my new mashtun.... deadspace question

[Deebee]

Hi.
after mots of looking and searching for someone in the Usa who would send me this at a decent price.. i finally received my new Gatorgrade 10 gallon cooler.

I had already bought the falsebottom and tap so spent 10 minutes yesterday and modified it to an mt.




On checking i noted the lid was hollow. But a 6 mm drillbit and a can of builders foam fixed that.



I filled 10 litres of water to check for leaks and all was wrll so i tapped it out to check the deadspace.

4L!!!!!

Granted that there was no grain and granted i had not put the tube on the bottom to act as a siphon but this seemed rather extreme.
will check again but could almost see me making a copper manifold for this.......
any thoughts?

[Mther]

Hi mate,

I see you are using the false bottom from homebrewshop. I have the same and I use a short nipple at the bottom to siphon as you also said. You can also use a plastic pipe.

That gives me <1.5L dead space when I measured it with water. However with grain I think it is much less.

Hope it helps?

Cheers

[Deebee]

Thanks for that.
I just added a length of around 3 ft from the nipple on the outside into a pan (simulating the boiler) ended up with just under a litre deadspace so guess with grain it will be even less. Roll on brewday.

[Mther]

That's great mate!

[Deebee]

A little update.

Based on the lack of insulation in the lid of the cooler 8 which I was told was extremely good) I decided to take no chances with the rest of it.

So I wrapped it up in 4 metres of camping mat sealed then with a roll of gaffer tape.

I am not worried about the lid, r the rest anymore, will be having a brew on Saturday so will see how well we hold up.

my main reasoning is that the brewery can actually be at around 0 degrees when I dough in during the winter so...