ionia ales

The Mash is the mixture of hot water and milled malted barley.  Diastatic enzymes found naturally within the malted barley start acting on the starches (the food source for the young plant once it would grow), breaking them up into sugars- some of which are fermentable by the yeast sachromyces the beer yeast and some aren’t. Those sugars that are unfermentable add body, viscosity, and the malty sweetness that is balanced by the bitterness of the boiled hops to varying degrees according to the style of the beer.

After the Mash is complete the wort must be “lautered” or the sweet liquid recirculated and drained and transfered to the boil kettle.  As the wort is recirculted, it becomes clear as proteins and grain particles become filtered out by the husks of the barley that forms the grain bed.  A Mash/Lauter Tun takes care of both jobs at once.
It is very easy to build your own mash tun and the supplies cost from $25-$50.

A 5 gallon cooler limits you to a 6% beer for a 5 gallon batch. What about my Big IPA?

I kept banging up my straining Stainless Steel mesh screen w/ the spoon or mash paddle.

If a brewer has a bigger mash tun they can make more beer.

The technique I use, “batch sparging” doesn’t need the grain bed to be the same proportions as recomended with “fly sparging”, where it’s best to have a deeper/taller grainbed for various reasons that a fluid mechanics specialist would only be able to explain. more on fly vs batch sparging later.

SPARGE! second only to bung and bung hole in WTF brewing jargon… Nope, it’s first.

I decided to go with the less insulated normally insulated IceCube Cooler.  A regular old rectangular Rubbermade cooler is just fine, and preferred by “batch sparge guru” Denny Conn.  I learned just about everything from his webpage.  I might even copy some of the formulae, in explaining the different SPARGING techniques, FYI.  I used a “mini-keg” bung, intended for the little kegs of Heineken at the beer store.  I used some tubing and ran it thru the BUNG HOLE and attached a cheap valve (a fancy brass or SS valve is even better. at the end.  A small “male to male” copper peice was fitted into the tubing so I could clamp down my stainless steel braided mesh straining device.

Braided hosing.. $4 I used a hacksaw to cut off the ends, and pilers to remove the inner plastic tubing.  Watch out for plastic versions.. you want stout stainless steel that can stand up to 20lbs plus of weight.  And then a hose clamp was used to attach it to the copper fitting.

Photos..