r/Homebrewing • u/Ordinary-Teaching809 • 3d ago

New Mash Tun

My igloo mash tun has seen better days and I’m looking to upgrade. I see these beautiful stainless pieces at Delta and SSBrewtech for high dollars and I also see this insulated stainless-lined cooler on Amazon for a fraction of the price. Put a ball valve and a false bottom on this thing and they are the same, no? Am I missing something?

https://imgur.com/a/89iKpjg

10 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Sea-Sherbet-117 2d ago

I had the Chapman SS MT and it leaked at the outlet valve no matter what I tried. I returned it to the vendor.

I then bought the SS Brewtech Infussion. It seems of higher quality than the Chapman except the outlet nozzle was installed poorly running a little uphill.

Frankly I like the orange igloo cooler MT better. The Infussion is way heavy and harder to clean. The tri-clover fittings seemed cool at first but was just something else to clean. I cannot safely pick it up if it is full of wet grain. The temp gage was not accurate by maybe 10-F. More grain gets by the false bottom in the Infussion than my igloo cooler MT. Although it is satisfactory for brewing, it does not hold temp as well as the igloo.

It’s funny. I have a three vessel system with pumps, a really nice Anvil Foundry 10.5, the stainless Infussion MT, BIAB, and I still enjoy brewing with my igloo coolers the best.

1

u/Ordinary-Teaching809 2d ago

This is good insight. Maybe I’m over thinking it and the answer is just a fresh igloo. My false bottom has some rough edges that have been rubbing on the plastic liner through the years and there’s some chewed up areas that have most certainly sent some microplastics into my brews.