Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Making up a mash tun using a 160 liter ice box and for the bottom drain stainless steel woven mesh from a 2 meter washing machine water inlet hose. Seem to be a very fine filter, maybe too fine.

If I use finely ground corn, almost like flour, what are the chances of the drain blocking?

The mash will have barley and wheat added as the mash temperature drops. I have used cracked corn before but not in a true mash tun.

It will block apparently you cant sparge either have read a few places rice hulls in the mash help but dont know never tried them..

Per, just to keep it simple, couldnt you just use your fermenter as you intend, without the SS drain/filter thing and just let it settle a day or so and decant/syphon it off. You dont lose too much wash and then just chuck what u dont need,almost a certainty that you will clog up and create much more work for yourself.Even if u get a bit of grunge into the mix, it cooks off clean.
Ken

Think I will go with the barley and wheat and drop the corn, too much expense to have a stuff-up on a large mash.
When I started making the 160 liter mash tun never even thought of how much it would cost for grain.

Peregian wrote:Think I will go with the barley and wheat and drop the corn, too much expense to have a stuff-up on a large mash.
When I started making the 160 liter mash tun never even thought of how much it would cost for grain.

If you're using enough malted barley, micronized horse corn feed would work well
It doesn't need a cereal mash because it's already gelatinised, you can just add it straight to the tun and the enzymes from your barley should convert the starch if you've got enough in there
Micrmaize should work http://www.hygain.com.au/feeds/micrmaize/
I work in the equine industry, I'm trying to get some at cost price through work to see how it goes, just gotta finish the 25kg sack of cracked corn I bought for doing UJSSM first

Peregian wrote:Think I will go with the barley and wheat and drop the corn, too much expense to have a stuff-up on a large mash.
When I started making the 160 liter mash tun never even thought of how much it would cost for grain.

At a rough estimate what do you reakon a 160l all grain mash would cost in grain? Nearly ready to start on big batchs and looking for best way to do big batchs of corn whiskey. Guessing a sugarhead will be the way to go...

How big is your boiler would start out smaller and work up to bigger did a beer with 4 kg pale malt and 2 kg of rice for 23 L malted grain is easy but rice and corn when you cook multiplies .Would need about 50 kg of grain and if using US recipe there malt converts more starch then the Australian
What’s the difference between 2-row and 6-row?

I use an excel sheet to calculate the water/space/grain bill.

This sheet is none of my doing I found it some time ago while doing a web search, can't remember the web site. Hope it is OK to add the file to this post, if not please delete.

With the grain bill at about 25 KG and costing about $5 plus per kilo that's $125, too much money to lose if I stuff-up.

Peregian wrote:With the grain bill at about 25 KG and costing about $5 plus per kilo that's $125, too much money to lose if I stuff-up.

You really should buy full 25kg sacks of grain, you'll save yourself a fair amount
I pay $50 per sack for Aussie malts and $80 for UK malts (smoked/peated malt is a tad more expensive)

sp0rk wrote:You really should buy full 25kg sacks of grain, you'll save yourself a fair amount
I pay $50 per sack for Aussie malts and $80 for UK malts (smoked/peated malt is a tad more expensive)

Have thought about full sacks of grain but at this stage would like to make sure this large mash tun works OK.

Not sure if you can purchase a full sack and have it cracked.

Peregian wrote:

sp0rk wrote:You really should buy full 25kg sacks of grain, you'll save yourself a fair amount
I pay $50 per sack for Aussie malts and $80 for UK malts (smoked/peated malt is a tad more expensive)

Have thought about full sacks of grain but at this stage would like to make sure this large mash tun works OK.

Not sure if you can purchase a full sack and have it cracked.

I think a grain mill is one of the best purchases I've ever made, I highly recommend it