Mash Tun dead space

[Mark Kessell]

hi all. i just built me a larger mash tun over the weekend. i bought a 54L chilli bin, went to master trade, and wipped it together in about 20 mins. no leaks... awesome.

 

only thing wrong with it, is it has a 3.5L dead space. i've not used it yet (planning to this weekend), but am already thinking about how i can reduce this dead space to a minimum. so am looking for ideas on what i can use to effectively raise the bottom of the tun with.

 

something that wont effect the flavour of the wort during mashing/sparging.

 

 

any ideas?

[Andrew]

If you could add a photo it would help us give you tips as I,m not sure what you mean by dead space. But; in a 54L bin I honestly wouldn't worry about 3.5 L of dead space. Just make a bigger brew and fill up the 3.5 L?

[Dougal]

Getting the manifold on the bottom of the chilly bin helps.

I use a real high tech solution with mine on the second batch sparge- putting a bit of 3x2 under the back end to drain toward the tap.

[Richard Jack]

I do the same thing, but I wait until it's already drained to the dead space and then lift the back. not sure if that makes a difference, but works well for me.

[Mark Kessell]

the dead space is the area cannot be drained without tipping the tun to the side of the drainage hole. so putting a piece of wood under the braided hose wont do much surely... ?

 

i'll try and get a photo up tonight.

[Richard Jack]

The wood goes under the mash tun to tip it up, not the hose.

[Mark Kessell]

ahh, so you are doing that.

thanks. :)

[Andrew]

I see what you mean now, couldn't get the picture in my head. If you look at my pics I have my mash tun on there. The "lauter" is fairy close to the bottom but I still have to use the trusty piece of wood too. Although; if you sparge too much water you might start to pull alot of polyphenols out of the maly with will hurt your final product so I wouldn't worry too much. Alot of the last runnings aren't that fermentable anyway so you don't lose much extract just some volume.

[Tilt]

If you need to take up space in the tun to reduce the deadspace (rather than tilt the whole shebang towards the tap) you could use a white plastic cutting board or two under your manifold.  Reduced my deadspace by about a litre.

[Doublehoppy]

Yeah, that's exactly what I've done. Two plastic cutting boards perfectly support the manifold in my setup and have reduced the dead space to half a litre.