Underletting by gravity

[flything]

Anyone tried this? Just heating up my liquor and wondered about doing this, seems that it could be a little easier than juggling the old bucket and spoon and trying to get rid of dough-balls.

[jubby]

Thought about it but not tried it. I will be trying it in the future though.

That doesn't help much does it

[Cheshire-cheese]

Could you be a little more explicit (not in a Gordon Ramsey way) in what you mean?
I gather underletting involves adding water from underneath but I am still not 100% sure what you mean.

[boingy]

I'm guessing he is planning to gravity-feed the mash water in through the outlet tap. It should work assuming you have a great enough height difference between the HLT and the MT (and also assuming that you can get a watertight seal on the tap...).

[Cheshire-cheese]

Ah.
I had visions of (based on my own set-up) adding the grain to a brewbin with holes in the base then lowering this into a tapped brewbin containing liquor at strike heat.
Your explanation makes more sense with the mention of gravity (although gravity would push the brewbin insert down too)

[jubby]

I was thinking of adding an inlet to the bottom of the mash tun (a bit like a sink plug hole) and connecting a pipe to that inlet from my HLT. My system is 4 tier gravity feed, so it should work. The advantage of this is that you don't have to stand over your mash tun pouring grain and stirring. Just put the grain in the tun and fill with your liquor from the bottom. You could put the liquor in through the tap as boingy says.

[Graham]

You can see my underlet pipe in the foreground of the picture below (and you can just see my valentine tube at the back).

Mash Tun Picture

With the underlet pipe I can stick a funnel in the end and pour hot water into it. I have another underlet pipe that has an adaptor on it that connects to my wallpaper stripper so that I can do direct steam injection. It could be connected to my HLT too, I guess, but I haven't done that yet.

I do not use it for mashing-in though, just for raising the temperature after mashing in. I don't think that you could get away without stirring. A paint stirrer in a cordless drill works wonders for that. A couple of quick bursts and it is done.