To: Paul W Placeway Reply-To: Gary Pelton Subject: Re: Fittings used for your Gott? In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 18 Nov 1995 16:10:14 -0500. <20270.816729014@LOAN4.SP.CS.CMU.EDU> From: Gary Pelton Date: Mon, 20 Nov 1995 09:39:26 -0500 Message-ID: <13905.816878366@BRACHIA.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU> Sender: Gary_Pelton@BRACHIA.SOAR.cs.cmu.edu Status: U Here are my records, I picked Jay Hersh's (the last one) method, because it seemed simplest. I don't know why he uses a grain bag. Gary ---- Article: 27766 of rec.crafts.brewing Xref: triceratops.soar.cs.cmu.edu rec.crafts.brewing:27766 Newsgroups: rec.crafts.brewing Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!fs7.ece.cmu.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!library.ucla.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!news.cerf.net!megatek!hollen From: hollen@megatek.com (Dion Hollenbeck) Subject: Gott cooler mash tun Message-ID: Sender: hollen@megatek.com (Dion Hollenbeck) Organization: Megatek Corporation, San Diego, California Date: Thu, 7 Apr 1994 15:46:28 GMT Lines: 103 I have had so many requests for information on bulkhead fittings and Gott cooler mash tuns that I thought I would post this as being generally useful. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to make a mash/lauter tun out of a GOTT cooler What I use is a standard 10 gal Gott drink cooler. As opposed to other brands, the Gott is specifically made for hot and cold beverages and therefore stands up well to mashing temps. The procedures are very simple. 1) Remove the valve assembly 2) Buy a Phil's Phalse Bottom (the 10 gal size for about $25) 3) Add a bulkhead fitting to the cooler in place of the valve 4) Connect the false bottom to the bulkhead fitting You can figure out how to remove the valve and buy the false bottom yourself. If not, don't try this at home. Hire a professional. B-} BULKHEAD FITTING ================ A bulkhead fitting is a way of getting an attachment for plumbing on two sides of a plate (bulkhead). The simplest bulkhead fitting is made with a close nipple, two rubber washers, two stainless steel washers and two pipe thread nuts. Place the nipple through a hole in the plate. Slip over a rubber washer, a SS washer and then run on the nut. From the other side, do the same. Tighten the two nuts against each other to form a seal. If the bulkhead is curved like in a round cooler, you may need very soft rubber gaskets, but if it is flat, the rubber can be harder. O-rings sometimes work. If you cannot get pipe nuts, you can make them by buying reducer fittings. For a 1/2" pipe nut, buy a 3/4" to 1/2" reducer. Hold the 3/4" threaded portion in a vise and use a hacksaw to cut off the hex nut portion. These are available for sale from McMaster-Carr in brass or bronze, but I have only seen them in retail stores in pot metal which one would *not* want to use in brewing. For use with a false bottom, *USE* the reducer, not the pipe nut and *DO NOT* cut off the threaded portion. This will be used as an adapter for the hose from the false bottom. A 1/2" ballvalve on the outside of the bulkhead fitting can be used in place of the pipe nut, and you probably want a valve anyway. PHALSE BOTTOM MODS ================== A Phil's Phalse Bottom is a circle of 1/8" plastic, slightly domed and with gazillions of small holes in it. In the center is one 1/4" NPT threaded hole into which a plastic elbow has been screwed. The other end of the elbow is about a 1/4" hose barb. If you are using this for a RIMS system, I strongly suggest that you replace the elbow with a larger one, but for just a manual lauter tun, it will do fine as is. For a RIMS system drill out the hole in the false bottom and thread with 1/2" NPT and buy a 1/2" NPT to 1/2" hose barb nylon elbow. If non-RIMS, buy a 1/4" nylon hose barb to 1/2" Male NPT straight fitting, for RIMS, buy 1/2" NPT to 1/2" hose barb. Take this straight adapter and go to a grindstone or belt/disk sander and grind off the threads from the outside of the nylon adapter doing so in a manner to give you a truncated cone shape like a rubber stopper. This is so that it will fit snugly into the reducing bushing which is part of the bulkhead fitting. With either the 1/4" or the 1/2" version, you now have a false bottom sitting on the bottom with an elbow sticking up out of it, and a bulkhead fitting with a nylon adpater sticking out of it, both of which have hose barb ends. Now to connect them. Measure the distance between the shoulders of the two hose barbs and cut a piece of clear vinyl, internally braided reinforced hose about 1/8" longer than that distance. Remove the false bottom and the nylon adapter in the bulkhead fitting and insert them into the ends of the pieces of hose. You then angle the false bottom down into the bottom of the cooler so that the nylon adapter begins to enter the bulkhead fitting while the false bottom is still at an angle and not quite on the bottom of the cooler. By the time the false bottom gets to the bottom of the cooler, it should have firmly wedged the conically shaped adapter into the bulkhead fitting. The grain bed sitting on top of this will guarantee it does not move. SUGGESTIONS FOR RIMS IMPLEMENTATIONS ==================================== As previously mentioned, use 1/2" hose. The reduction of input to your pump will be too restrictive with only 1/4" hose and most magnetically driven pumps can be throttled on the output side, but do not like to be throttled on the input side. It is possible with heat and suction to collapse regular braided reinforced hose, so I used Teflon hose with Stainless Steel overbraid. This was probably overkill, but it will never collapse on you. You could probably get by with just Teflon. I used just the clear hose for a while and it worked, but with some collapsing causing partial blockage of the input to the pump. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Dion Hollenbeck (619)675-4000x2814 Email: hollen@megatek.com Staff Software Engineer Megatek Corporation, San Diego, California ----------------------------------- Manifold in a round cooler It's built from 3/8"OD copper tubing (I had a bunch of it), "held together" with 3/8" copper fittings. These are designed to be soldered together, but I've just "slip fit" them. Thus, I can take it apart for cleaning. There are 3 basic pieces: two semi-circles and one straight piece. There are 4 T fittings, and two very short bits of tubing. The "down tube" is long enough to reach just to the top of the cooler (I want to be able to put the lid on), and there is another piece that goes through the hole where the spigot was. (I got a nice fitting from Kinney Baughmann that fits in this hole and has compression connections on both ends). On the outside is a short piece of tubing, a ball valve, and another short piece of tubing, all held together with compression fittings. I can slip my siphon hose over the last bit of tubing. Inside, it looks like this from the top (Thanks Jim for the original graphic). *(long tube coming up at you) * * * * ***** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ***** * *(short tube going out the spigot hole) The semicircles and cross-piece are slotted on the bottom side. I made a little jig from a piece of 2x4 to cut the slots. It's just a hole through the 2x4 a little bigger than 3/8". I stuck the 2x4 in a vise, then put the tubing through the hole, and sawed right next to the 2x4. Lots easier than trying to just hold the sucker still with one hand and saw with the other. I made it a tight fit in the cooler. I didn't realize it until recently, but this is extra insurance against the manifold coming apart during the mash (there was a "horror story" about this in the HBD). The downtube is very useful for introducing water gently from the bottom (underletting): Put the cooler on the floor. Fill the siphon hose with water and crimp one end in your hand. Slip the one end over the downtube (easier with practice). Put the other end in the pot full of water, and release the crimp. It seems to me that I get better mixing this way, when I'm trying to infuse water to raise the temperature of the mash. It also should act as a suction breaker -- that is, if the suction from the water flowing out the spigot is too hard, instead of getting a stuck mash, you'll just suck air from the downtube. I'm not sure if this is an important consideration, since I usually set the valve so it runs pretty slowly. ----------------------------------------------- Jay Hersh's Gott Cooler Mash Tun OK many folks are interested in my mash/lauter tun arrangement. It's real simple. I obtained the following parts for converting a 5 gallon cylindrical Gott (by Rubbermaid) brand water cooler. 1. 3/8 inch right angle brass fitting. This has 3/8 inch male threads on one side and a 3/8 inch compression fitting on the other. 2. 6 feet of 3/8 inch copper coil 3. a 3/8 inch right angle spigot. The kind you find under your sink and in any good hardware store that carries plumbing supplies. It has an oval handle on it, a 3/8 inch female thread and a 3/8 inch compression fitting 4. a rubber washer to go around the 3/8 inch male threading of (1) 5. a 6.7 gallon nylon mesh grain bag from a homebrew supply shop So what you do is first unsrew the spigot in the cylindrical cooler. Cut slots or drill holes every 1/4 inch along the length of the 6 ft copper coil and pinch the end that is in the inside of the coil closed. You put the coil into the compression fitting side of the brass right angle fitting and put the male thread sticking out of the cooler where the original spigot once was so that the copper coil is seated on the bottom of the cooler and the 3/8 male thread sticks out of the cooler. Then you put the washer around the 3/8 inch male thread and screw the right angle spigot onto it. You seat the grain bag in the cooler, and you're done.... a stainless steel collander that sits in the top of the cooler to disperse sparge water is a nice addition to this set up as well. Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalts Jay Hersh, hersh@x.org Back to the Beer Page. Spencer W. Thomas (spencer@umich.edu) To: Paul W Placeway Reply-To: Gary Pelton Subject: Re: Fittings used for your Gott? In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 18 Nov 1995 16:10:14 -0500. <20270.816729014@LOAN4.SP.CS.CMU.EDU> From: Gary Pelton Date: Mon, 20 Nov 1995 09:41:24 -0500 Message-ID: <13916.816878484@BRACHIA.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU> Sender: Gary_Pelton@BRACHIA.SOAR.cs.cmu.edu Status: U Another design. For a rectangular cooler, but also talks about making the slots in more detail. Remember slots go down. Gary -------------------------------- Copper Manifold in a Rectangular Cooler (Metric note: 1" (inch) is 2.54 cm, 3/8" is about 1cm. 1' (foot) is 30.5cm) Ok, here's a sketch of the procedure. I've used this with a rectangular (30qt) picnic cooler. 1. Look at your cooler. Does it have a drain hole? If so, you need to get a stopper that will fit it. I'm assuming here that the drain hole has a removable stopper, not a valve of some sort. If it's the latter, you may need to remove the valve (usually by unscrewing a large nut on the inside). 2. Buy a 10' coil 3/8" tubing (outside diameter, frequently sold as a hook-up for automatic ice makers). 1/4" tubing might work, too. You should also get a "tubing bender" the same size. This is simply a tightly coiled spring with a flare at one end. You slide it over the tubing to the place where you want to make the bend, and bend the tubing inside it. It prevents the tubing from crimping as you bend. Should cost a few bucks. 3. If you will be bringing the tubing out through the drain hole, drill the stopper slightly smaller than the diameter of the tubing (measure to make sure). This is somewhat tricky, especially with a small stopper. Mark one end of the tubing about a foot from the end. If you do not have a drain hole, then you'll have to bring it out the top. Mark one end of the tubing about the depth of your cooler (maybe 10 inches) 4. Measure about (3*L) + W, where L is the inside length and W is the inside width of your cooler, on the tubing from your first mark. Make a mark. Then measure the depth of the cooler from this mark and cut the tubing. 5. Between the two marks, starting a couple of inches in from the first, and ending a couple of inches from the second (this leaves solid tube for sharp bends), cut a slot across the tubing, about 1/2 way through, with a hacksaw. I built a "jig" to do this by drilling a 3/8" hole in a piece of scrap lumber, and clamping that in my vise. I could then cut a slot, slide the tubing, cut a slot, etc. I used a carbide hacksaw blade; it makes somewhat wider cuts than the regular kind. This may or may not be good (but it works for me.) 6. Now comes the tricky part: bending it to fit. I'm assuming your drain hole (if you have one) is in the center of one end. You want to make two right angle (as sharp as you can without wrecking the tubing) in that end so that the tubing will stick out a few inches through the drain. On the inside, it should turn and go to one side of the cooler. Force the drilled stopper, with the fat end in, over the tubing so that when the whole thing is put in the cooler, it plugs the drain hole nicely. Or, if you don't have a drain hole, bend the tubing so that it stands up to almost the top of the cooler, in one corner. IMPORTANT: Make sure to make your bends so that the slots end up facing down. Then you run the tubing the length of the cooler along the side, bend it in a U back to the other end down the middle, another U takes it back to the far end along the other side. My current manifold runs very close to the cooler walls and works fine. Then, bend the tubing up so it runs almost to the top of the cooler (you may need to trim the end at this point.) To use it: 1. Put the sparge manifold into the cooler (with the stopper blocking the drain hole, if you've made that version). Attach a length of tubing to the "drain" end, and close it with a tubing clamp (the kind with a thumbscrew works best, and will let you easily regulate the flow when sparging). If you don't have a drain plug version, don't attach the tubing yet. 2. Put your grain into the cooler. Heat your mash water to 170F (allow about 1 quart per lb of malt). (If you're making a 3 gallon batch, you might use 6 lbs of malt and 1.5 gallons of water.) 3. Place one end of a siphon hose into the mash water, and start the siphon. Pinch or clamp near the end of the hose, and push the end over the top of the copper tubing coming up in one corner of your cooler. Stir to thoroughly mix the water into the grain. You should end up with a temperature between 150 and 160F. 4. Take off the siphon hose, and put the lid on the cooler. Let it sit and mash for an hour. (If you're the worrier type, you can try doing an iodine test, but it's probably not worth it, and mine always come out black when I do it from the top of the mash anyway.) 5. Heat about 1/2 the original mash water quantity to boiling, and siphon (or pour) it into the mash to raise the temperature to 170F. It's helpful to measure while you're doing this so you don't overshoot too much (this is one step I don't have well calibrated, yet). I find that running the water in through the manifold gives me more even temperature distribution (i.e., better mixing) than pouring it in the top. Let this sit at least 10 minutes while you heat more water to 170F (I actually do this in stages while I'm sparging -- heat a gallon, add it, heat another gallon, etc. How much you really need depends on a lot of factors, but it won't exceed your total target volume, anyway.) 6. Now, you're ready to sparge. With the drain plug version, place the end of the drain hose in a pot and loosen the clamp until you get a slow steady flow. With the other version, attach your siphon hose to one end, and start the siphon. A hose clamp is useful here, too, to control flow rate. Keep it below the bottom of the cooler to maintain the siphon. (Keep an eye on it, if you start getting bubbles in the tubing, you need to slow down.) Take the first few quarts and pour them (gently) back into the cooler. The outflow should be pretty clear by that point. I put a bowl into the middle of the grain bed and pour into it, to avoid disturbing the grains. Add sparge (170F) water as necessary to keep the level of water in the cooler above the top of the grain bed. You stop sparging when any of the following conditions are met: 1. You've got as much as you can safely boil in your pot (hint: if you've got enough pots, start the first bit boiling while you're still sparging). 2. The specific gravity (corrected for temperature) falls to 1.010 (this means about 0.995 at 150F). 3. The outflow starts to taste like weak tea (somewhat astringent). Boil your wort for at least an hour. Add hops, etc., as usual. It's useful to figure your "extraction rate" so that you'll be able to better calculate how much grain you need to make a specific strength beer. To do this: Measure the specific gravity of your final wort (call it OG). If the volume of the wort is V, and you used L pounds of malt (not counting dark grains, and crystal malts need to be discounted by multiplying by roughly 80%), then your extraction is E = (OG-1)*1000 * V / L (points/lb/gal) Thus, a wort of 1.050 in 3 gallons starting with 6 lbs of grain has an extraction rate of (1.050 - 1) * 1000 * 3 / 6 = 50 / 2 = 25 pts/lb/gal That is to say, you got 25 "points" of extract from each pound of grain (for a total of 150 points), diluted into 3 gallons gives 50 points or 1.050 total. 25 is not bad, 30 is pretty good, anything over 30 is excellent. Your first time, I wouldn't shoot for anything over 25. If you get more, you can always dilute the wort after boiling it (with boiled, cooled water, of course). Well, this came out longer than I expected. I'll conclude with a picture. Top view of manifold (drain plug version): key: "=" tubing "/","\" bends "I" tubing "O" tubing coming up "|","-","+" cooler walls +----------------------+ | /==================\ | | I I | =====/ /================/ | | I | | \================O | +----------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 12:52:32 -0500 From: KennyEddy@aol.com Subject: re: Manifold Slits Tim Haby writes: >Ola Brewers, I'm in the process of building a copper manifold for my lauter >tun and I have some questions. >1. How many slits per inch? >2. What orientation are the slits? >3. In the lauter tun do the slits face up or face the bottom of the tun? Conventional Wisdom seems to say to cut across and about halfway through your tubing every half inch, and orient your slits to the bottom of the tun. A recent article in Brewing Techniques makes it more scientific by relating the total cross-sectional area of the cuts to the outlet area. If there's less area in the outlet than the slits, your flow rate will be limited. If you have the opposite condition, then your outlet is the only limiting factor. This is the condition you are after. You can calculate the outlet area using Area = 3.14 x half the diameter x half the diameter or pie-are-squared for us math nerds. The slots each contribute Area = half the circumference x slot width = 3.14 x half the diameter x slot width Assuming a hacksaw makes a cut about 0.030" wide, halfway through a 1/2" inside diameter pipe, each cut contributes 0.024 square inches of flow area. If your outlet is also 1/2" inside diameter, its area is 0.785 square inches. Thus you need 0.785 divided by 0.024 slots minimum (which is 33). Now you'll want to assume the grain will partially block some of the slit area (but not necessarily "clogging" the slit), so increase this by say 50% (I'm pulling that figure from a sunlight-deprived portion of my anatomy). So figure on about 50 slits. Going further, if you cut them every 1/2", you then need 25 linear inches of pipe/tubing. An 8" - 9" diameter circle or a 7" per side square would provide about enough tubing. The Brewing Techniques article also discusses fluid flow distribution as it relates to different types of collection devices. A false bottom, with its evenly-distributed pattern of inlet holes, is "ideal". Gravity drives wort straight down evenly across the grain bed. A pipe manifold causes some "channeling" since the fluid flowing straight down into a slit has an easier time than the fluid that has to flow "sideways" or at an angle to find a pipe with an opening. An "Easymasher" type arrangement of a single rolled screen or pipe makes for worst efficiency since wort to the sides of the Easymasher has a tougher time flowing to the outlet in the absence of the boost that gravity gives the wort directly above the Easymasher. YMMV, and this is all dependent on a lot of things. Easymasher fans swear by the efficiency of the system. But it raises good points for thought. The manifold I used in my Coleman Drinking Water 5 is made from 1/2" copper pipe in the shape of a square, but I added a "crossbeam" member to improve distribution (closer approximation of a false bottom). I drilled 3/32" diameter holes straight through the pipes and fittings about every 1/4" using a drill press (beats the hell out of cutting slits). The larger diameter of the fittings compared to the pipe actually suspends the pipe above the cooler bottom, so the bottom holes are not at all "blocked". In addition, I toss a cut-to-size piece of 8 hole-per-inch nylon needlepoint backing mesh over the manifold, in effect creating a false bottom in addition to the manifold. While it isn't rigid like a true false bottom, it does significantly increase the drainage area. I rotate the pipe sections a few degrees so that the mesh isn't directly over the pipe holes. I *assume* the mesh is helping the extraction and sparging, but the bonus points really come from the fact that it protects the manifold from the onslaught of my stirring spoon! A plani-spiral loop of soft tubing is another popular choice, since it presents itself as a close approximation to a false bottom because of the close & even distribution of slits across the grain bed. Again, drilling holes instead of cutting slits would make fabrication much more relaxing. By the way, Tim, it's "hola" with an "h". Pero te entendemos. Ken Schwartz El Paso, Tejas