28 replies to this topic

[MyaCullen]

I went from a 10gal rubbermaid round to a direct fired sanke for volume reasons. I originally used a manifold but recently switched to one of swagman's falsebottoms. Manifold flows better, FB's prevent scorching better. You can fly or batch with either. I may end up with a manifold/FB combo, I know, overkill but the best of both worlds.

any scorching issues with direct fire?

[siouxbrewer]

any scorching issues with direct fire?

With the FB scorching is zero issue. When I had the manifold (square in round sanke keg)I had excellent flow, but had small scorching issues where the corners of the square manifold slightly touched the bottom of the keg and grain got stuck underneath. I'm talking maybe a square inch of metal had scorch marks on it, nothing serious. Since picking up the FB, no scorches but I need to seriously manage flow to prevent sticking the recirc/sparge. I have stuck the recirc with the FB but it has never scorched. I pretty much only brew pale beers so any amount of scorching would be noticeable. YMMV

[denny]

It looks like from the other pics in the link that it has some sort of dead space underneath the mash chamber, can't figure the purpose of that other than insulation.

Ya know, I think I did see a stand for it. The idea must be to get it up high enough for draining.

[MyaCullen]

Ya know, I think I did see a stand for it. The idea must be to get it up high enough for draining.

my thoughts as well after viewing all of the available pics, too spendy for me, but it looks like it'll do the job well

[Howie]

Ya know, I think I did see a stand for it. The idea must be to get it up high enough for draining.

Well, it's truthfully a company that manufactures them for beverage companies to use as display/serving units, like you see at ball games, convenience stores, etc.The guy works for the company and saw the potential benefit as a mash tun and started a new "retail homebrew" division to sell them. It is dead space underneath, I think basically designed to get it up off the ground for serving as a beverage cooler (its intended purpose). For me, the extra height would be a great benefit in a gravity system. You could easily elevate the spout above your kettle without having to have it on something extremely tall.

[MakeMeHoppy]

It looks like from the other pics in the link that it has some sort of dead space underneath the mash chamber, can't figure the purpose of that other than insulation.

Likely it is at that height for easy run off into the kettle

[MakeMeHoppy]

Wonder why a false bottom would tend to get a stuck sparge, I have to imagine that is at least as much space for wort to drain through as with the toilet braid. A couple members of my club has the 10 gallon round for HLT and Mash Tun with a SS false bottom. They appear to work great for both batch and fly sparging. I have a 5 gallon with a braid and I also use a sparge bag to line. Sometimes I get very slow run off and it appears to be caused by too much weight on the braid. I just pull up on the sparge bag and it takes the pressure off and allows good flow.

[siouxbrewer]

Wonder why a false bottom would tend to get a stuck sparge, I have to imagine that is at least as much space for wort to drain through as with the toilet braid. A couple members of my club has the 10 gallon round for HLT and Mash Tun with a SS false bottom. They appear to work great for both batch and fly sparging. I have a 5 gallon with a braid and I also use a sparge bag to line. Sometimes I get very slow run off and it appears to be caused by too much weight on the braid. I just pull up on the sparge bag and it takes the pressure off and allows good flow.

In my case I got better flow with a copper manifold, never used a braid but I can see issues with fly sparging there. Not being a certified rocket surgeon, my only guess why the manifold worked better than the FB is because there was more evenly dispersed drainage from the grainbed with the manifold. I imagine the FB as concentric circles of stronger "pull" coming from around the dip-tube and weakening toward the edges of the tun. This has been my experience and may not be the case for your setup.

[CaptRon]

Wonder why a false bottom would tend to get a stuck sparge, I have to imagine that is at least as much space for wort to drain through as with the toilet braid. A couple members of my club has the 10 gallon round for HLT and Mash Tun with a SS false bottom. They appear to work great for both batch and fly sparging. I have a 5 gallon with a braid and I also use a sparge bag to line. Sometimes I get very slow run off and it appears to be caused by too much weight on the braid. I just pull up on the sparge bag and it takes the pressure off and allows good flow.

I have problems with my FB with grain getting under the edges. I'm trying to figure out how to convert my 10 gal rubbermaid to a ball valve and hard pipe to the FB to hold it down real tight. I'm not getting how to make it water tight, but I'll figure something out. Also if I don't start slow the grainbed will compact and then it is a constant struggle to get good flow again.