Sparging System for Home Made Mash Tun

Spray bar for sparging the drained, mashed grist

As I am currently using a rectangular mash tun I decided against a rotating spray bar due to the smaller area of the width in ratio to the length of the mash tun. I would be stuck with a rotating arm that didn't spray hot liquor (water) over the drained, mashed grist (malted barley) at either end of the mash tun.

So, instead for starters I have chosen to build a static spray bar, albeit one that hopefully covers most of the surface area of the mashed grist.

The connector on the top will have a pipe from the aluminium boiler fixed on and hot water will be allowed to slowly trickle onto the drained grist, sparging it. The drain tap will be open from the start of the sparging process and the sparged liquid (I really do need to remember the proper terms) will flow into the previously drained wort.

Once sparged the mash tun has finished it's job. The liquid wort plus sparged liquid will then be added to the empty boiler and brought back to the boil ready for the addition of hops and any adjuncts (other flavour ingredients eg rice) required in the recipe.

Just a quicky post really, the spray bar is all 14mm copper pipe that has been drilled every 40mm, I may drill additional holes between the current ones if need be. I have purposely angled the spray bar stages downwards with a total drop from the water entry point to the end of the bar of about 40mm. this may or may not help the sparging liquor flow better and reach the last few holes.

Home made mash tun with sparging system and brewing boiler/copper for my first foray into full grain brewing