Instructions for Building a Mash Tun

You may have read our earlier post about building a lauter mash tun and we have since compiled all the parts and photographs into an easy to understand instruction post – Building a Lauter Mash Tun. This is found in the new “How To” section of the site, which we hope to fill later with further instruction as we start to build more equipment (wort chiller up next).

It is very important to note that you should use CPVC piping instead of traditional PVC piping when building the mash tun. This is important because only CPVC can withstand the high temperature of the liquid that will be flowing through the pipes. Regular PVC will leak chemicals into the mash tun liquid, which would make for a bad home brew indeed. Good luck building your own mash tun and let us know if the instructions could be improved at all.

We had a great time learning to mash and hope to take some of the mystery away by detailing our findings (and maybe you can avoid some of the pitfalls we encountered). The maiden brew on our new equipment was a Chocolate Irish Stout that didn’t turn out so great. Low carbonation and alarmingly low ABV. We are still sorting out what exactly went wrong here but the temperature control during mashing was not consistent, which might have caused a lower sugar conversion and thus less fuel for the yeast to consume and turn into ethyl alcohol. Not to be discouraged, we have vowed to drink even more of our Irish brew on St. Patty’s day since we’ll need quite a few to get anything off a 3% ABV.

Go check out the instructions for building a lauter mash tun and please share your feedback if you have ideas on how our design could be improved. Another brew will tell if the low ABV on the Irish Stout was due to poor temperature control or, hopefully not, poor equipment design.