DIY Mash Caps

[Owenbräu]

[bensonledbetter]

[Owenbräu]

Yup. Just needs to be sturdy and make it float. The SS shell will make it food safe. I'm probably going to use silicone to adhere the foil to the foam.

[Weizenberg]

[bensonledbetter]

So per @Weizenberg post, it sounds like some folks have incorporated mash caps, others have not.

The styrofoam board thing has my wheels turning. I might swing by Dome Hepot and see what they've got laying around and maybe cover the foam with the silicon baking mat I bought, affixing it with some silicon caulking.

And as predicted, the baking mat has already been used twice in its first day in our house. Buttermilk biscuits yesterday morning, pizza in the evening. Both delicious.

[Bilsch]

I thought I’d chime in and post my solution to the mash cap issue. I brew with fairly common 8.5 gallon kettles that are sold at many different brewing supply outfits. They’re not all exactly alike and range in inside diameters of about 13-5/8” to 13-3/4” but this cap construction method is variable enough that you can custom fit to the size you got. I purchased this off the shelf pot cover, Homichef HOM490034 13.5” lid, available at many places online for about 20 bucks.

I don’t have a before picture, you can find that online at the sellers, but the inside edge of the cover is 13-1/4” and the flared lip extended out to about 14” in diameter. The trick is to bend that flared horizontal lip back to vertical to custom fit the kettle ID as well as increase the edge height on the lid. More importantly this increased height causes the lid to displace more liquid and float with a more comfortable margin.

Being stainless, I thought that might be a problem but this lid is made out of a fairly malleable grade of metal therefore it was quite easy, with time and a little care, to work the lip up to custom fit the kettle ID. As you can see I did not bend the lid lip back all the way to 90 degrees as that was unnecessary and would have been difficult without being able to shrink or ripple the excess metal. You will get some damage to the edge from the bending but it’s only cosmetic and won’t hinder its function. Anyway with an adjustable wrench and about an hour of slowly reforming the metal is all that is required. Going around many times bending in small steps is best to keep it looking less like a hack job. Pictured in my kettle, it looks uneven but actually the kettle is fairly out of round and I had to leave a bit more clearance so it would fit at any rotation it was placed in.

After reworking the overall diameter of the lid decreased to 13-5/8” and the height of the lid increased to about 3/4” of an inch. Floating it in water (1.0 SG) displaced two thirds of it’s height or about 1/2” draft, leaving quite a comfortable margin of safety against sinking.

[Brandon]

[Bilsch]

Thanks.
Homichef also makes 12-1/2", 14-1/8", 15-3/4", 18" and 19-3/4" lids. The OD of the vertical edge is 1/4" less then the advertised size for pot fit. So one could figure out if any of those sizes might fit their pots with some wrenching.

[Brandon]

[Brandon]