Gear Update - All Grain Build

I decided randomly yesterday to get setup for All Grain brewing. I headed to Home Depot to check out coolers and sink return lines (for my pseudo false bottom) to start. I ended up finding this nice 60 quart Rubbermaid cooler and 10 feet of 1/4" return line that should work perfectly for a mash tun. This will give me plenty of room to do very high gravity 5 gallon batches and in the future, maybe normal gravity 10 gallon batches. I have an old Coleman cooler that I haven't used for along time and figured it would make a perfect Hot Liquor Tank.

After getting all of this stuff together and doing some measurements, I headed to the local brew shop (Doc's Cellars) to get the rest of the hardware I needed. Fortunately they had full stainless steel valve setups that didn't require many other parts to get them installed. I did have to use a couple couplers on the Mash Tun to get it to reach through the incredibly thick insulation. Also, I bought 2x 3 foot 1/2" ID tubes, a simple sparging end, some hose clamps and a barbed end for the false bottom.

In an ideal world, everything would have gone together without issue. But of course that was not the case.I struggled big time with leaks at the valve on both tanks. Long story short, the rubber washers that came with the valve kits where not working for me, the rubber washers that were on the coolers' OG valves were perfect. Once I put those on, I had no more issues with leaks.

So here are the final results. I am planning on doing my first all grain batch this Friday. It will be my Oktoberfest lager.

Mash Tun:

Hot Liquor Tank: