Mash/Lauter Tun Design and

Construction Choices
for Homebrewers
By Cole Davisson
 MashTun vs. Lauter Tun
• Mash Tun- A brewing vessel designed to
hold a mash at a constant or increasing
temperature
• Lauter Tun- A brewing vessel designed to
filter wort from spent grains of a mash
after conversion
• Homebrewers commonly use a dual-
purpose mash/lauter vessel
 Mashing Mechanisms
• Single Temperature Infusion
• Step Mash
– Multiple Infusions
– Decoction
– Applied heat
 Vessel Requirements
• Needs to hold an appropriate amount of
liquid
• Aspect ratio and volume will determine
depth of grain bed
• Needs to be able to maintain temperature
over the period of a rest
Some Common Vessel Choices
• Food-grade Plastic Buckets
Some Common Vessel Choices
• Insulated Bucket
Cylindrical Coolers
Rectangular Coolers
Converted Kegs
Kettle-based Mash Tuns
Purpose-built Mash Vessels
Less Popular Choices…
 Lautering Mechanism
Strainer
•

•Requires scooping of hot

mash from mash tun into
strainer

•Many brewers are

concerned about the
effects of ‘Hot-side
Aeration’
 Lautering Mechanism
• Bucket-in-a-bucket
 Lautering Mechanism
• Purpose-built False Bottom
– Plastic or metal
– Hinged
– Legs or Domed
– Outlet above or below
False Bottoms
False Bottoms
Manifolds
Manifolds
Metal Hose Braid
Metal Hose Braid
Sources for Metal Braid
 Sparging
• No Sparge
• Batch Sparge
• Fly Sparge (or Continuous Sparge)
 No Sparge
• Calculate strike water volume and gravity
of extract expected.
• Mash
• Drain off high-gravity wort
• Top off to reach final, pre-boil volume
 Lautering Considerations
• Because you are draining the mash tun
completely in one step, the choice of
lautering technology is not particularly
critical.
• So long as you don’t have dry patches in
your grainbed, false bottom, manifold or
braid should all perform equally well.
 Batch Sparge
• Mash
• Drain off high-gravity wort until dry
• Add hot sparge water and stir to combine
• Drain off lower-gravity wort until dry
• Repeat until satisfied…
 Lautering Considerations
• The sparge operation is a diffusion
process, rather than a rinsing process.
• Like with No Sparge, all of the wort is
drained in one step.
• Like with No Sparge, any of the lautering
choices should work equally well.
 Last note on batch sparging
• substantial amount of sugar is present and
diffuses into sparge water in the last
sparge operation
• pH of sparge water never rises to the level
that husk tannins are extracted
• ‘impossible to oversparge’
 Fly Sparge
• Continuously rinsing the grain bed to
extract as much sugar from the grain as
practical
• Slow sparging can take up to an hour
• Many brewers do a mashout to denature
enzymes to combat further conversion
during sparge
 Fly Sparge
• Water is added uniformly across the top of
the grain bed, at the same rate as wort is
run off
• As sparge water trickles down through
filter bed, it rinses away interstitial sugars
• Wort drawn continuously off the bottom of
the grain filter bed
 Lautering Considerations
• Sparge water must be uniformly
distributed across top of grainbed
 Lautering Considerations
• Uniform distribution of sparge water and
uniform distributed collection discourage
channeling
• Because water flows through the path of
least resistance, if channels form, sparge
will not collect sugar from other portions of
grain bed
• Efficiency will suffer
• Most breweries use false bottom and sparge
arm
Show and Tell