum stock pot over a propane burner, mash in a cooler with no false bottom, run through a strainer into a bucket. Then repeat, batch sparging.
Buckets get dumped into the stock pot, which is boiled with hops, chilled with a chiller, then strained again into the buckets and yeast is added.
Very hard, lots of work, involves holding 5+ gallons of very hot water in 1 hand and a strainer in the other. Lots of problems with extracted tannins, low efficency or spilled wort - but made a few nice batches of beer other times.
I recently decided to upgrade and make my life easier. So I bought a Bayou classic - steel with a false bottom and "lab grade" thermometer. Not sure this was a good purchase. It loses more heat than the cooler as a mash tun, and the thermometer is worthless for mash temperature. I thought I'd be able to heat it slowly while mashing to better control the temperature. That didn't work so well - the bottom overheats without the top heating up - even constantly stirring does not heat evenly.
I had a stuck mash (put the hop screen on - I guess that was a mistake) but this could happen normally, and then I had to dump the mash into buckets to get under the false bottom to unclog it. I sparged with cold water, since I had no way to heat water in the same kettle as my mash (I could have lifted the whole thing off and used my aluminum stock pot, but decided this was too much work). Lots learned, but so far, not much of an upgrade.
Worst case, I can go back to the cooler for a mash tun, and then at least I have a nice kettle. But I see lots of youtube videos with 3 tier setups, and wonder if I could do something like this. I brew on my patio, so anything needs to either be waterproof or moveable into storage, in addition to being fireproof. It could be as simple as cinder blocks under the first kettle, with a second kettle lower down, but then I need buy another burner and manually switch the gas lines - too much work/risk to lift both kettles and move burners which could be hot enough to burn me even through an oven mitt.
The youtube videos and plans I've seen are very elaborate, expensive, complicated, and not mobile. Does anyone have any pointers for simple and cheap ways to make my life easier?
BTW - I don't want to 'brew in a bag' - part of the appeal of all grain brewing is lowering costs over extract. You lose this cost advantage if you lose efficiency.
I would heat strike water in an aluminum stock pot over a propane burner, mash in a cooler with no false bottom, run through a strainer into a bucket. Then repeat, batch sparging.
Buckets get dumped into the stock pot, which is boiled with hops, chilled with a chiller, then strained again into the buckets and yeast is added.
Very hard, lots of work, involves holding 5+ gallons of very hot water in 1 hand and a strainer in the other. Lots of problems with extracted tannins, low efficency or spilled wort - but made a few nice batches of beer other times.
I recently decided to upgrade and make my life easier. So I bought a Bayou classic - steel with a false bottom and "lab grade" thermometer. Not sure this was a good purchase. It loses more heat than the cooler as a mash tun, and the thermometer is worthless for mash temperature. I thought I'd be able to heat it slowly while mashing to better control the temperature. That didn't work so well - the bottom overheats without the top heating up - even constantly stirring does not heat evenly.
I had a stuck mash (put the hop screen on - I guess that was a mistake) but this could happen normally, and then I had to dump the mash into buckets to get under the false bottom to unclog it. I sparged with cold water, since I had no way to heat water in the same kettle as my mash (I could have lifted the whole thing off and used my aluminum stock pot, but decided this was too much work). Lots learned, but so far, not much of an upgrade.
Worst case, I can go back to the cooler for a mash tun, and then at least I have a nice kettle. But I see lots of youtube videos with 3 tier setups, and wonder if I could do something like this. I brew on my patio, so anything needs to either be waterproof or moveable into storage, in addition to being fireproof. It could be as simple as cinder blocks under the first kettle, with a second kettle lower down, but then I need buy another burner and manually switch the gas lines - too much work/risk to lift both kettles and move burners which could be hot enough to burn me even through an oven mitt.
The youtube videos and plans I've seen are very elaborate, expensive, complicated, and not mobile. Does anyone have any pointers for simple and cheap ways to make my life easier?
BTW - I don't want to 'brew in a bag' - part of the appeal of all grain brewing is lowering costs over extract. You lose this cost advantage if you lose efficiency.
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