Mash/Lauter Tun

The manifold comes with a 3/8" barb adapter that fits into the recirculation port on the mash tun. This connects via supplied tubing to the manifold which 'sits' on the grain bed during the mash. Honestly, this does not get regular use. The manifold tends to dig down into the grain as it recirculates. Shortening of the tubing to hold the manifold more to the top of the grain just results in it kinda cocking sideways in the mash. I see this working a lot better with some kind of RIMS or HERMS setup, neither are used in our brewing. Mostly, any recirculation that happens is done using the Vorlauf attachment and the occasional stir with a spoon.

This gets used as the primary device for recirculation in the mash tun, as well as for the actual vorlauf. This is a handly little tool that connects right to the recirculation bulkhead on the mash tun. With the plate it's very easy to see when the wort is running free of debris and the lautering is ready to begin. About 10-15 minutes of vorlauf generally produces a nice clear wort into the kettle. You can also conveniently rotate the plate out of the way of the sparge arm to begin the sparging process.

The sparge arm! This little gem elevated the mash process from 3 small batch sparges into one big fly sparge and it's really made a difference in the quality of the grain rinse. It comes with 3 different sparge heads which allow for wider or thinner jets for rinsing (although, I really don't see much of a difference between them). The sparge is not gravity fed, the riptide pump is used to pump the sparge water from the HLT, on the burner, up to the mash tun as it drains out into the kettle (which IS gravity fed).

This used to be the main brewery pump and it did a fine job at everything from moving strike and sparge water from the HLT into the MLT, to transferring the wort from the kettle, through the counterflow chiller, and into the fermenter. These days, it's only job is to recirculate the mash for temperature regulation and to perform vorlauf at the end of the mash. Note, the pump pictured is 'similar' but not the exact BRÄU pump. It also has a pair of the Blichmann 1.5" TC to 1/2" NPT adapters because thread tape is the WORST! (the Blichmann adapters are compression fit and have not leaked a drop yet)

I cannot lie, I do not like this mash/lauder tun. For years, a square picnic cooler with a homemade pvc manifold worked wonders at mashing 5 and 10 gallon batches. Eventually, that cooler started to warp, which made me reconsider plastic and acidic wort interactions at 152F, so I replaced with this MLT. It does not hold temperatures nearly as well. Enter the MTSs temp control (which I really should not even need). Even with this heating pad fully on for the entire mash, there is still consistent temperature loss. So, it's needed, but still does not fully solve the issue.

When you've got leftover neoprene from your homemade fermenter jacket and a mash tun that doesn't hold temps well, you fashion your own mash tun jacket. Believe it or not, this does help with maintaining mash temps. On a recent 10 gallon batch of Pilsner, the jacket, along with MTSs heating pad, held the mash tun so it only saw about a 3F degree temp drop over 90 minutes, which I am happy with. This was with the MTSs heater fully on, stirring every 20 minutes, and occasionally pumping to recirculate the heated wort on the bottom of the MLT, near the heater, to the grain on the top of the mash.

Based on all the rave reviews for this mash tun, I can only think that mine is defective in some way. I suppose the insulation may not be blown properly all around. Which could be why the jacket seems to really help. The only way to know is to cut into it, which I'm not going to do. Saying ALL of that, typical conversion is about 90%.