The beers I’ve made so far (and still not actually tasted), have all utilized malt extracts. This is somewhat limiting in terms of the kinds of beers I can make, but quick and easy because someone else has taken malted grain and mashed it for me.

The goal with this beer making is to make seriously good beer on the cheap. Soon, I plan to attempt a clone of one of the best beers in the world. Doing so involves making beer directly from malted grain. Which means mashing said grain, as there are no extracts available made from specialty Belgian grains.

This means that I need yet another piece of equipment. Well, I’d need a mash tun, a lauter tun, and a hot liquor tank if I were doing it the professional way. Since the goal is to do this cheaply, I’m going to make do with a single 10 gallon multi-purpose mash/lauter tun. I constructed one this morning, utilizing a 10-gallon Rubbermaid water cooler from Home Depot. Actually, everything I needed to construct it was available at Home Depot, with exception of some stainless steel 5/8″ washers which I had to pick up from Ace. If anyone else is in the market for 10 gallon water coolers, Home Depot has by far the best price at $39.

Here it is!

On the inside you can see my fancy lautering “manifold” which is just some braided stainless steel faucet hose, with the plastic removed from the inside. The internets say that it should work fine for batch or “English” sparging.