All-Grain Here I Come!

Here we go. I decided to make a leap into a whole different (and intimidating to many a seasoned extract brewer) world of brewing. All-grain. I watched hours of video online of guys brewing all-grain to make sure I knew exactly what I’d be getting into.

I already had purchased a 10 gal. kettle back in October, so now what I needed was a mash tun. The liquid extract batches I’ve been brewing up until this point haven’t necessitated a mash tun because the “mashing” or “steeping” of all the grains is already done for you and condensed into thick syrupy liquid form. I wanted to start all-grain brewing so I could eventually deviate from recipes and develop my own beers as I come to understand how malts, hops and yeast work together to create a unique finished product.

Many of the videos I watched online featured guys building mash tuns made out of water coolers. One video in particular had a guy using the exact cooler I had sitting in my basement (that we use maybe two days a year). It was a really expensive cooler and the guy in the video was saying how great this model is for the purposes of a mash tun. There ya go, I already own the biggest part of this. I went out and bought the rest of the necessary parts. After putting it all together I realized it was leaking a bit. Turns out I needed a longer nipple (that’s what she said?) so I could have more room to tighten all the necessary parts. A trip back to Midwest Supplies fixed that.

Mash tun complete!