What do you use for a mash tun?

I toss in about 0.5 G of 180°F water, jostle it around then sit. Then drain, and dump in ~165°F H2O, then stir in the grain. No deformed yet on a Coleman 56 qt wheeled that I got at Kmart.

 

48qt rectangular Coleman here.
I've run a good half-dozen batches through it with no issues whatsoever.

 

48 qt green Coleman that I have used for over 2 years now, no warping. It did drop from my shelf to the floor and break one hinge on the lid, so I just ripped the lid off and put it on after mashing in. I overnight mash with the MLT wrapped in a heating blanket set to high, inside and old, thick sleeping bag I used as a kid. Inside looks like an Aztec pyramid:



I have a SS ballvalve with Aluminum cam lock to a brass bulkhead inside to copper pipe with SS braid. Works great.

 

I use a standard bottling bucket and drop it in one of those big plastic containers with the rope handles and insert bubble wrap in the void between the buckets and cover with a few towels. Just a 1 degree drop in 1 hour. Done this for over a dozen brews and it works great.

 

20.00 at the depot

 

I'm opposite. My mash tun is fine.. My HLT is another cooler, and it's warped from putting 200* water in there.

 

Seems a bit high, was that a mistake? I believe the highest temps I've put in there were around 179°.

 

Nah.. Sparge water.. Heated it up, tossed it in, and leave it there so I can be ahead of the game to sparge. I whats left over to clean, and refill with hot water from the chiller to clean up afterwards too. That stuff comes out even hotter at first!

Only got one kettle, so I heat in it, and move the water to the HLT till I need it to go into the mash tun.

 

I do this too, but perhaps not as early as you. I heat the sparge water to about 175°, dump it in the cooler (about 20-30 min before sparge) and it's at around 168° when I'm ready to fly-sparge.

I guess I'll make sure to keep it under 180° when I do put water in there, since it seems to warp more readily above that temp.

 

Yeah, above 180* is probably a dead zone. I normal get the water to sparge pretty much when I'm ready to lauter the tun, but sometimes I'm getting ahead, and doing my cups with my hop additions, or getting water additions ready on the scale for the sparge water or something.

It hasn't done it again, and I normally shoot for 190 water as it gets the grain bed up high enough to make it to temp.

 

A pony keg. Unfortunately I can't get anymore than 12 lbs of grain (with water) in it. So I do a lot of 3.5 gallon-ish batches or 6% beers. I don't mind at all though.

 

I just bought one of these and in the test run lost 10 degrees in an hour.

 

You just learned a lesson in thermal mass. You will 'lose' heat that is absorbed by the cooler. Because that's measurable, it can be modeled and compensated for. After that, the really important question is how well does the tun hold heat after it reaches equilibrium with the contents? 10 degrees in an hour would be terrible for that, because you can't compensate for it (without a HERMS or RIMS system).

 

The majority of people, including myself, lose about 1-2° over an hour. Based on others' experience, it can only be one of two things:

1. Related to your process.
2. A defect in your cooler.

I don't really know how to check for #2, but #1 would be easy to identify.

 

Congrats for the new acquisition, it's sounds like you never mash with a cooler.
Try add some insulation to your mash tun, In the winter I use wooden board under it and Micro Fleece blanket around it and on top. During summer one beach towel will do.
that's how I lose around 1-3 deg.

 

Preheat the tun and add some extra insulation (especially in colder weather), and that 10 gallon Igloo will do fine.

 

Igloo Cube 48 qt, fitted with SS bulkhead attached to homemade copper manifold and ball-lock spigot.

 

My MLT is a 7 gallon stainless steel kettle with a bazooka screen and weldless ball valve. For 5 gallon batches I can easily make beers up to ~ 1.075 as my mash efficiency is up around 85%. Most of my beers are in the 1.050 to 1.060 range. I wrap it in a dozen or so towels to keep it insulated during the mash, and then direct fire heat it to 168 prior to sparging.

 

Mine is so high tech that I hesitate to mention it. My tun is a 6.5 gallon plastic bucket with spigot, lined with a 24'' bag from MoreBeer and a $1.00 collander in bottom to act as preudo a false bottom to give some separation between the bag and the spigot. I insulate the outside with bubblewrap. The bucket and insulation keep the mash within a degree or two over 60 minutes. I grind the grain pretty fine with a $24.00 Corona mill and get excellent efficiency and very drinkable beer with little hassle. I use ingredients like grits, rice, wheat, etc. in nearly every batch and never experience the dreaded stuck situations. At this stage of life I'm a believer of keeping things simple and efficient.

 

My first mash tun was an enameled steel canning pot, I lautered in a ZapPap for 4 or 5 years before I built my mash/lauter tun from a keg.