Analysis of Mash Tun Flow: Recommendations for Home Brewers

E. Gutierrez-Miravete[1], C. J. Walsh[2]
[1]Rensselaer at Hartford, Hartford, CT, USA
[2]General Dynamics-Electric Boat, Groton, CT, USA
Published in 2014

The major steps in the beer making process are simple and with some skill, rather good brew can be produced using a common picnic cooler. First, grain (usually barley) is wetted and allowed to partially germinate before dried in a kiln (malting) Next, during mashing in a mash tun reactyor the malted grains are soaked in hot water in to extract the fermentable sugars and then rinsed slowly to ensure as much sugar is removed as possible. In order to analyze the extraction efficiency and wort quality of a mash tun, computational fluid dynamics simulations were performed using the COMSOL Multiphysics® software. The results of this experience are described in this paper.