TOPIC:

Hi folks,
Having moved brewing operations to somewhere with a bit more space than our apartment "galley" kitchen, grainne and I are planning to finally go to all-grain and are looking to use Séan's mash-in-the-boiler technique. We laid hands on an old Burco recently - any issues with using this given it's stainless steel as long we insulate it properly? I don't think the capacity is as large as an Electrim bin so we might have to resort to smaller batches. If the Burco is not good for this method for some reason, is it cheaper to buy an Electrim or get/construct a seperate mash tun?
Cheers
bighair/Tim

I used to use an electrim and it was fine but you really need another boiler to heat sparge water. You can just use the grain bag in another bucket and keep the boiler for heating sparge water....it will move things along quicker...that may be in the earlier posts but I did not read them yet.

I have to admit I am gone off sparging. I don't bother doing the traditional sparge and just dump in hotter water and leave it to soak for about ten mins whilst the first runnings gets towards boiling temp. I still get around 75-80 % and it really cuts down on effort.

A boiler with two elements will also make things go an awful lot quicker..in fact it about halves the time it takes to get to a rolling boil.

Tim, I used to use a Burco, but had a picnic cooler mash tun. As Rossa said it frees up the burco for heating sparge water as you mash.

Rossa, is that not just (a variation of) batch sparging?