Building a Lauter-Tun for All Grain Brewing

We decided the time was right to make the leap into all grain brewing and built a lautur-tun to try a new recipe for Chocolate Irish Stout. We got our hands on a rectangular 48 quart cooler and decided to build a “manifold style” apparatus for separating the liquid from the mash. With ambition high and chance of success low, we spent most of the weekend at Lowe’s trying to implement our DIY plan. To my surprise, when we explained our idea to the Lowe’s guy, expecting confusion, he responded with “oh yea, sure, a lauter tun” as if it was commonplace. Sean at Highland Lowe’s, you rock.

LET’S BUILD A LAUTER-TUN
Our lautur tun had 2 main components to build: (1) the manifold to drain liquid and (2) a nozzle spout that could be turned on/off and attach securely to the cooler AND the manifold. We removed the existing spout and found that creating a tight, secure connection (to avoid leaks) was tricky. We eventually purchased 7 feet of 1/2 inch CPVC piping and a whole bag of washers, nuts and nozzles to create the connection. It is important to use CPVC and not traditional PVC since the high temperatures could interact with chemicals in the PVC and make your beer very unhealthy. By some miracle, everything fit securely and our home brewing egos just ratcheted up a bit higher.

LET’S MASH, BABY!
Now on to our first all grain brewing! We chose a relatively safe recipe for Irish Stout but decided to add a bit of chocolate malt (1/2 lb) to balance our increased 2 ounces of hops. We got to hang with the big boys at the brewing shop and grind up our 4 different types of grains, throwing out manly and knowledgeable comments to other brewers like “So, what do you think of the black 2 row grains?” or “Yea, we had some success with that english malt for our pale ale but you gotta watch that boil”. It was awesome.

Mashing is actually much easier than I thought. Really you just combine the heated water and grains in your cooler … and then wait for the magical sugar-sucrose conversion to happen. I couldn’t see this happening but allegedly it was. After the allotted time, we drained a bit of the liquid (which was speckled with grain) and re-circulated it back into the cooler. These speckles appear at the beginning (hence the re-circulating) but weren’t present after that. As a secondary measure, we held a small strainer between the hose and the pot to catch any other stray grains.

WHO WANTS TO SPARGE?

After the liquid was drained down to the last inch in the cooler, we started “sparging” by pouring hot water on the spent grains, which helped us get every last bit of converted sugar from the grain. We ended up with about 3.5 gallons of extracted liquid and started boiling on the stove, adding hops when appropriate, and pitching the yeast after cooling. We had to cool the pot in a homemade igloo of snow outside but it got the job done.

High hopes for this one. A success on our first all grain brew could really kick our egos up to dangerous levels. The next brew will be something more appropriate for the (hopefully) warm weather on its way soon.