Pictures attached.
My dad works in plumbing & heating wholesale. He constructed our first generation mashtun using the customary mesh braid and ball valve.
It works okay. We had a few stuck sparges, but mostly it just ran off really slow. Like, so the point where it would take almost two hours for the first runoff and the sparge.
I know this is supposed to be a controlled process, but the light trickle we got just didn’t seem right.
So, my dad thought about using a high temp water filter that he sells at work. They’re designed for industrial high temp water filtration.
He picked one up along with a couple of fittings and designed our new mashtun.
We ran two batches through it yesterday. I’ll tell you what…this thing runs of clear! We did the wourloff twice for good measure, but the first runnings were perfect!
We’re able to get a full power draining of the mashtun! The mash water drains out from start to finish in about 15 minutes.
When we batch sparge, we slow the rate down to about half so the grains have time to rinse.
The wort actually ran backwards, away from the filter, and then back down through the grains and out the nozzle.
For cleaning, the filter snaps on and off of the spiggot from the inside. Run some water through it and you’re good as new!
All in all, the parts were about $34 with shipping.
This is a 60 grade mesh, but it can go as fine as 220.
